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JAPAN
Sep 14, 2005

Japanese expected to head ITER project

The head of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project organization is expected to be Japanese, because the parties involved have agreed to support a candidate to be recommended by Japan, the science and technology ministry said Tuesday.
JAPAN
Sep 14, 2005

Centenarians to hit 25,606 by October

The number of centenarians in Japan will set a new record of 25,606 by the end of the month, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said ahead of Respect for the Aged Day.
JAPAN
Sep 13, 2005

Reform mandate may help boost diplomacy, experts say

The sweeping victory by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party may have given the reformist leader a strong mandate for reform, but political experts are hoping the decisive gains will also give him the power needed to resolve sensitive issues on the diplomatic front.
JAPAN
Sep 13, 2005

Man gets suspended prison term in first 'phishing' case

A former computer system engineer was sentenced Monday to 22 months in prison, suspended for four years, in Japan's first established "phishing" case for creating a replica of Yahoo Japan Corp.'s Web site and stealing personal information from users of the nation's largest portal.
Sep 12, 2005

'Assassin' Koike bests 'rebel' Kobayashi

Environment Minister Yuriko Koike wrested the Tokyo No. 10 district seat in Sunday's election from former Liberal Democratic Party member Koki Kobayashi.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Sep 11, 2005

TV Tokyo's "Dawn of Gaia" tackles the 2007 problem and more

Japanese industry is now gearing up for what's being called the 2007 Problem. In that year, the huge mass of humanity known as the baby-boom generation will start to retire, and when they leave their companies they will take with them many of the skills and knowhow that built those companies and, in...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 11, 2005

The curious Mr. Longfellow

LONGFELLOW'S TATTOOS: Tourism, Collecting, and Japan, by Christine M.E. Guth. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004, 256 pp., 123 illustrations, $29.95 (paper). After the new Japanese government was officially installed in 1868, only a decade or so after the country had been, more or less, forcibly...
JAPAN
Sep 10, 2005

Family-bred politicians fan out

KURASHIKI, Okayama Pref. -- Japanese politics is often a family affair, with the offspring of Diet members winning seats originally held by their fathers, and in some cases, grandfathers.
JAPAN
Sep 10, 2005

Chinese warships make show of force at protested gas rig

Five Chinese naval ships, including a guided-missile destroyer, were spotted Friday morning near the Chunxiao gas field in the East China Sea, where Japan and China have a dispute over demarcation, the Maritime Self-Defense Force said.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Sep 10, 2005

Nobuko Somers

LONDON -- In a Dickensian setting near the British Museum is a bookshop. Open the door, and the inviting musty smell of old books strikes you at once. On the ground floor, stacked shelves support books in English that "cover all aspects of the Far East and the Middle East." Rare books have their secure...
EDITORIALS
Sep 8, 2005

Try again with rights bill

The government was to have submitted a human-rights protection bill during the most recent session of the Diet. Various reasons are cited for the bill's failure to reach the Diet floor, including government leaders' obsession with other hot-button issues such as postal-service reform. Still, legislation...
JAPAN
Sep 8, 2005

Commercial launchpad abroad urged; Kiribati eyed

A space industry advisory panel at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has proposed in a report that Japan build a rocket launchpad abroad, in addition to the one currently being used on Tanegashima Island in Kagoshima Prefecture, METI officials said Wednesday.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 7, 2005

Koizumi's bare-knuckle power play may soon haunt him

Sunday's election for the Lower House stands out as abnormal, but not because of its abruptness. Many surprise elections have been held before. On March 14, 1953, for instance, then Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, who was president of the Liberal Party, dissolved the Lower House following the passage...
BUSINESS
Sep 6, 2005

Minimum for oil reserves to be cut in line with IEA

Japan will cut its mandatory minimum for oil reserves held by refiners and other private-sector oil firms in a concerted action by the International Energy Agency, a senior government official said Monday.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Sep 6, 2005

