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JAPAN
Aug 19, 2006

Lobbying firm strives to be bridge to Diet

and Daniel Lintz of Nagatacho Forum pose at a Tokyo hotel in July. PETER CROOKES PHOTO
BASKETBALL
Aug 18, 2006

FIBA World Championship has long, colorful history

World Cup soccer's exploits have been well chronicled. Basketball's international competitions, excluding Olympic gold-medal games, have received much-less attention from the sporting press.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 17, 2006

The rules of Lebanon's reconstruction

PRAGUE -- Lebanon's reconstruction, so painstakingly carried out in the 1990s, is now at risk of being undone. But Lebanon is not alone in that respect: According to the United Nations and several independent studies, countries in transition from war to peace face roughly a 50 percent chance of sliding...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 17, 2006

Exploring her selves

Modern culture is deeply interested in constructed and changing identities. The mutability of the individual is an obsession that stretches from stories about Leonardo Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" being a portrait of the artist in drag to Oprah Winfrey's very public weight-loss programs; from Japanese artist...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 16, 2006

Intelligence works better than bullets

The British police, acting closely with intelligence agencies in the United States, Pakistan and perhaps elsewhere over many months, have foiled a major terrorist plot of blowing up numerous planes between Britain and America.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 13, 2006

Shifting relations with China

JAPAN'S RELATIONS WITH CHINA: Facing a Rising Power, edited by Lam Peng Er. London: Routledge, 2006, 242 pp., £65 (cloth). Sino-Japanese relations are of critical importance to the future development of the two countries as well as wider East Asia. At the present time these relations are characterized...
Japan Times
LIFE
Aug 13, 2006

His Emperor's reluctant warrior

Samurai-born and steeled in Japan's harsh military culture, Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi had lived five years in North America but was largely unknown to Washington's leaders when he was ordered to defend Iwo Jima "at all costs." The U.S. would pay dearly for underestimating him.
JAPAN
Aug 10, 2006

Abe gets boost as factions look set to back him

Factional politics once again have come to the forefront of the Liberal Democratic Party presidential election with reports Wednesday that Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe has secured the support of two faction leaders and is a virtual shoo-in.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 10, 2006

Looking beyond the West

Art historian Dr. Charles Merewether is the artistic director and curator of the 2006 Biennale of Sydney (established 1973). Merewether has worked and taught in Mexico, Spain, Australia and the United States and is the author of a number of books on art, including "Art, Anti-Art, Non-Art: Experimentations...
JAPAN / Politics
Aug 3, 2006

Discuss Yasukuni after LDP poll: lobby

The Japan War-Bereaved Families Association, the most powerful lobby for relatives of Japan's war dead, will forgo discussion of politically sensitive issues related to Yasukuni Shrine until after the Sept. 20 Liberal Democratic Party presidential election, an executive of the group said Wednesday. ...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jul 31, 2006

Is bigger better for European Union?

See related story EU membership sharpens Central, East Europe's competitive edge
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 30, 2006

And in the Japanese corner is . . . Morita-san

Christina Morimoto is sitting in the office of the Tokyo modeling agency she works for, answering questions about her first acting job in the new movie "I Am Nipponjin."
EDITORIALS
Jul 29, 2006

No time to be shy

The Sept. 20 Liberal Democratic Party presidential campaign heated up Thursday when Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki became the first LDP lawmaker to officially declare his candidacy. Mr. Tanigaki's entry promises to deepen discussion of tax and other policy issues following former Chief Cabinet Secretary...
CULTURE / Music
Jul 28, 2006

Peaches "Impeach My Bush"

The title is an eye-catcher, promising all manner of saucy-yet-savvy postfeminist fun, but be warned: Far from the liberal alien sex-prophetess of your dreams, Peaches is actually your embarrassing uncle who visits every Christmas. You chuckle at his "leg or breast" gag while dad's carving the turkey,...
JAPAN
Jul 27, 2006

Abe may leave faction before LDP leadership race

Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe is thinking of leaving his faction before the Liberal Democratic Party's presidential election in September to garner broader support, sources close to Abe said Wednesday.
COMMENTARY
Jul 25, 2006

