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EDITORIALS
Aug 23, 2002

Time to act quickly on aging

In about 13 years, when the generation born in the first baby-boom period immediately after World War II reaches old age, Japan will become a full-fledged aged society. According to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the elderly population aged 65 years or over will number 33 million and will...
JAPAN
Aug 22, 2002

Aeon, Life to restock disgraced firm's products

Aeon Co., operator of the Jusco supermarket chain, said Wednesday it will resume selling the products of Nippon Meat Packers Inc., possibly as early as this week.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 22, 2002

Law grad opts for freelance reporting, not elite track

With an average monthly income of just 150,000 yen, Maiko Morimoto is the exception among graduates of the University of Tokyo's law department, which has turned out a slew of elite bureaucrats and lawyers.
EDITORIALS
Aug 21, 2002

Resolving the plight of southern Africa

Food shortages in southern Africa are reaching alarming proportions. The World Food Program, or WFP, says tens of millions of people in six countries -- Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Lesotho and Swaziland -- face starvation as a result of disastrous crop failures. The U.N. agency is calling for...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 21, 2002

Trance music: Taking it to the next level

When deep into the music at a trance party, most people dance a sort of mechanized primal stomp, working their arms like pistons and clomping their feet. Although these maneuvers may look awkward, they are a natural reaction to the music's rigidly 4/4 industrial-sounding beats, which, though sublime...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 21, 2002

Universal comedy without errors

Hold on to your seats: We're going back to the essence of theater -- entertainment. "The Kyogen of Errors," directed by and starring 36-year-old Mansai Nomura, is a fitting way to celebrate his five-year appointment as artistic director of the Setagaya Public Theater (SEPT), which was announced two weeks...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 21, 2002

Light My Fire festival to heat things up

Relaxing in a conference room crowded with shelves of CDs and a couple dozen bottles of Belgian beer, Shohachiro Haga recently explained how he chose the four acts for the Light My Fire world music festival. A middle-aged man wearing an enviably broken-in polo shirt, Haga says, "We can find the roots...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 21, 2002

Afghan heritage is back from the brink

Like many exhibitions, "Afghanistan: A Timeless History" tells a story. It's not the story of Afghan art, though; nor, despite its title, the story of Afghanistan itself -- a country whose millennia of strife are expressed in every artifact now on display at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts...
BASEBALL / MLB
Aug 21, 2002

Major League tour in doubt

It appears that bad news is in the offing for Japanese and foreign fans of Major League Baseball.
JAPAN
Aug 20, 2002

DNA scholars hope to stock Siberia 'park' with mammoths

"Jurassic Park" was a work of fiction. Pleistocene Park is in the process of becoming fact.
JAPAN
Aug 19, 2002

New ODA plan to involve local municipalities

The Foreign Ministry has decided to introduce a new type of official development assistance, initiated by Japan's local governments, to finance projects for foreign countries.
MORE SPORTS
Aug 18, 2002

Fans get chance to meet Saracens

English Premiership side Saracens will play Japan champion Suntory on Aug. 25 (kickoff at 7 p.m.) at National Stadium in Tokyo.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 18, 2002

Aum documentary holds up a mirror to Japanese society

RELIGION AND SOCIAL CRISIS IN JAPAN: Understanding Japanese Society Through the Aum Affair, edited by Robert J. Kisala and Mark R. Mullins. Hampshire: Palgrave (St. Martin's Press/Macmillan), 2001, 228 pp., $68 (cloth) It is frequently observed that social change and resulting social crises often give...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 18, 2002

Living Dead returns with 'group gestalt'

Bob Weir says he can use some serious beach time. The former Grateful Dead guitarist and vocalist is taking a breather a short while after bounding off stage following a well-received set by his band RatDog at last weekend's Mount Fuji Jazz Festival.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 18, 2002

Tourmaline trinkets

It's all systems go. The negative-ion air conditioner, negative-ion fan and negative-ion dehumidifier are all plugged in and humming away, dutifully belching out zillions of the negatively charged particles that, their manufacturers say, take on dust and neutralize pollutants around the house.
JAPAN
Aug 17, 2002

Professors to visit Afghanistan

A group of professors from five Japanese women's universities will visit Afghanistan for 10 days beginning Aug. 24 to prepare a training program for female Afghan teachers that will be held in Japan next year, Ochanomizu University said Friday.
BUSINESS
Aug 17, 2002

Shipbuilding industry to get ministerial assistance

The Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry will map out by the end of this fiscal year a set of plans to enhance the international competitiveness of Japan's shipbuilding industry, ministry officials said Friday.
Japan Times
JAPAN / MUSEUM MUSINGS
Aug 17, 2002

8,000 relics of Tibetan Buddhism might not all appeal to faint-hearted

The area around Tokyo's Meguro Fudoson Temple has traditionally been a site for the city's faithful.
BUSINESS
Aug 16, 2002

Shinsei, Mellon to launch asset management venture

Shinsei Bank and Mellon Financial Corp. of the United States said Thursday they will launch a 50-50 asset management joint venture in Tokyo later this year.
Japan Times
JAPAN / THE OKINAWA FACTOR
Aug 15, 2002

Postwar legacy holds key to identity of Okinawans

NAHA, Okinawa Pref. -- Akira Hamamatsu, 75, recalls Emperor Hirohito's surrender broadcast on Aug. 15, 1945, as little more than a garbled voice mixed with static.
JAPAN
Aug 15, 2002

Indicted Foreign Ministry staff dismissed

The Foreign Ministry on Wednesday dismissed Akira Maejima, a former assistant director in charge of aid projects for Russia, following his indictment late last month, a Foreign Ministry official said.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Aug 15, 2002

Isolation spells survival in the Sea of Okhotsk

In penguinlike tuxedoed masses, the Tyuleni Island murres were standing in murmuring hordes, crowding the rock ledges of their remote breeding colony off the east coast of Sakhalin in the Sea of Okhotsk.
JAPAN
Aug 14, 2002

Ministry set to press charges against food execs

The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry is set to file criminal complaints against three managers of a subsidiary of Nippon Meat Packers Inc., better known as Nippon Ham, on suspicion they defrauded a beef-buyback program, ministry officials said Tuesday.
BUSINESS
Aug 14, 2002

Food makers find an escape route

Not long ago, instant ramen from a prestigious noodle shop would have been an odd combination.
BUSINESS
Aug 13, 2002

Current account surplus rocketed 51.9% in first half

The nation's current account surplus soared 51.9 percent in the first half of 2002 from a year earlier to 7.928 trillion yen, the second-largest figure for a six-month period, according to a preliminary report released Monday by the Finance Ministry.
JAPAN
Aug 13, 2002

Info on secret Okinawa pact placed on Web

Copies of official documents that confirm a secret pact between Tokyo and Washington concerning the 1972 reversion of Okinawa to Japanese rule have been placed on the Web site of Diet member Kinya Narazaki of the Democratic Party of Japan.

Longform

Koichi Tagawa’s diary entry from Aug. 9, 1945, describes the day of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
The horrors of Nagasaki, in first person