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JAPAN
Aug 10, 2001

Smokers sue as Japan Tobacco denies causal links

Matao Yamamoto, a 67-year-old former Kyoto cab driver, is one of a large number of smokers in Japan who deeply regrets acquiring the hard-to-quit habit.
COMMENTARY
Aug 10, 2001

Noblesse oblige in short supply

The immediate task for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is to wrap up a specific reform package. While his slogans — "Structural reform with no sacred cows" and "No economic recovery without structural reform" — are basically supported here and abroad, stock prices have continued to fall.
LIFE / Lifestyle / JET STREAM
Aug 10, 2001

Getting a different perspective

Before coming to Japan, Jennifer Biggers had achieved some success as a musician in her native Texas. The world music enthusiast had composed and produced two tapes and a CD of original music.
JAPAN
Aug 10, 2001

JAL systems snafu snarls services

Japan Airlines said Thursday its host computer for passenger services broke down, stalling almost all international flights in the morning out of Narita airport in Chiba Prefecture.
JAPAN
Aug 10, 2001

Suicides abate, but still over 30,000

The number of suicides in Japan in 2000 fell 3.3 percent to 31,957 for the first annual drop in six years but stayed above 30,000 for the third straight year, the National Police Agency said Thursday.
JAPAN
Aug 10, 2001

Guru doesn't appeal sarin redress

A Tokyo District Court ruling ordering Aum Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara to pay about 464 million yen to relatives of victims of a sarin gas attack in Nagano Prefecture in 1994 became final Thursday after the appeals deadline passed Wednesday midnight with no challenges.
JAPAN
Aug 10, 2001

Abuse rate high among reformatory residents

More than half the minors sent to juvenile reformatories suffered repeated physical abuse from their parents and other relatives before their admission, according to a Justice Ministry survey released Thursday.
COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE
Aug 9, 2001

Times get tougher for Bush

WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush has now been in the Oval Office for a little more than one half year, and it has been the best of times and the worst of times for him.
JAPAN
Aug 9, 2001

North Korea, Ukraine join saury fishing off Hokkaido

Russia has granted North Korean and Ukrainian boats permission to fish for saury in waters around Russian-held islands off Hokkaido that are also claimed by Japan, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
COMMENTARY
Aug 9, 2001

The dangers of cohabitation

LONDON -- The institution of marriage has been taking some hard knocks lately. It is not just that cohabitation -- living together without the marriage commitment -- is now increasingly popular. Nor yet that, as is widely known, one in four British marriages end in divorce. (In the United States, the...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 9, 2001

Koizumi: a sheep in wolf's clothing

LONDON -- "I am resigned to not seeing a visible economic recovery for two or three years," said Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi last month. He had just won a resounding election victory despite his tough-love talk about the need for economic pain to pull the country out of its long slump....
JAPAN
Aug 9, 2001

Gaffe earns Tanaka slap on wrist

The Liberal Democratic Party gave Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka a slap on the wrist Wednesday for "unsuitable" remarks while stumping for an LDP candidate in the Upper House election last month, party officials said Wednesday.
JAPAN
Aug 9, 2001

Shinkansen tax break eyed for JR Tokai

The transport ministry may give tax relief to Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai) in an attempt to reduce the financial burden stemming from the carrier's repairs to the Tokaido Shinkansen Line, ministry officials said Wednesday.
JAPAN
Aug 9, 2001

ODA, public works cuts face LDP opposition

The Foreign Ministry and some LDP policymakers expressed opposition Wednesday to a government panel's decision to cut Official Development Assistance in the fiscal 2002 budget by 10 percent from the initial fiscal 2001 budget.
EDITORIALS
Aug 9, 2001

Argentina's turn in the spotlight

There has been a dangerous complacency in the world of international finance since the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Although that contagion spread through emerging markets with breathtaking speed, once the crisis was weathered, talk of real global financial reform was first muted and then seemed to...
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Aug 9, 2001

Teetering Toto scores on own goal

A rush of adrenaline ran through my inebriated body when I read the Toto results one Saturday evening a few months back. Hang on, better check that again, was my thinking at the time. According to the numbers on my computer screen, I had all the day's numbers correct with only three games to be played...
ENVIRONMENT / GARDENING FOR ALL
Aug 9, 2001

Hidden treasures in south Kyushu

Aside from the feral horses and the splendid views from Cape Toimisaki, southeastern Kyushu is known for its "living fossils": the cycads.
BUSINESS
Aug 9, 2001

With election over, focus turns to reforms

The Tokyo stock market has reacted little to the ruling coalition's victory in last month's Upper House election, as the outcome was well within expectations.
JAPAN
Aug 9, 2001

MSDF unit sent to Ehime Maru site

Defense Agency chief Gen Nakatani on Wednesday ordered the dispatch of about 130 Maritime Self-Defense Force members to Hawaii to assist the U.S. Navy in salvaging the Japanese fisheries training ship Ehime Maru.
JAPAN
Aug 9, 2001

Maid, machinist get life for murder

OSAKA -- A former maid and her male acquaintance were sentenced Wednesday to life in prison for robbing and strangling her employer in 1999 in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, and dumping his body in Aomori Prefecture.
BUSINESS
Aug 9, 2001

Shiokawa vows to prevent negative growth

Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa reiterated Wednesday that the government will take all necessary measures to prop up the economy if it falls into negative growth on an annual basis.
JAPAN
Aug 9, 2001

War criminal kin's widow on peace quest

Shizue Sugano, 60, a relative by marriage to Class-A war criminal Koki Hirota, embarked on her antiwar pilgrimage in 1994.
BUSINESS
Aug 9, 2001

Civil servants may face second year without a raise

For the second year in a row, the National Personnel Authority has recommended withholding a pay raise for employees of the central government in a belt-tightening move reflecting the severity of the economic downturn.

Longform

In 2020, 38% of all households were single-person. That figure is projected to rise to 44.3% by 2050.
The rise of AI companionship in a lonely Japan