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BUSINESS
Jul 31, 2003

Koizumi denies postal plan report

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi denied Wednesday he plans to set up an official committee on privatizing Japan's postal services to boost studies that his private panel conducted in 2001 and 2002.
BUSINESS
Jul 28, 2003

Chinese currency system must face step-by-step liberalization

We recently hear a lot about the need for China to adjust the exchange rate of its currency, the yuan. In fact, Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan, during the U.S. Senate Banking Committee hearing July 16, said it is "increasingly evident" that China should allow its currency to trade freely...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 27, 2003

The art of redemption

YOSHIMASA AND THE SILVER PAVILION: The Creation of the Soul of Japan, by Donald Keene. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003, 10 illustrations, 224 pp., $29.95 (paper). In the appropriate volume of his monumental history of Japanese literature, Donald Keene only once mentions the eighth Ashikaga...
JAPAN
Jul 23, 2003

Don't build it unless they'll come

More than three-quarters of respondents to a recent survey believe the government should stop building expressways if the projects are not expected to turn a profit.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 19, 2003

Japan Highway on the road to ruin; 617.477 billion yen in debt: document

A set of secret documents allegedly compiled by Japan Highway Public Corp. suggest that the semigovernmental corporation is in a state of capital deficit.
JAPAN
Jul 11, 2003

Nov. 9 election nearly a certainty: Yamasaki aide

A Nov. 9 general election is a near certainty as Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is expected to dissolve the House of Representatives to meet that schedule, a close aide to LDP Secretary General Taku Yamasaki said Thursday.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 11, 2003

Man who held girl for nine years to serve 14, Supreme Court rules

The Supreme Court on Thursday restored the original 14-year sentence imposed on a man who kidnapped and confined a girl in Niigata Prefecture for nearly a decade.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jul 10, 2003

Know what you eat

Trying to understand the debate over Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) is a bit like trying to pick up mercury. It seems solid enough, but try to grasp it and it slips away. Critics of GMOs might draw another parallel as well. Considering how pervasive GMOs are and yet how little we know about them,...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 8, 2003

Watching the detectives

There's something to be said about Japanese police attitudes towards foreigners.
EDITORIALS
Jul 6, 2003

The case of the missing WMD

Since the war in Iraq ended, supporters and critics alike have reached a near-consensus that the main reason given for the U.S.-led operation -- the threat posed by Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction -- was baseless. U.S. President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair insist...
JAPAN
Jul 5, 2003

All right, have a drink then: JCP

Members of the Japanese Communist Party working at the party's headquarters in Tokyo may be able to drink alcohol outside their homes after all.
JAPAN
Jul 4, 2003

U.S. wants officials present in military suspect questioning

The United States has demanded that Japan allow American officials to be present when U.S. servicemen suspected of committing crimes here are questioned by Japanese investigators prior to indictment.
EDITORIALS
Jul 3, 2003

Freeze salaries to arrested lawmakers

The average annual income of Japanese Diet members in 2002 dropped 6.2 percent from the year before to 26.93 million yen, the lowest level since 1993 when an income and asset reporting system for national legislators was introduced, according to data released Monday by the Diet. This drop is attributed...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jul 3, 2003

What a week that was

It was a week filled with surprises and excitement.
BUSINESS
Jul 2, 2003

FSA accused of strong-arm tactics

The Financial Services Agency exerted improper pressure early last year on Tokio Marine & Fire Insurance Co. to consolidate with Asahi Mutual Life Insurance Co., a Democratic Party of Japan member said Tuesday.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jun 28, 2003

Darius Hecq-Cauquil

Old-timers remember the late Masaru Ogawa, characterful senior editor of The Japan Times 40 years ago. Bilingual and bicultural from his birth and upbringing in the United States, he returned to Japan, married and brought up his family here.
COMMENTARY
Jun 23, 2003

Diet group takes uneasy steps toward abolishing death penalty

Among major industrial countries, only Japan and the United States retain capital punishment. In Japan, however, there is a growing abolition movement. The Diet Members' League for Abolition of the Death Penalty, a suprapartisan group headed by Shizuka Kamei of the governing Liberal Democratic Party,...
BUSINESS
Jun 18, 2003

Red tape hinders Singapore Airlines campaign

Attempts by the SARS-battered Singapore Airlines to offer travelers bargain deals have been stalled here by domestic regulations, despite high hopes for mutual promotion of tourism under a bilateral free trade agreement signed recently.
COMMENTARY
Jun 16, 2003

They impeach murderers, don't they?

NEW YORK -- U.S. President George W. Bush told us that Iraq and al-Qaeda were working together. They weren't. He repeatedly implied that Iraq had had something to do with 9/11. It hadn't. He claimed to have proof that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein possessed banned weapons of mass destruction....
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 15, 2003

The albatross of nuclear power in Japan

According the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), the residents of the greater Tokyo metropolitan area are facing the crisis of a power shortage this summer because most of the company's nuclear reactors will remain shut down for inspections and repairs stemming from last year's discovery that the...
EDITORIALS
Jun 12, 2003

Preparing for the worst

Japan's efforts to update its security legislation reached a milestone last week when an overwhelming Diet majority passed three defense bills designed to deal with a military attack from abroad. The vote -- 202 in favor and 32 against -- would have been inconceivable during the Cold War. It is proof...
COMMENTARY
Jun 6, 2003

Force restructuring anxiety

SINGAPORE -- There was a time when the Pentagon saw "relieving regional anxiety" as one of its primary alliance maintenance tasks in East Asia. Today, it seems more adept at creating this anxiety, rather than providing the reassurance that lies at the heart of sustaining America's critical alliances...
JAPAN
Jun 4, 2003

DPJ to scour newspaper clippings to control image

By REIJI YOSHIDA
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 1, 2003

Travel or reality show? A bit of both and neither

The TV Tokyo series, "Inaka ni Tomaro" ("Let's Spend the Night in the Countryside"; Sunday 7 p.m.), which started several months ago, is categorized as a travel show, but its appeal is similar to that which characterizes reality shows, namely the spectacle of people placed in real-life situations that...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 31, 2003

Improve your English via e-mail correspondence

Studying French from age 11, it was exciting when my school in England teamed up with another in France for correspondence exchange. Francoise and I wrote to one another for five years before fading from one another's lives. But I have never forgotten her, or her impact on my life: opening up the world...
COMMENTARY
May 29, 2003

Change hasn't halted decline

LONDON -- I was invited recently to Japan to speak to two Japanese audiences about the Japanese economy as seen from London and what should be done to ensure Japanese economic recovery. I prepared a speech that was pessimistic. This was inevitable as British reporting on the Japanese economy is full...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 28, 2003

Enjoy your complicite in a world of dizzying multiplicity

It was a difficult delivery. The fruit of the union between actor/director Simon McBurney, founder of London-based Complicite (formerly Thea^tre de Complicite), and a Japanese cast in Tokyo had been long-awaited, but even so it kept everyone guessing past the expected arrival time.
COMMENTARY
May 19, 2003

Strengthen Japan's deterrent

The ruling coalition and the top opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan, have agreed to amend a package of government-sponsored war contingency bills, marking a turning point in Japan's security policy.

Longform

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