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SUMO
Jan 13, 2002

Maru favored to win Hatsu Basho

The Hatsu Basho gets underway this Sunday with only one yokozuna competing -- Musashimaru. Yokozuna Takanohana will be absent for the fourth consecutive tournament.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 13, 2002

The blackest summer in Sydney's history

SYDNEY -- The pall of eucalyptus-scented smoke that has smothered Australia's largest city since Christmas Day is lifting. More than 11,000 evacuees are returning to the burned-out bush where their homes once stood. The cost of Sydney's worst-ever bush-fire season? Who dares count?
JAPAN
Jan 13, 2002

Bureaucrat breaking mold to give public more of a voice

Until six years ago, Nobutaka Murao says, he was just another central government bureaucrat. Then he was posted to the Mie Prefectural Government in July 1995, on loan from the Finance Ministry, and everything changed.
COMMUNITY
Jan 13, 2002

Tsukiji fish market: As fresh as it gets

As you would expect, there are plenty of fish restaurants in Tsukiji, both inside the wholesale market and also in the narrow streets that surround it. The rows of simple, hole-in-the-wall eateries in the very heart of the market cater primarily to the early-rising market workers who are already finishing...
BUSINESS
Jan 13, 2002

Credit union set to fight FSA insolvency ruling

The Financial Services Agency declared Saturday Eitai Credit Union insolvent, legally forcing it to begin insolvency proceedings under the Deposit Insurance Law, FSA sources said.
COMMUNITY
Jan 13, 2002

The real deal in Kansai's kitchen

OSAKA -- Osaka's Kuromon Market has never ceased to fire the Japanese public imagination in its 180 years of existence. Back in the 1940s, it was described in Sakunosuke Oda's novels, including his well-known "Meotozenzai." And these days, Kuromon is on television, in a popular NHK morning serial "Honmamon"...
COMMUNITY
Jan 13, 2002

Time catches up with old men and the sea

HAKODATE, Hokkaido --Kenji Fujita sits among his crabs, the wood fire in a tin bucket at his feet a thin defense against the predawn chill. It's minus 3 degrees at Hakodate's famed morning market, the pitch darkness of 4 a.m. adding layers to the cold.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 13, 2002

No recovery in sight for Japanese book publishing industry

One often sees references in the Japanese media to the "lost decade" that followed the burst of the speculative bubble in the early 1990s, but the publishing world has only suffered a half decade of negative growth. After five consecutive years of falling sales, however, it can no longer ignore systemic...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 13, 2002

Why North Korea's people starved

THE GREAT NORTH KOREAN FAMINE: Famine, Politics and Foreign Policy, by Andrew S. Natsios. United States Institute of Peace Press, 2002, $19.95 (paper) This is a grim and troubling account of the 20th century's fifth great famine, a calamity that swept through North Korea during the 1990s, claiming an...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jan 13, 2002

If we could all so depend on the kindness of strangers . . .

The Japanese are renowned for their kindness to foreigners. I tell myself this late at night as I shiver in my pajamas, my wife having once again swiped all the bed covers. And as the chatter of my teeth quickly makes it too noisy to sleep, I remember that many foreigners -- especially those from non-Western...
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Jan 13, 2002

Daikon breathes life into dead of winter

The current watchwords for trends in Western cooking are fresh and local. The chef's ideal is to use ingredients harvested as close as possible to the site where they will be transformed into a meal. While modern greenhouse-farming techniques have certainly extended the growing season of many vegetables,...
JAPAN
Jan 13, 2002

Rigging bids allegedly earned Kato secretary millions

Saburo Sato, a 61-year-old secretary to Koichi Kato, former secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party, accepted money from construction firms for approving their bids for public works projects in Yamagata Prefecture, sources close to the case said Saturday.
COMMUNITY
Jan 13, 2002

Seafood central: Tokyo's Tsukiji market

"For Japanese, fish is the very best thing in the world," Sadao Ohashi declares with pride as he pushes his medieval-looking, two-wheeled wooden cart at jogging speed, maneuvering a load of mackerel, squid and sea bream through the moving maze of carts, people and battered one-man trucks that throng...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jan 13, 2002

