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JAPAN
Jan 1, 2003

Recruiters adapt to a changing job scene

Are the days of the job-offering "recruiter" numbered? In Japan, recruiters are young employees who help their companies woo recent graduates from their alma maters. But the long-standing practice -- criticized for favoring students from a small circle of select universities -- is giving way to more...
JAPAN
Jan 1, 2003

Nippon Yusen collared over huge tax dodge

Nippon Yusen K.K., Japan's biggest shipping company, failed to declare about 5.8 billion yen in taxable income in the five years through 1999, sources said Tuesday.
BUSINESS
Jan 1, 2003

Dollar expected to fall against yen in first half

For Japanese looking to travel to the United States this year, the best exchange rates for the yen are likely to last until around June -- that is, if market predictions prove to be correct.
JAPAN
Jan 1, 2003

Parties prepare for snap election

Although no date has been set for the next general election for the House of Representatives, the ruling and opposition parties have already decided to field a total of 811 candidates, believing it will be held this year.
JAPAN
Jan 1, 2003

New university to join bioscience race

KYOTO -- Although the government is aware that bio-related businesses are important for revitalizing the economy, this field has yet to develop in Japan at the level seen in other countries.
JAPAN
Jan 1, 2003

Quest for disputed islands snarled by Suzuki scandals

Japan's efforts to get back the four Russian-held islands off northeast Hokkaido suffered an apparent setback last year.
CULTURE / Music
Jan 1, 2003

Heard, but not scene

Only a few years ago, Japanese music was the hype. At South by Southwest, the tony annual music confab, consecutive years saw Cornelius, Number Girl and Ex-Girl wow audiences. Rolling Stone ran a feature on upcoming Japanese bands like The Zoobombs, Takako Minekawa and Buffalo Daughter that heralded...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Jan 1, 2003

So you thought '02 was good? Well, there's Mori to come

It looks, at first glance, like a refreshing case of "out with the old, and in with the new": In late 2002 the Tokyo art community bade a teary goodbye to its Mecca, when the falling-down old Sagacho building, home for years to some of Japan's most progressive gallery spaces, finally closed its doors...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 1, 2003

Ackerman and tpt bend theater's rules

Whether a person becomes a theatergoer often depends on a crucial encounter with this dramatic art form -- and a play that just opened at the Benisan Pit in Tokyo's Sumida Ward is indubitably the stuff that makes theatergoers.
CULTURE / Music
Jan 1, 2003

Mash it up, tear it up

The battle over music copyrights continued to rage this year. To combat the song pirates, the record industry unveiled copy-proof CDs and AudioGalaxy, one of the biggest music file-sharing networks in the post-Napster era, was shut down. It was a heavy blow, but MP3 hounds just regrouped and shared elsewhere....
MORE SPORTS
Dec 31, 2002

'Sappu' phenomenon captures imagination of Japanese public

A beast will send chills down the spine of the bravest of men.
COMMUNITY
Dec 31, 2002

Bringing AIDS awareness to the EFL classroom

Burning the candle at both ends has a different meaning for Louise Haynes, director of Japan AIDS Prevention Awareness Network (JAPANetwork).
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Dec 31, 2002

Caveats to help avoid the conmen

Not long ago, while I was out posting a letter, a salesman phoned and told my wife that we had been tabbed to receive a new water filter for our kitchen faucet, absolutely free of charge.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Dec 31, 2002

Don't pay extra for shipping when you move to Japan

Belated greetings
COMMENTARY
Dec 31, 2002

Koizumi losing ability to lead

The most striking impression about 2002 is that the world has become increasingly insecure. When two jetliners hijacked by suicide terrorists crashed into New York's World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, old-fashioned big-power games ended and a new struggle between civilized society and international...
COMMENTARY
Dec 30, 2002

Missiles challenge diplomac

Defense chief Shigeru Ishiba's rash remarks regarding a joint Japan-U.S. missile defense project deviate from Tokyo's official defense policy and could give the impression that Japan is advancing the bilateral initiative beyond research to the development stage.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Dec 30, 2002

