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JAPAN
Jul 2, 2004

'Tankan' logs best reading in 13 years

Confidence at Japan's large manufacturers improved to its highest level in 13 years in the three months to June, underlining the most powerful economic recovery since the economic bubble burst in the early 1990s, according to the Bank of Japan's key business survey released Thursday.
JAPAN
Jul 2, 2004

Kin of kidnapped fret lack of focus on Pyongyang in Upper House poll

KOBE -- Seven months ago, on the eve of the House of Representatives election, North Korea's abductions of Japanese was one of the main campaign topics.
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Jul 1, 2004

Tucking in to alien outcasts

IN MAY, I was invited to Vancouver to give a keynote speech at the Fourth World Congress of Fisheries. The congress in that beautiful city in southwest British Columbia was attended by about 1,500 delegates from 80 countries. Its theme was: "Reconciling Fishing with Conservation."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Jun 30, 2004

Skeletons come out of the closet

For a decade now, Yoshiko Shimada has been a lonely but tireless torchbearer of feminist consciousness in Japanese contemporary art. After spending time in Germany and America, the 44-year-old returned to Japan in the mid-1990s to tackle taboos -- subjects such as the Emperor's complicity in World War...
EDITORIALS
Jun 28, 2004

Get a consensus on cloning research

Whether to sanction the cloning of human embryos remains a polarizing issue that has profound ethical and moral implications. In Japan, a government-appointed committee on bioethics late last year published a noncommittal interim report stating the pros and cons.
Japan Times
Features
Jun 27, 2004

Baby pictures

She hung up the phone and looked out of the living-room window. The house was on a slight rise and she could see most of Fairview Estates -- the rows of wide, orderly streets, the big houses and neat lawns, children on bicycles, the mail truck making its rounds. It all looked too neat, too much like...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jun 24, 2004

Nakagawa confirms existence of China gas project complex

Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Shoichi Nakagawa on Wednesday confirmed that a complex tied to a natural gas project being carried out by a Chinese consortium has been built near Japan's exclusive economic zone in the East China Sea, government sources said.
BUSINESS
Jun 23, 2004

Tokyo may retain stake in privatized mail service

The government is considering retaining equity stakes in postal services even after they are privatized, government sources said Tuesday.
COMMUNITY / Issues
Jun 22, 2004

Nova's culture clash

Going to extremes Your article about the Nova no-contact rule was interesting, but seemed to overlook (or at least de-emphasize) one important aspect of the rule. It not only prevents Nova employees from having romantic or potentially romantic contact with any Nova student from any branch, but it also...
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Jun 21, 2004

Translating laws into English would make good business sense

Japan is pushing for judicial reform, and efforts to establish a judicial system that the public can clearly understand and feel familiar with -- including the recent enactment of a law introducing the so-called citizen judge system -- are fully under way.
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 20, 2004

Guys en pointe frolic in frocks in grand diva style

Watching a bunch of grown men wearing tutus and pancake makeup parodying some of ballet's most cherished classics, such as "The Dying Swan" and "The Nutcracker Suite," may not sound like everybody's bag. But the wildly hilarious Les Ballets Grandiva, an all-male comedy ballet troupe based in New York,...
EDITORIALS
Jun 19, 2004

SDF's new role raises questions

Reiterating in effect what he had told U.S. President George W. Bush in a Japan-U.S. summit earlier this month, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi announced on Thursday that Japanese troops now stationed in Iraq will participate in the U.S.-led multinational force following the June 30 transfer of sovereignty....
EDITORIALS
Jun 16, 2004

New defense laws best left unused

Monday's Diet approval of defense-related bills signifies that Japanese security policy has entered a new phase. Now, Japan has a legal framework for defending itself against military attacks. This is no cause for complacency, however. The real challenge for the nation is to make greater efforts for...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 16, 2004

ReJoyce! Fans fete Bloomsday centenary

DUBLIN -- One hundred years ago today is the day described in arguably the greatest novel of the 20th century, James Joyce's "Ulysses." June 16, 1904, was when Joyce's hero, Leopold Bloom, set out on a meandering stroll through Dublin, and the date is now celebrated worldwide as Bloomsday.
EDITORIALS
Jun 15, 2004