Skeptics searching for super powers

The laziest attributes of Japanese TV come to the fore during the New Year break, namely, the over-reliance on repetitive talk-show formats, the use of quizzes to liven things up, and lots of amateur videos and old news footage.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jan 13, 2002

Different strokes, different folks

Former Olympic swimmer Yasuko Tajima appears tonight on the exotic travel show, "Sekai Ururun Taizaiki (World Sojourn)" (TBS, 10 p.m.), the program on which she made her showbiz debut last year.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 13, 2002

Reassessing Kurosawa's neglected masterpiece

SEVEN SAMURAI: The Film by Akira Kurosawa, by Joan Mellen. London: British Film Institute, 2002, 96 pp., with many b/w photos, 8.99 British pounds (paper) The National Film Theater in London is currently presenting a two-month-long festival featuring the works of Akira Kurosawa. A number of other events...
COMMUNITY
Jan 13, 2002

Fishy facts and figures

* The global fish harvest topped 120 million tons in 1998, a threefold increase over 1960.
LIFE / Food & Drink / VINELAND
Jan 13, 2002

A great group effort

After the yearend holiday whirlwind, a mood of austerity settles over the month of January. It's a shame, since deep winter evenings are arguably the best time of year to pop the cork on rich, dark and warming red wines. Yet there is a way to savor special wines even in tight-budget times. Start a wine-tasting...
CULTURE / Music / JAZZNICITY
Jan 13, 2002

Take me to your anti-leader

The Shibuya Takeshi Orchestra is one of the most singular, challenging and unusual jazz units in Tokyo. Many local groups strive for accomplished technique, pushing their instruments to the far edge of rapid-fire playing or polishing one style to perfection. The Shibuya Takeshi Orchestra, however, delights...
SOCCER / World cup
Jan 13, 2002

Donations for World Cup 80 percent off expectations

The Japanese organizing committee for the 2002 World Cup (JAWOC) is struggling to raise donations, having received less than 20 percent of what was projected in its revenue plan.
COMMENTARY
Jan 12, 2002

Japan's economic black hole

Realism is finally impinging on the economic debate here. The "structural reform" ideologues may remain blind to the contradiction between urging privatization and liberalization even as they are being forced effectively to nationalize a banking system suffering from past liberalization excesses. But...
BASEBALL / MLB
Jan 12, 2002

Eight enter Japanese Hall of Fame

Kazuhiro Yamauchi, one of the best sluggers of the late 1950s and 1960s, has been elected to the Hall of Fame along with seven other notable contributors to Japanese baseball, baseball officials said Friday.
JAPAN
Jan 12, 2002

Tokyo police chief emphasizes World Cup security at drill

Takeshi Noda, superintendent general of the Metropolitan Police Department, instructed his staff Friday to take full security precautions for the World Cup soccer finals that are to be jointly hosted by Japan and South Korea this year.
BUSINESS
Jan 12, 2002

Ailing Daiei looks to unload baseball team, dome

Troubled Daiei Inc. is planning to sell a majority of its shares in the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks baseball team and its ballpark, the Fukuoka Dome, as part of efforts to reduce its massive interest-bearing debts, according to company sources.
JAPAN
Jan 12, 2002

Bank loans decline for fifth year in row

The average daily lending balance by the nation's banks in 2001 fell 3.9 percent from the year before to 447.05 trillion yen for the fifth straight year of decline, the Bank of Japan said Friday.
JAPAN
Jan 12, 2002

'Kandahar' director laments Afghan bombing

Afghanistan needs books rather than bombs to educate a largely illiterate population that has endured nearly two decades of war, starvation and drought, celebrated Iranian movie director Mohsen Makhmalbaf told a news conference in Tokyo on Friday.
BUSINESS
Jan 12, 2002

Shiokawa eyes easing burden of direct taxes

Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa said Friday he hopes to raise indirect taxes, including asset taxes, and reduce the burden of direct taxes in a comprehensive tax reform plan to be introduced later this month.

Longform

Ichiro Suzuki, one of the most iconic players in NPB and MLB history, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the vote.
With Hall of Fame induction, Ichiro makes himself heard loud and clear