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JAPAN
Dec 8, 2004

Should English be compulsory in elementary schools?

After visiting an English class at an elementary school in Arakawa Ward, Tokyo, early this year, then education minister Takeo Kawamura told the principal, "In the near future, I think there should be English classes in all of Japan's elementary schools."
JAPAN
Dec 8, 2004

'Sesame Street' making waves -- in Japanese

Rena Mizushiro sits in a cramped position with other puppeteers as she works her character, Teena, to sing in a scene about Elmo's birthday in "Sesame Street."
JAPAN
Dec 8, 2004

Obituary: Daphne Shaw Stegmaier

Daphne Shaw Stegmaier, widow of U.S. diplomat John Lloyd Stegmaier and translator of Kageo Muraoka and Kichiemon Okamura's "Folk Arts and Crafts of Japan," died at her Maryland home Nov. 21, her family said. She was 81.
CULTURE / Film
Dec 8, 2004

Working on a tough shoot

Whether it's a movie, a TV show, a commercial or even a music video, a key decision is choosing where the cameras will roll. To that end, members of film crews are often dedicated to hunting down locations that will satisfy both the directors and producers, and this is where film commissions can play...
JAPAN
Dec 8, 2004

OECD test sees Japanese kids slip

Japanese high school students have slipped in the latest international ranking of reading and mathematics skills by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.
SOCCER / World cup
Dec 7, 2004

Zico recalls Inamoto for Germany game

Japan coach Zico has recalled West Bromwich Albion midfielder Junichi Inamoto for the Asian champion's final game of the year against 2002 World Cup finalist Germany next week in Yokohama.
EDITORIALS
Dec 7, 2004

First steps toward U.N. reform

It has become clear that the United Nations is ill suited to the challenges of the 21st century. Its institutions were created in the aftermath of World War II and to this day they reflect that balance of global power. Yet the world has changed drastically in the past half century. The number of states...
MORE SPORTS
Dec 6, 2004

Sheehan snaps up Nippon Series JT Cup

Australian golfer Paul Sheehan shot his second straight 4-under-par 66 Sunday for a 14-under 266 total to win the season-ending Nippon Series JT Cup by four strokes for his second tour victory in Japan.
MORE SPORTS
Dec 5, 2004

Fukabori makes move

Keiichiro Fukabori turned a two-stroke deficit into a one-stroke lead Saturday by equaling the day's low of 5-under-par 65 heading into the final round of the Nippon Series JT Cup.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Dec 5, 2004

Joji Yamamoto: Time to serve

Joji Yamamoto was a young, idealistic politician with a bright future -- but all that promise dissolved on Sept. 4, 2000, when he was arrested on suspicion of fraud.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 5, 2004

EU frittering away influence in Korea

BRUSSELS -- One of the last best hopes for securing a solution to the current crisis on the Korean Peninsula is being killed by U.S. politicking and EU penny- pinching. U.S. neoconservatives are determined to drive North Korea into a corner, while the European Union bickers over "small change"' rather...
JAPAN
Dec 4, 2004

Foreign English teachers call for fair treatment

About 40 foreign English teachers urged the government Friday to take steps to eradicate the serious problems they face on the job, including low wages and sudden dismissal.
BUSINESS
Dec 4, 2004

Capital spending surged in third quarter

Capital spending by Japanese companies grew 14.4 percent in the July-September quarter from a year earlier, the Finance Ministry said Friday, fueling hopes that Japan's economic growth data for the third quarter will be revised upward.
JAPAN
Dec 4, 2004

Hosoda apologizes to former sex slaves for wartime acts

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda on Friday apologized to former sex slaves for Japan's sexual violence against them during World War II.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 4, 2004

Brutality pays poorly in interrogation

HONOLULU -- After a Japanese soldier named Shuji Ishii was taken prisoner by American Marines on the island of Iwo Jima during World War II, he expected the worse, including being put to death. Instead, he wrote later in a memoir, he was astonished to find himself in a sanitary hospital and to be given...
JAPAN
Dec 4, 2004

Push 1970s boomers to breed: white paper

The government should take effective measures targeting people in their late 20s and early 30s over the next five years to reverse Japan's falling birthrate, according to a white paper released Friday.
JAPAN
Dec 3, 2004

Chlamydia rate for 16-18 crowd seen topping 10%

One in 10 high school students in northern Japan has chlamydia, a curable sexually transmitted disease, a study showed Thursday.
JAPAN
Dec 3, 2004

Supreme Court to hear Monju appeal

The Supreme Court said Thursday it will hear the government's appeal of a Nagoya High Court ruling that nullified the 1983 approval of the troubled Monju experimental fast-breeder nuclear reactor project in Fukui Prefecture.
BUSINESS
Dec 2, 2004

Joint action eyed to stop dollar's drop

A senior Finance Ministry official said Wednesday that joint intervention by Japan and European countries in the currency markets was possible as the dollar rapidly weakens.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Dec 2, 2004

Apres le deluge

As I write this it is 4 in the afternoon of a mid-November day, a fine, clear, crisp day, with the sun now gone down behind Iizuna mountain to leave the massive bulk of Kurohime looming black against a sky of blazing silver, its peak lightly brushed by misty cloud.
BUSINESS
Dec 1, 2004

Unemployment rate rose to 4.7% in October

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate hit 4.7 percent in October, up 0.1 percentage point from the previous month and the first rise in three months, the government said Tuesday.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 1, 2004

Taking public pulse on Iraq mission turns up disturbing information gap

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has said he will take into account public opinion, along with various other factors, when he decides whether to extend the one-year Self-Defense Forces mission in Iraq, which expires Dec. 14.
JAPAN
Nov 29, 2004

DPJ to launch group for China economic ties

Lawmakers from the Democratic Party of Japan will launch a group this week aimed at promoting economic ties between Japan and China amid souring bilateral relations at the political level, they said Sunday.
EDITORIALS
Nov 29, 2004

Heading for higher taxes

The latest report from the government's Tax Commission has a sobering message: In the long run, taxes in Japan have nowhere to go but up. As the commission's chairman, Mr. Hiromitsu Ishi, points out, there is no way to avoid tax increases in order to put the nation's fiscal house in order.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 28, 2004

So many deities for still many troubled lives

EIGHT MILLION GODS AND DEMONS, by Hiroko Sherwin. Plume Books, 2003, 320 pp., $14 (paper). When "The Name of the Rose" transformed Umberto Eco from obscure Italian academic to international best-selling author, a common complaint among readers of his dark novel was that only after wading through the...
JAPAN
Nov 27, 2004

Yahoo targets Net content dangers

Yahoo Japan Corp., Japan's largest Internet portal site operator, plans to offer a service that lets parents restrict their children's access to Web sites with harmful content by using filtering technology from a company it recently acquired, company sources said Friday.
MORE SPORTS
Nov 27, 2004

'Godzilla' returns home after heartbreak season

Even after living every boy's dream of hitting cleanup for the New York Yankees in the 2004 season, Hideki Matsui isn't happy.
JAPAN
Nov 27, 2004

Most spinal-cord injury patients suffer 'abnormal' pain: poll

Three-quarters of paralyzed spinal-cord injury patients suffer from persistent abnormal pain, according to a study released Friday.

Longform

Members of the nonprofit group Japan Youth Memorial Association search for the remains of dead soldiers in a cave in Okinawa Prefecture in February.
The long search for Japan’s lost soldiers