Fitting memorial for war dead

With the governing Liberal Democratic Party set to elect its new leader in September -- when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi step downs as LDP president (and hence as prime minister) some LDP lawmakers are proposing ways to solve the ongoing row over Koizumi's repeated visits to Yasukuni Shrine. Visits...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 24, 2006

Iran's attempt to score a preemptive strike

WASHINGTON -- Iran's quarreling and competing leaders have decided, by their acts, to reject the offer by Europe and the United States of a nuclear reactor, aircraft spare parts, economic cooperation and more in exchange for giving up uranium enrichment.
Japan Times
LIFE
Jul 23, 2006

Faces of terrorism

The Richman's Cafe seemed an unlikely place to meet a terrorist, but at least it was well lit and public.
JAPAN / Politics
Jul 23, 2006

Retired Yasukuni official recounts turmoil over war criminal question

in Kashihara, Nara Prefecture, in May 1981. KYODO FILE PHOTO
JAPAN
Jul 21, 2006

Missile crisis put Abe in leader spotlight

Although the political pageantry to choose the next Liberal Democratic Party president will not officially begin until September, Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe's recent time in the crisis spotlight is giving him a huge lead over other possible candidates to succeed Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi....
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 21, 2006

Double trouble for Poles used to benefits

WARSAW -- Much of the world seems fascinated by the fact that Poland is now governed by identical twins who first became famous as child movie actors: President Lech Kaczynski, and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, whom Lech appointed to the post of prime minister earlier this month. They are indeed intriguing, but...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 15, 2006

Britain to get new Japanese studies center in September

Efforts by Japan experts in Britain to boost Japanese studies in the country will bear fruit this September with the opening of the National Institute of Japanese Studies in the new White Rose East Asia Center.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 7, 2006

Boycott against civil conduct

LONDON -- "It could happen here" is the shorthand phrase frequently used for a variety of alarming hypothetical scenarios. "How could this happen here?" was the question more pertinently asked in Britain recently, as its universities witnessed the unfolding of an all-too-real and perplexing action.
COMMENTARY
Jul 6, 2006

Bush's Iraq dreams are turning to dust

WASHINGTON -- It appears to be the season for second thoughts about American intervention in Iraq. Periodic public-relations offensives after endless "turning points" have failed to halt the Bush administration's long-term slide in popular support. The misbegotten war in Iraq does more than discredit...
COMMENTARY
Jul 3, 2006

A public-relations disaster

LONDON -- Politicians and officials are sometimes their countries' worst enemies. Some politicians and officials behave ineptly and tactlessly in ways that damage the national interests of their country.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 29, 2006

Uribe raises hope for Colombia's future

PRAGUE -- A leftwing tide has supposedly been sweeping Latin America. But President Alvaro Uribe's re-election in Colombia may not only have begun the process of reversing that tide; it has perhaps also shown conservative and liberal parties across the continent a way forward -- one that may soon be...
EDITORIALS
Jun 20, 2006

No need to fear Central Asian club

The summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is a curious event. Most of the year, the organization toils in obscurity, but its annual heads-of-state meeting invariably elicits breathless commentary about the rise of a bloc that is designed to stop the West or, more specifically, the United...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 18, 2006

In the wake of the true traditional Japanese funeral

MODERN PASSINGS: Death Rites, Politics, and Social Change in Imperial Japan, by Andrew Bern- stein. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2006,242 pp., with photos, $39 (cloth). I have long admired Japan's attitude toward death, its acceptance, its no-nonsense attitude toward disposal and entombment,...
COMMENTARY
Jun 16, 2006

Is Japan set to stumble after Koizumi?

LOS ANGELES -- China is like the relatively new baby on the block that the neighbors fawn over, mostly ignoring any negatives, acting as if it's the perfect child as the other children are unceremoniously pushed into the background. Overlooked, the others occasionally fling their rattles out of the playpen...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 15, 2006

Nihonga painter captured Taiwanese beauty

The scene was tranquil in 1927 at the newly established "Taiten" annual fine arts exhibition in the Japanese colony of Taiwan, which had been ceded by China in 1895 as a result of the First Sino-Japanese War. None of the artists practicing in the Qing Period (1644-1911) styles of Chinese painting were...

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years