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COMMENTARY
May 2, 2004

Taiwan Strait status quo grows riskier

HONG KONG -- The Shanghai Communique, signed by U.S. President Richard Nixon and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in 1972, asserted: "The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 1, 2004

Reverend mom gives a good name to activism

Quite how the Rev. Claudia Genung (a surname of French Hugenot origin) fits everything into 24 hours is beyond all understanding.
COMMENTARY / World
May 1, 2004

China lacks sincerity in seeking apologies

GUATEMALA CITY -- It is a constant refrain of officials in Beijing that no other country should interfere with its internal affairs or even pass comment on events that occur inside China. However, this insistence on "noninterference" only works one way since Chinese officials often venture opinions on...
Japan Times
Features
Apr 25, 2004

Reluctantly putting the hanging case

Despite official data showing public support for capital punishment running at around 80 percent, few Japanese are willing to openly defend the death penalty.
MULTIMEDIA
Apr 24, 2004

Rachad Farah

As he prepares to leave Japan for his next diplomatic posting, Rachad Farah, ambassador of the Republic of Djibouti, admits he cannot help but have "a heavy heart." He has been here 15 years, and to leave is wrenching even though he goes to an attractive new posting. For the last 10 years, he has been...
JAPAN
Apr 21, 2004

LDP panel eyes changes to Constitution preamble

A constitutional research panel of the Liberal Democratic Party has decided to prioritize the compilation of draft revisions to the preamble of the country's war-renouncing Constitution, LDP sources said Tuesday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 14, 2004

Lessons still unlearned

Timely or what! Just as Japan's autocratic leaders appear to have junked war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution -- with news last week of SDF aircraft even having transported armed U.S. soldiers into Iraq -- along comes "Taiko Tataite Fue Fuite (Playing Drum and Flute)," which vividly portrays...
JAPAN
Apr 14, 2004

Malpractice-death coverup appeal fails

The Supreme Court rejected on Tuesday an appeal by the former director of a Tokyo hospital who was convicted of violating the Medical Practitioners Law by failing to notify police of a malpractice death within 24 hours.
COMMENTARY
Apr 10, 2004

A fight that does not finish

Tokyo's angry reaction to the threatened retaliatory killing by Iraqi militants of three young Japanese civilians taken hostage this week reminds one of how much the impasse in Iraq parallels the 1960s quagmire in Vietnam.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 8, 2004

Prime minister pledges Yasukuni return

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Wednesday that he will keep visiting Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine despite a Fukuoka District Court ruling that his August 2001 trip there, the first of four, violated the Constitution.
JAPAN
Apr 5, 2004

Kanzaki favors defining SDF in the Constitution

New Komeito leader Takenori Kanzaki suggested Sunday he would support a constitutional amendment that would define the Self-Defense Forces.
JAPAN
Apr 4, 2004

Tanaka's daughter won't appeal

The daughter of former Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka has decided not to appeal a high court ruling that rescinded an earlier injunction banning sale of a weekly magazine that featured an article about her divorce, her lawyers said Saturday.
Events
Mar 31, 2004

South Korean economy bedeviled by serious woes: writers

While Japan's economy may finally be bidding farewell to the "lost decade" of the stagnant 1990s, growth in South Korea, once noted for its rapid recovery after the 1997 Asian crisis, is slowing down amid serious problems like mounting household debts.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 21, 2004

New coalitions of the willing seek change

While I was in London in January, The Guardian newspaper ran a front-page story about an independent evaluation of some of Britain's leading international charities that tried to help southern Africa avoid a food crisis in 2002-2003. The evaluation concluded that the charities had overstated the seriousness...
JAPAN
Mar 20, 2004

Ishiba sorry for 'autistic forces' jibe

Defense Agency Director General Shigeru Ishiba apologized Friday for saying earlier this week that the Self-Defense Forces are sometimes referred to as "the autistic forces."
Japan Times
JAPAN / POLITICS IN FOCUS
Mar 16, 2004

LDP policy panel calls the shots, not Diet

The Diet shall be the highest organ of state power, and shall be the sole lawmaking organ of the State. Thus reads Article 41 of the Constitution.
COMMENTARY
Mar 14, 2004

Getting Beijing to mind its own business

WASHINGTON -- China routinely vilifies any comment on its political practices as unwarranted outside "interference." Yet Beijing is always ready to lecture America on its policies.
COMMENTARY
Mar 10, 2004

No easy answers to immigration issues

LONDON -- A fundamental principle of the European Union has been freedom of movement within it and the right to work in any member country. This principle has, however, been undermined by the decision of some EU founder states to limit immigration from the new member countries in Eastern Europe for varying...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Mar 7, 2004

Yayoi Kusama: Lost and found in art

Yayoi Kusama was just shy of 30 when she left her hometown of Matsumoto in Nagano Prefecture and headed to America to meet her hero, the painter Georgia O'Keeffe.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 7, 2004

Levitation, drug claims and, er, melons blur reality in Asahara trial

The sarin attack on the Tokyo subway system that the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo carried out exactly nine years ago this month is often cited as the first mass terrorist strike against civilians, and like al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Aum's former guru Shoko Asahara is accepted as the mastermind...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Mar 4, 2004

Pottering in a paradise too easily lost

Whenever I get the chance I like to spend time in Okinawa, which is where I am writing this. As I said to my long-suffering editor, who is getting this article in longhand, I am here to work on the first draft of a novel in Japanese, so I sit at a table loaded with books and dictionaries, a big window...
SOCCER / World cup
Mar 3, 2004

Japan players to receive reprimands for conduct

Seven players from the Japanese national team are set to be reprimanded for violating team regulations by indulging in a drinking binge and acting improperly during a training camp in Kashima last month.
JAPAN
Feb 26, 2004

Government defends sacking Japan Highway chief

Government lawyers argued Wednesday that the dismissal of Haruho Fujii as president of Japan Highway Corp. was permissible under rules of the semigovernmental highway construction body.
JAPAN
Feb 25, 2004

Asahara a social fiend or doting guru?

Over the course of Aum Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara's eight-year criminal trial, Tokyo prosecutors have portrayed him as a religious charlatan who used his teachings only to feed his lust for power and fame.
JAPAN
Feb 25, 2004

Mass lawsuit filed against troop deployment in Iraq

Opponents of the dispatch of Ground Self-Defense Force troops to Iraq have filed a lawsuit against the government, saying the deployment violates the pacifist Constitution, officials said Tuesday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 18, 2004

Unpeeling Melt-Banana

Melt-Banana are one of the most popular Japanese bands in Europe and the United States, and there's two reasons for this: 1) They play more shows abroad than any other Japan-based band; and 2) They are one of Japan's most original-sounding bands, who, although highly experimental, make quality music...
BUSINESS
Feb 17, 2004

France win of China rail bid denied

The transport ministry on Monday denied that France has beaten Japan and Germany in a bid to provide technology for a planned high-speed rail link between Beijing and Shanghai.

Longform

Rock group The Yellow Monkey played K-Arena Yokohama in June as part of a nationwide tour. Concerts are increasingly popular in the age of social media as users value in-person experiences.
Inside Japan’s arena boom: Sports, sound and city-building