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JAPAN
Oct 25, 2005

At last minute, safety panel delays ending ban on U.S. beef imports

A government-appointed panel unveiled Monday a draft report that would pave the way to lifting the 22-month-old ban on U.S. beef imports, saying meat from young cattle poses an extremely low food safety risk.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Oct 24, 2005

Marines batter toothless Tigers

CHIBA -- The Chiba Lotte Marines keep losing bodies, but the Hanshin Tigers keep losing games.
COMMENTARY
Oct 24, 2005

Tired of military presence

As expected, U.S. base-relocation plans in Japan -- part of the U.S. strategy of global troop realignment -- are facing difficulties. Americans living near military bases at home may be opposed to cutbacks for fear of losing jobs, but people in Japan, an island country one-twenty-fifth the size of the...
COMMENTARY
Oct 23, 2005

Look for change next year

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's determination to visit Tokyo's controversial Yasukuni Shrine needs to be seen in the perspective. The visit was not necessarily, as Beijing and Seoul seem to believe, a final proof of prime-ministerial evil.
JAPAN
Oct 20, 2005

GSDF to train at U.S. base in Okinawa

Japan and the United States have agreed in principle to relocate some training of a Ground Self-Defense Force unit to the U.S. Marine Corps' Camp Hansen in Okinawa Prefecture in the hope of improving the interoperability of the two militaries and leading to a future reduction in U.S. bases, informed...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 20, 2005

Tagging in Mito galleries

"Street culture" and graffiti came into Japan around the 1990s, primarily as a fashion trend that accompanied the spread of hip-hop music and skateboarding. Traditionally, of course, it has grittier associations with American slums and ghettoes, where it became, at its most politically conscious, an...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 20, 2005

A binational prayer for reconciliation

If any one programming section of the Pusan International Film Festival best represents its dedication to exploring every avenue of filmmaking, it's Wide Angle. This year, the section included more than 80 short subjects, documentaries and animated films. Seven of the feature-length Korean documentaries...
EDITORIALS
Oct 19, 2005

What is Mr. Koizumi thinking?

His landslide victory in the Sept. 11 snap elections and the Diet passage on Oct. 14 of the postal services privatization bills apparently have emboldened Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. He made his fifth visit to the Yasukuni Shrine since he came to power in 2001 on Monday, which marked the start...
EDITORIALS
Oct 18, 2005

Toward the final frontier

China's successful launching last week of its second manned spacecraft, the Shenzhou 6, coming just two years after its historic first flight, demonstrates that the country's space program is making steady progress. China's goal, obviously, is to become a "space power."
COMMENTARY
Oct 15, 2005

Statesman test for Koizumi

TOKYO -- Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has demonstrated that he is a brilliant politician. His resounding victory in the Sept. 11 Lower House Diet elections provides him with an opportunity to demonstrate his brilliance as an international statesman as well.
BUSINESS
Oct 15, 2005

G-20 finance chiefs set for talks

Finance ministers and central bank governors from 20 industrialized and emerging economies were to start a two-day meeting Saturday in China where they are expected to discuss the impact of soaring oil prices on the global economy, development issues and possibly China's currency reforms.
JAPAN
Oct 15, 2005

Tsunami survivor returns to help Sri Lanka

and TECH Japan members Suvendrini Kakuchi and Akiko Ozaki show off an apron made at a sewing center for tsunami and civil war survivors here in northern Sri Lanka.
JAPAN
Oct 8, 2005

China and Hong Kong set forex landmark

The combined foreign-exchange reserves held by China and Hong Kong as of the end of June topped those held by Japan for the first time, according to Finance Ministry data released Friday.
BUSINESS
Oct 8, 2005

Ships spotted taking pipes toward disputed gas fields

Japan has confirmed that vessels carrying pipes are sailing in the East China Sea toward two gas fields at the center of an energy and border dispute between Japan and China, the trade minister said Friday.
JAPAN
Oct 7, 2005

Atone and get UNSC support: Uri Party chief

South Korea will support Japan's bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council if Tokyo adopts "sincere" policies reflective of its wartime and colonial-era conduct, Moon Hee Sang, visiting chairman of South Korea's ruling Uri Party, said Thursday.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Oct 4, 2005

Hidden wisdom of 'the guv,' Shintaro Ishihara

Adored by large sections of the Japanese public, reviled in equal measure by the foreign community and courted tirelessly by the domestic media: There are few more divisive figures in Japan today than Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara.
BUSINESS
Sep 30, 2005

JEC defends defensive stock split

Japan Engineering Consultants Co. on Thursday defended its stock split against a hostile bid by construction engineering firm Yumeshin Holdings Co. as an appropriate measure during its general shareholders meeting in Tokyo.
COMMENTARY
Sep 26, 2005

China should face its own unsavory past

NEW DELHI -- The new foreign-policy subtleness that China has displayed in recent years is a far cry from the coarse image its earlier Communist rulers presented, especially when they set out, in then-Premier Zhou Enlai's words, to "teach India a lesson" in 1962, or when, to quote strongman Deng Xiaoping,...
COMMENTARY
Sep 26, 2005

Underwhelmed in Okinawa

Most of the Japanese political community is all agog over the overwhelming victory of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party in the Sept. 11 Lower House election. Okinawa Prefecture is the exception.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Sep 26, 2005

Constitutional debate welcome

NEW YORK -- I was recently intrigued by the constitutional debate -- not in Iraq, but in Japan -- when I read a book on the art of writing, "Bungei Tokuhon," that Yukio Mishima dictated in 1958.
Sep 22, 2005

Firms betting on Russia amid political poker

A screen up front read "Welcome to St. Petersburg!" as top officials of Russia's second-largest city gave a presentation in Tokyo to lure Japanese investment.
COMMENTARY
Sep 21, 2005

System's flaws help keep Koizumi on top

From the start of the recent Lower House election campaign it was predictable that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's theatrics -- his constant references to magic "kaikaku" (reform) and the alleged benefits from postal-service privatization -- would have its inevitable mesmerizing effect on Japan's...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Sep 20, 2005

Brought to heel

The watchdog role of journalists in Japan is on trial in several cases with enormous implications for freedom of the press here
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 19, 2005

Junichiro Koizumi's great leap forward

HONOLULU -- The stunning electoral victory engineered by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan last week ought to make leaders in Washington, Beijing, Pyongyang, Seoul, and at the United Nations sit up and take note because it marks a great leap forward in Japan's emergence from the passive and pacifist...

Longform

Dangami House is a 180-year-old former samurai residence of the Kato clan, who ruled over Ozu, Ehime Prefecture, until the Meiji Restoration.
A house, a legacy and the quiet work of restoration in rural Japan