Managing security alliances

The administration of President George W. Bush has recognized that new security threats and new military capabilities require a new U.S. global defense posture. Nowhere are those changes more evident than Northeast Asia, and on the Korean Peninsula in particular. The redeployment of U.S. forces in South...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 15, 2004

Casualty of war

"I do understand why that girl could do such a brutal thing, because I myself treated people cruelly during World War II, without any hesitation," says 82-year-old Masaichi Nishiguchi, a former military policeman (MP) in the Japanese Army.
Features
Jun 13, 2004

Shaking off 'shame'

In a civilized society, people should not be scared to talk about their ailments -- especially when the illness may have been contracted from medical product infected with a potentially fatal virus.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 13, 2004

Murakami's job guide for teens lights the pipe of dreams

In mid-May, NHK's nightly news feature "Closeup Gendai" looked at the current post-university recruitment situation from the viewpoint of the recruit. For the past decade, the main story with regard to this issue has been the difficulty of finding work as more and more companies restructured along nontraditional...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jun 12, 2004

The one-man national yacht movement

On my planet, the U.S., people change things at the grassroots level. In Japan, the root of the blade is often an "obaa-san" or "ojii-san," a single person out to change things. You can find these individuals all over Japan, conjuring up their own ways of making a difference in this country. I ran into...
EDITORIALS
Jun 11, 2004

Saying goodbye to Mr. Reagan

Friday, at a solemn state funeral in Washington, D.C., the United States formally bids farewell to Mr. Ronald Reagan, one of the most eminent, influential and widely liked U.S. presidents of the postwar era. Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone will be there to convey this nation's sincere condolences...
JAPAN / Politics
Jun 8, 2004

Power of LDP support groups waning

About 5,000 people gathered in Sapporo on May 23 to attend a convention of the national association of special post office chiefs, a longtime supporter of and the biggest vote-gathering machine for the Liberal Democratic Party.
BUSINESS
Jun 8, 2004

Foreign exchange pool at near-record level

Japan's foreign exchange reserves stood at $816.85 billion in May, up $1.88 billion from the previous month, the Finance Ministry said Monday.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jun 5, 2004

Taking the long road to nowhere

Out on the straight freeways of higher enlightenment, many an astute Japan watcher has tied the cautious, noncommittal qualities of Japanese personality to various cultural and linguistic features, such as tightknit group society and ambiguous language structure.
SOCCER / World cup
Jun 4, 2004

Olympics for Ono?

Feyenoord midfielder Shinji Ono looks set to be picked for Japan's Olympic team as an over-age player for this summer's Athens Games, soccer sources said Thursday.
EDITORIALS
Jun 2, 2004

Striking a balance in Geneva

The World Trade Organization opens three days of farm trade talks in Geneva on Wednesday. Japan, which maintains high tariffs on rice and other sensitive products, is likely to find itself on the defensive, as it did in previous talks. But maintaining a rigid policy of protection is not a sensible option....
BUSINESS
Jun 1, 2004

Over 15 million use high-speed Net services

There were more than 15 million subscribers to high-speed broadband Internet connection services in Japan as of the end of April, a preliminary government report showed Monday.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 1, 2004

'No sex please, you're teachers'

"I feel offended that anyone would tell me who I can or can't hang out with," says Brendan (not his real name), one of 6,000 foreign language instructors employed by Nova Corp. in Japan.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
May 31, 2004

Numbers show road to recovery fraught with inflationary risk

The preliminary GDP figures Japan released May 18 show that the gross domestic product in the January-March quarter expanded 1.4 percent (5.6 percent annualized) in real terms over the previous quarter. Compared with the same period in 2003, first-quarter GDP grew a robust 5.4 percent. The GDP has now...

Longform

Sumadori Bar on Shibuya Ward's main Center Gai street targets young customers who prefer low-alcohol drinks or abstain altogether.
Rethinking that second drink: Japan’s Gen Z gets ‘sober curious’