The empire strikes back

Venerated by militarists and marinated in over a century of militarism and war, Yasukuni Shrine may well be Japan's least friendly venue for a demonstration by pacifists.
BUSINESS
Sep 6, 2005

Insurer errors may top 100,000

Sompo Japan Insurance Inc., one of Japan's six biggest nonlife insurers, said Monday it failed to make payouts totaling 920 million yen in 27,296 cases between July 2002 and last June.
COMMENTARY
Sep 5, 2005

A historic scramble to rule

The Sept. 11 Lower House election will test Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's politics, giving voters a chance to choose the nation's leadership between the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the opposition Democratic Party of Japan.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 4, 2005

The aged better off heading for the hills on their limited pensions

The main opposition parties claim that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's attempt to make the upcoming Lower House election a referendum on postal reform is simply a scheme to deflect public attention away from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's fiscal failures under his leadership. Consequently,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Sep 3, 2005

Bringing porn to the people

It has always surprised me how so often in Japan, the beauty of the countryside loses out to the convenience of the city. To most Japanese people, the countryside is backward and just not suited for everyday living. Nature is like a video to be watched for a few hours during your free time, preferably...
BUSINESS
Sep 2, 2005

Koizumi gets some high marks but must do more: Doyukai

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's administration should be given high marks for having addressed issues untouched by its predecessors, but there is still more to do, according to the chairman of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives (Keizai Doyukai).
JAPAN
Sep 2, 2005

Groups against revisionist history text call campaign a success

Civic groups opposing a contentious revisionist history textbook on Thursday hailed the result of the publisher's recent survey, as well as their own, that less than 1 percent of the nation's junior high schools are likely to use the book from next April.
Sep 1, 2005

Defense Agency wants 5 trillion yen

The Defense Agency on Wednesday requested 4.89 trillion yen in the fiscal 2006 budget to increase the capabilities of the Self-Defense Forces to counter threats to national security, including acts of terrorism, missile attacks and natural disasters.
EDITORIALS
Aug 31, 2005

More than postal reform at stake

As the Lower House election campaign goes into full swing, Japanese voters face an important decision: whether to endorse the reform politics of Liberal Democratic Party leader and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, or a different kind of reform politics pushed by the opposition Democratic Party of Japan....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 31, 2005

The nature of the mind

Shunmyo Masuno calls his works "expressions of my mind," and they have the power to stir up depths of emotion and even tap into the subconscious. They are not psychedelic paintings, however, nor are they virtual reality installations -- they are gardens. And the man who creates them is a Buddhist priest....
EDITORIALS
Aug 30, 2005

A timely warning to Tokyo

It is tempting to overreact to warnings that al-Qaeda is preparing an attack on a large financial center in Asia. That would be a mistake. If accurate a big if the reports should spur officials to better prepare for that awful possibility. But the news is not really new: Japan has already suffered one...
Japan Times
JAPAN / POLL SHOWDOWN
Aug 30, 2005

Okada hopes to shift election focus

Democratic Party of Japan leader Katsuya Okada is calling for voters' support in the Sept. 11 general election to bring about regime change and rebuild Japan in the face of ballooning government deficits and a rapidly aging population.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Aug 30, 2005

Spoiled pooches live the good life

Whether it's "wan-wan," "bow-wow" or "ruff-ruff," dogs in Japan are all speaking the same language: life here ain't too dog-gone bad.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Aug 28, 2005

Summer scorecard: road trips, managers, scraped bathtubs

Road Trip of Survival: The Hanshin Tigers came through their "Road Trip of Death" in pretty good shape. The team went 10-9 while away from their home Koshien Stadium (being used for the national high school Tournament) for 25 days from Aug. 1 and was still in first place in the Central League, leading...

Longform

Construction equipment sits idle in a park near Shiba Toshogu shrine in Tokyo's Minato Ward. While Japan has a history of treating its trees with reverence, green coverage is said to be lacking in most of the major cities.
Do Japan's trees no longer occupy the sacred space they used to?