Search - politics

 
 
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 21, 2001

K-1 hits the spot

Blood spurts from his nose. Another crunching blow to the head. His lights go out as he drops to the floor unconscious. Thousands of dollars go down with him.
JAPAN
Oct 17, 2001

Opinions clash over SDF role in war on terror

Two days after U.S.-led forces launched a bombing campaign on Afghanistan, six Air Self-Defense Force C-130 cargo planes arrived in Islamabad with relief supplies for refugees.
LIFE / Travel
Oct 8, 2001

Transnistria: relic of a bygone era

TIRASPOL, Moldova -- Think of the end of the Soviet Union as the Big Bang of recent politics. The successor states are the new planets -- large or small, and subject to varying amounts of gravitational pull from Russia. And then there are the asteroids, in this case composed of breakaway republics, autonomous...
JAPAN
Oct 7, 2001

Senaga, Okinawa opponent of U.S. presence, dies at 94

Kamejiro Senaga, the former vice chairman of the Japanese Communist Party, Lower House member and noted activist against the U.S. presence in Okinawa, died Friday night of pneumonia at a hospital in the village of Tomigusuku, Okinawa Prefecture. He was 94.
JAPAN
Sep 26, 2001

Koso resigns in wake of election scandal

Kenji Koso of the Liberal Democratic Party tendered his resignation from the Diet on Tuesday in the wake of a vote-canvassing scandal involving several top postal officials.
LIFE / Travel
Sep 25, 2001

No, really, it's completely unspoiled!

Paradise in the South Pacific? Isn't that only ad copy for getaway resorts that put little beach umbrellas in the cocktails and charge prices the locals could only afford after a winning lottery ticket?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 23, 2001

Dream weavers of a bygone era

When made up for work, Norie is perhaps as close to the classic image of Japan as you could wish. Clad in a colorful yet demure kimono, wooden sandals and a jet-black wig that provides a striking contrast to the white makeup lavished on her fine features, she looks like a doll.
CULTURE / Music
Sep 19, 2001

They'll do it theeeeeeir way

Girl bands . . . you've gotta love them.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Sep 13, 2001

Shaping up the economy: more parks, fewer highways

One of the joys of visiting the United States is having a chance to check out the alternative press. This summer, while in Vermont (which some say is a state, and some a state of mind), I picked up a free copy of "Green Living: A Practical Journal for Friends of the Environment."
CULTURE / Film
Sep 12, 2001

The life and death of the party

Blow Rating: * * * 1/2 Director: Ted Demme Running time: 123 minutes Language: English Now showing
MULTIMEDIA / SPORTS SCOPE
Sep 6, 2001

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

It's a memory that still pains me to this day. It was a public humiliation -- and the very worst kind. There are those who can shrug off such insults. I am not one of those.
JAPAN
Sep 1, 2001

Dirty waters surround Kenya dam plan

A group of lawmakers will arrive in Kenya on Sunday for a two-day inspection tour that is likely to end up endorsing a controversial hydroelectric dam project.
JAPAN / History
Aug 30, 2001

A half-century of media pigeonholing

Japan is a nation of children who were led astray by their military, re-educated under the benevolence of the United States, and rose to become America's important ally. It became a nation of salaried men and office ladies gaining, for a few brief years, through international trade what it had failed...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 27, 2001

Immigrants' uphill battle to learn English

SANTA MARIA, Calif. -- The Asian immigrant was described as speaking in "halting English" even after 20 years of living in the United States. The reporter of the Central California newspaper seemed to suggest that 20 years of living in the country should have resulted in a strong command of the language....
CULTURE / Books
Aug 26, 2001

Shaping the future:the politics of language

LANGUAGE PLANNING AND LANGUAGE CHANGE IN JAPAN, by Tessa Carroll, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 276 pp., 40.00 British pounds (cloth) Most countries consider their official language to be an area of state responsibility requiring "planning" by government agencies or special institutions. Language, from...
COMMENTARY
Aug 25, 2001

Asking a lot of peacemakers

LONDON -- What have Macedonia, Israel and Northern Ireland got in common?
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 24, 2001

Mahathir goes all out to remove thorn in his side

SINGAPORE -- After months of futile attempts at various kinds of measures, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad may have hit upon the right combination to effectively deal with a formidable political opponent -- the fundamentalist Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS).
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Aug 23, 2001

Poachers, politics threaten Japan's Eden

"It is a pocket of the earth that has been protected, but it will not be like this much longer if we don't do something. It's a shame, because we have it in our grasp now."
JAPAN / PRIVATIZING PAINS
Aug 23, 2001

Pork-barrel highway entity key target for privatization

Kyodo News Japan Highway Public Corp. is the most symbolic privatization target of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's "structural reforms without sanctuaries" campaign.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 20, 2001

Kim Jong Il's quaint trip to Moscow

BANGKOK -- Decades before European socialism crumbled, taking the Soviet Union down with it, young Russian communists were already having a hard time taking North Korea seriously. There on the distant Pacific coast was this bizarre and demanding little client state; extreme in its isolation, brutal in...
JAPAN
Aug 20, 2001

Resistance futile, Ishihara warns bureaucrats

Nobuteru Ishihara, state minister in charge of administrative reform, warned central government bureaucracies on Sunday that resistance to privatization of government-affiliated organizations is futile.
JAPAN
Aug 18, 2001

Seoul politicians slam Yasukuni visit

Five visiting members of South Korea's National Assembly on Friday criticized Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine as "anachronistic."
EDITORIALS
Aug 16, 2001

Rome's unseemly retreat

Determined to avoid another bloody fiasco like last month's Group of Eight summit in Genoa, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has asked the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization to move the World Food Summit, which is scheduled to be held in November in Rome, to Africa. That would be a mistake:...
EDITORIALS
Aug 15, 2001

The prime 'rogue state'

For the Japanese, the first half of August is a period of soul-searching, remembering those who died in World War II and renewing our hopes for world peace. But more than half a century after the end of the war, and in spite of the termination of East-West confrontation, the world today remains a potentially...
COMMENTARY
Aug 14, 2001

Cleaning up after Tanaka

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi faces a serious problem: How to restore confidence in Japanese diplomacy, which has been eroded by Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka's inept conduct in the first 100 days of his administration.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 12, 2001

Victimhood in the national psyche

THE VICTIM AS HERO: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan, by James J. Orr. University of Hawaii Press, 2001, 271 pp., $22.95 (paperback). August 15 approaches, and once again Japan's neighbors are up in arms over the prospect of a prime minister's visit to Yasukuni Shrine. In...
CULTURE / Music / MUSIC NOMAD
Aug 12, 2001

Take time to stop and hear the music

As your Music Nomad is wandering back to the U.K., this will be my last column. Thanks for taking the trouble to read it over the years; hopefully some of you have enjoyed seeing the concerts recommended.

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