Pomp, ceremony and the U.S. presidency

NEW YORK -- A new book by Christopher Anderson is called "George and Laura: Portrait of an American Marriage." Andersen, who also wrote "Jack and Jackie" and "Bill and Hillary," may not always be "respectful," to quote a reviewer, toward America's First Couples, but the appearance of his latest book...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 30, 2002

S. Korean-U.S. relations at a crossroad

SEOUL -- Riding atop a tsunami wave of popular protest against perceived inequities in the Status of Forces Agreement governing U.S forces in South Korea and a general restiveness over the American military presence, South Korea's president-elect, Roh Moo Hyun, promises to bring a new focus to South...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / JET STREAM
Dec 30, 2002

An Ainu 'homecoming' for journeying Navajo

When Marcus Mose, a Native American from the Navajo Nation and an assistant language teacher in Gonohe, Aomori Prefecture, visited the popular Ainu musician Kano Oki in Hokkaido this November, it was like a journey home.
EDITORIALS
Dec 29, 2002

What 'McDonaldization'?

I t wasn't all that long ago that American journalist Thomas Friedman was making headlines with his so-called Golden Arches Theory of conflict prevention: No two countries that both had McDonald's, he wrote in 1996, had ever fought a war against each other. Around the same time, McDonald's was drawing...
COMMUNITY
Dec 29, 2002

A master of tea's art and science

Kunihiko Sokan Horinouchi, 59, is not just the 13th master of the tea house Horinouchi Choseian, one of the two subdivisions of the Omotesenke, a major school of traditional Japanese tea ceremony. As the head of one of the two families which, for generations, have been supporting the Omotesenke tradition...
COMMUNITY
Dec 29, 2002

Winter's ancient symbol of vigor and life

In the contemporary Western world, Christmas starts with Christmas Eve on Dec. 24. and ends with Boxing Day on Dec. 26. In times now long past, though -- and on calendars now long since consigned to history -- the date of Christmas and celebrations of the birth of Christ have varied from Dec. 25 to Jan....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 29, 2002

Stymied by a myopic military

THE SHADOW WARRIORS OF NAKANO: A History of the Imperial Japanese Army's Elite Intelligence School, by Stephen C. Mercado. Brassey's: Washington, D.C., 2002, 331 pp., $27.95 (cloth) This is the groundbreaking story of Japan's World War II intelligence agents, an elite cadre of approximately 2,500 men...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 29, 2002

Mt. Fuji observed, and revealed

FUJI: Images of Contemporary Japan, by Chris Steele-Perkins. New York: Umbrage Editions, 2001, 136 pp., 104 color plates, $45 (cloth) Ukiyo-e master Hokusai established a tradition when he traveled around Mount Fuji in the 19th century, illustrating his 36 views of the mountain. He made it the locus...
COMMENTARY
Dec 29, 2002

Resist the potions of the past

LONDON -- "Capitulation bottom" is the ugly and inelegant phrase used by financial analysts in London to indicate the low point in the cycle of investor optimism and pessimism -- the point where investors give up in despair, sell their shrunken shareholdings, if they can find a buyer, and start putting...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 29, 2002

Hideki Togi out to gagaku your world

He is the man responsible for bringing gagaku back into the Japanese lexicon. He is to gagaku (classical Japanese court music) what Ayumi Hamasaki is to J-Pop. Since Hideki Togi left the Imperial Household Agency in 1996, armed with his hichiriki, black leather pants and cool charm, he has been on a...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 29, 2002

Koma Square -- a new years' tale by RK

1997-99 He woke to the sound of a prerecorded voice booming from the nationalists' minitruck rolling through their neighborhood, making the windows rattle. Shirtless on the tatami, his bare back pressed to the ribbed weave, he heard the voice as part of his dream and then part of the day, and then...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 29, 2002

'Russian spirit' headed down the hatch

MOSCOW -- With the winter holidays upon us, Russians are looking forward to the longest drinking binge of the year. It started with "Western" Christmas, which Russians began celebrating after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then come New Year's Eve, Russian Orthodox Christmas on Jan. 7 and the old...

Longform

An illustration features the Japanese signs for "ganbare" (good luck) and the Deaflympics, which will be held between Nov. 15 and 26.
A century of Deaf sport finds its moment in Tokyo