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COMMENTARY / World
Jan 18, 2007

Latin America's next growth challenge

TORINO, Italy -- Since 2003, Latin America's economies have been thriving, with GDP, including estimates for 2006, up by 17 percent -- an average annual growth rate of 4.3 percent and a 12 percent increase in per capita GDP. While impressive, this is only the second time in 25 years that Latin America...
EDITORIALS
Jan 3, 2007

Wages of brute force

Saddam Hussein is dead. The former Iraqi dictator went to the gallows before sunrise Saturday morning in Baghdad, with a Quran in one hand, crying for justice. In death as in life, he divided his country: Shiites danced in the streets and fired guns in the air, while Sunnis mourned the passing of a martyr...
Japan Times
LIFE
Dec 31, 2006

Eyeing Japan's new year and far, far beyond

The future may be fundamentally uncertain, but people's appetite for predictions of what will be happening in days, weeks, months, years or even decades to come is one thing, at least, that is certain to be part of it.
BUSINESS
Dec 20, 2006

Restaurants plan to ask government to ease up on U.S. beef restrictions

The nation's restaurants will urge the government to ease import restrictions on U.S. beef, saying the stringent rules are causing a serious supply crunch, officials said Tuesday.
SUMO / SUMO SCRIBBLINGS
Dec 19, 2006

Dear Santa, one new nose, a couple of knees and a lower back, please

In the next couple of weeks, expect the media to start talking of yokozuna Asashoryu and his latest bout with the sniffles, being bunged up or perhaps having fallen victim to a mystery allergy -- again!
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Dec 17, 2006

High-end fashion on the (fairly) cheap

Japanese consumers are famous (or infamous) the world over for their obsession with luxury brands -- and as hard data demonstrates, this is definitely no globalized urban myth.
BUSINESS
Dec 15, 2006

Ruling bloc says keep tax breaks for corporations

The ruling coalition finalized its tax revision proposals Thursday for fiscal 2007, focusing on breaks for companies in a bid to accelerate capital investment and postponing discussion of the sensitive issue of a consumption levy hike until after next fall.
JAPAN
Dec 9, 2006

Kyuma admits Tokyo backed Iraq attack

attends an extraordinary Cabinet meeting Friday with Prime Minister Shinzo Ane and health minister Hakuo Yanagisawa. KYODO PHOTO
COMMENTARY
Dec 4, 2006

Rolling back a dictatorship

Fifteen years after signing the Paris peace accord that ended its civil war, Cambodia has emerged as a full-fledged member of the international community. It joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 1999 and the World Trade Organization in 2004.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Dec 3, 2006

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Japan's expat rebel with many causes blends music and a wider world view

Former Japanese pop heart-throb and musical pioneer Ryuichi Sakamoto talks about music, the state of the planet — and why he still reluctantly lives in New York City.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Nov 26, 2006

Fan power fails this time, as 'Guts' bolts Fighters for Giants

Despite the best efforts of those Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters fans who sought to convince star player Michihiro Ogasawara to remain with the club, the infielder decided to use his free agency and switch to the Yomiuri Giants.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 25, 2006

German potter carries on raku tradition

BERLIN -- Despite a tradition of more than 400 years, raku ceramics are now not well-known in Japan beyond the tea ceremony.
JAPAN
Nov 25, 2006

South Korean poultry imports halted over bird flu outbreak

to suspend imports of South Korean poultry and to ask that people entering Japan from South Korea sterilize their shoes," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki told reporters. Japan imported 289 metric tons of chicken meat from South Korea in 2005, according to the Japan External Trade Organization....
CULTURE / Books
Nov 19, 2006

Akebono: Yokozuna to K-1

GAIJIN YOKOZUNA: A Biography of Chad Rowan, by Mark Panek. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006, 301 pp., $24.95 (paper). Biographers of living celebrities must make a fundamental choice: write from the inside or the outside. At one extreme are the insiders -- friends, relations or paid hacks --...
BUSINESS
Nov 17, 2006

Hitachi touts three-year plan to revamp TV, power, disk-drive businesses

Hitachi Ltd. announced a plan Thursday designed to turn around its three core businesses -- power plants, flat-panel TVs and hard-disk drives -- by the end of March 2010.
JAPAN
Nov 11, 2006

Sanctions pain or nuclear confidence?

Reports from Pyongyang say North Korea has recently put up banners across the capital hailing its arrival as a nuclear state, following its declared underground atomic explosion on Oct. 9
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Nov 7, 2006

Pulling the wool

I s the world's second-largest economy, Japan feels it deserves the respect and privilege accorded the club of rich countries.
BUSINESS
Nov 3, 2006

FSA soliciting bids for Ashikaga bank

The Financial Services Agency began soliciting bids Thursday for the sale of state-owned Ashikaga Bank Ltd., publishing the conditions that buyers must satisfy to purchase the Tochigi Prefecture-based bank.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 1, 2006

Dolphin kill dogged by mercury, activists

Nearly every day since the first week in September, fishermen have been driving pods of dolphins into quiet coves near the village of Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, to kill them for their meat, whatever the mercury content, or sell them to marine parks.

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight