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BUSINESS
Feb 11, 2002

FTC moves raise doubts over Antimonopoly Law

For more than 120 years during the Meiji, Taisho and Showa eras, the government was the primary driving force of the Japanese economy. That changed as the nation entered the Heisei era, as the private sector began to play a public role previously monopolized by the government. This is why the nation...
COMMENTARY
Feb 1, 2002

Truth and consequences

The forced resignation of Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka says a lot about Japan's sloppy politics and its emotional inability to focus on the rights and wrongs of a dispute.
JAPAN
Jan 7, 2002

Princess Takamatsu backs idea of reigning empress

Princess Takamatsu has penned an article for publication in a biweekly magazine in which she expresses her support for the possibility that Japan may one day have a reigning empress, it was learned Sunday.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 23, 2001

Japan well-served by 'soft power' strategy

Japan's International Relations: Politics, Economics and Security, by Glenn D. Hook, Julie Gilson, Christopher W. Hughes and Hugo Dobson. London & New York, Routledge, 2001, 532 pp. $32.95 (paper). Problem child, kingmaker and political gadfly, Ichiro Ozawa has long been one of the most ambitious men...
COMMENTARY
Dec 19, 2001

Door to constitutional change

Last June, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi created an advisory panel on his proposal aimed at empowering the public -- not lawmakers as at present -- to directly elect the premier. The group is expected to come up with recommendations on the plan by next summer.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 25, 2001

Failed chemistry experiments in the media lab

Two weeks ago, a friend faxed me an article from the weekly news magazine Aera about a new advertising trend called "collaboration CF," which is the selling of two different companies' products in one TV commercial. I had already read about collaborations two days earlier in advertising critic Yukichi...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Sep 27, 2001

Can God damage your health?

On Sept. 15, the Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins published a piece in The Guardian called "Religion's misguided missiles." With customary antireligious zeal, the Charles Simonyi professor for the Public Understanding of Science gave his explanation for the attacks on New York and Washington,...
CULTURE / Books
Sep 23, 2001

The struggle for a strategic prize

THE ORIGINS OF THE BILATERAL OKINAWA PROBLEM: Okinawa in Postwar U.S.-Japan Relations, 1945-1952, by Robert D. Eldridge. Garland Publishing, Inc., New York & London, 2001, 280 pp., $85.00 (cloth) Of all the issues plaguing Japan's relationship with the United States, none is as contentious as the U.S....
JAPAN
Sep 21, 2001

Japan must avoid treading Gulf War path

Staff writers After last week's terrorist attacks in the United States, Japan was again haunted by the dilemma that confronted it 10 years ago.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 12, 2001

Til death or demographics do us part: the changing face of family life in Japan

At the end of each year, NHK has a ritual contest of male singers vs. female singers, but signs have been emerging of more serious gender conflict on the horizon in Japan. The diverging interests of men and women are evident in a recent book on changing attitudes toward having children and an article...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jul 30, 2001

Is yellow journalism in vogue again?

Why do so many foreign commentators feel they can get away with anything they say about Japan?
COMMENTARY
Jun 25, 2001

Another blast from Mr. Bix

To more than 80 percent of Japanese voters, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi looks like a populist reformer. But to the American winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, Koizumi is a "rightwing nationalist."
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 9, 2001

Is Japan tilting toward China?

WASHINGTON -- Key officials in the Bush administration, especially Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, have long been on record as urging Japan to play a more substantial role in East Asia's security affairs. Some of them even want Japanese leaders to repeal, or at least modify, Article 9 of...
JAPAN
May 5, 2001

Aging U.S. POWs still await slave labor redress

OSAKA -- For 56 years, Ben Comstock, 82, an American captured by Japanese forces on Wake Island in December 1941, has been waiting.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Mar 26, 2001

Never say you've apologized too much

When Ursula Smith, my publisher friend up in Vermont, wrote to say, "I can't close without offering some (futile) form of apology, as one national to another, for that unfortunate accident off Hawaii," I said there was no need to apologize to me. It was an accident, and I wasn't too clear about the meaning...
BUSINESS
Jan 8, 2001

Reply to No-Action Letter clarifies insurance rescues

The first article on the debut of the No-Action Letter system focused on why it is necessary to create a standardized, public interface through which the Financial Services Agency can promptly respond to financial institutions' questions and concerns about compliance with regulatory issues.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

Policy cooperation key to resolving Korean issues

The politics of South and North Korea have been greatly influenced by U.S. policy. What happens within South Korean politics is also important to policymakers in the United States. The start of the 21st century coincides with the inauguration of U.S. President George W. Bush. Among South and North Korean...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Dec 25, 2000

Emotion trumps logic in whaling debate

Over a sushi lunch with Scott Latham, I mention "whaling," and Scott, my trade-consultant friend, doesn't miss a beat: "The Whaling Wall."
JAPAN
Dec 14, 2000

Mori sues over story on gangster ties

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori filed a libel suit with the Tokyo District Court on Tuesday against a magazine that published an article and photographs allegedly linking him to a rightwing gangster, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said Wednesday.
JAPAN
Dec 10, 2000

Magazine to run picture of Mori, alleged rightist

In the latest potential headache for Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, a weekly magazine plans to publish photographs of Mori with a man allegedly linked to a crime syndicate in an edition that will hit newsstands this week.
JAPAN
Dec 8, 2000

DPJ panel urges end to peacekeeping ban

A Democratic Party of Japan panel on Thursday called for the ban on Japanese participation in U.N. peacekeeping operations to be scrapped and for the five guidelines for Japan becoming involved in operations to be reviewed.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 1, 2000

Are class differences widening in Japan?

Along with increased pressures for deregulation and a free-market economy have come wider questions of what Japanese society should be like in the new century. Has the Japan in which 90 percent of the people considered themselves middle class ended? Is Japan becoming a class society of winners and losers...
JAPAN
Nov 30, 2000

Suffrage bill may be unconstitutional

Debate on a controversial bill that would grant permanent foreign residents the right to vote in local elections will probably be carried over to the ordinary session that is to convene in January.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Nov 29, 2000

Caring more and judging less: fighting AIDS with compassion

"What you need is a hooker!"
JAPAN
Oct 25, 2000

Mori recants as friends, foes slam abduction plan

Retracting comments made earlier by his government, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori admitted during Tuesday's Diet session that a controversial proposal for finding Japanese nationals allegedly abducted by North Korean agents was not merely the personal opinion of a ruling party lawmaker.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 24, 2000

Asia getting mixed messages from U.S.

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- The issue is not new, but it has recently resurfaced: How is U.S. foreign policy coordinated and articulated, particularly when it affects Asia?
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 20, 2000

Taiwan is worthy of a place in the U.N.

The United Nations' Millennium Summit in New York, attended by about 150 heads of state and governments earlier this month, pledged to make globalization a positive force for all the people of the world. It published a list of central values for 21st-century international relations. It also admitted...

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past