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JAPAN
Nov 9, 2006

Abe says no to nukes but allows discussion

Japan has no intention of going nuclear but there is still room for debate on the issue, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Wednesday as he defended key Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers who have been criticized for comments suggesting that the matter needs to be discussed.
JAPAN
Nov 9, 2006

NHK closer to getting order on North reports

The Radio Regulatory Council, an advisory committee to the internal affairs and communications minister, Wednesday approved a ministerial directive to NHK to increase its reporting on North Korea's abductions of Japanese on its shortwave radio programs.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Nov 9, 2006

An unexplained howl

I don't much care for those explanatory texts we call "artists' statements," because if an artist has to explain a work of art, then it simply isn't standing on its own. Artists who spell out what their art means (and, in doing so, establish parameters regarding how one should see it), only succeed in...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 7, 2006

The nine lives of Nicaragua's Ortega

MANAGUA -- Once again, Nicaragua faces a possible Sandinista restoration. The country voted Sunday in an unprecedented presidential election with four competitive candidates, and the question on everyone's lips is whether Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, who lost by more than 10 percent in each of the...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 6, 2006

Europe's misguided 'growth pessimists'

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- So deep is the pessimism in Europe about the economy that the better the economy does today, the worse people think it will do tomorrow.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 5, 2006

Radio rivals are a turn off by playing it safe

In the United States, media critics bemoan the homogenization of FM radio, which has become dominated by a handful of corporations dictating what music is played. Meanwhile, AM radio is considered the exclusive domain of the right wing, filled with talk shows that badger so-called Middle America into...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Nov 4, 2006

Japan's future task: a balancing act on U.S., China ties

T he question of how to maintain balanced relations with China and the United States will be Japan's major diplomatic challenge in the coming decades, and the recent nuclear test by North Korea may in fact provide a good chance for Tokyo and Beijing to cement their ties.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 3, 2006

It's not about porn, it's all about art

Lucile Hadzihalilovic strides into a room and the mood immediately becomes dense with awe. It's not just her striking looks or her height (over 1.85 meters in stockings), but the way she seems to mute these things behind a natural quietness and engaging shyness, as if she's whispering: "Please don't...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 2, 2006

Love, Peace & Money?

Tokyo Design Week brings together international and local designers, manufacturers, retailers and entrepreneurs for a raft of exhibitions, gatherings and design-related events, and, of course, parties -- wherever designers get together, a party is not too far away. But apart from the civilized pleasure...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 1, 2006

Dolphin kill dogged by mercury, activists

Nearly every day since the first week in September, fishermen have been driving pods of dolphins into quiet coves near the village of Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, to kill them for their meat, whatever the mercury content, or sell them to marine parks.
BUSINESS / THE VIEW FROM EUROPE
Oct 30, 2006

Will private equity boom in Japan? It did in Europe

After booming in the United States and Europe, private equity finally seems to have set its sights on Japan. Two of the world's top three private equity firms -- Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Texas Pacific Group -- have each opened offices in Japan or expanded their existing Japan operations over...
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Oct 28, 2006

Seguignol Shimmy, Shinjo's tears . . . and more

SAPPORO -- The Japan Series wrapped up Thursday in Hokkaido, and Japan Times baseball writer Stephen Ellsesser is taking the first train out of here, before hopping a plane for Tokyo.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 28, 2006

International role of NPOs

All over the world, culture is being pushed to the sidelines. I am not referring here to commercialized, globalized culture produced purely for entertainment. By "culture," I mean the provision of culture as a public good, such as through foreign-language education, intellectual exchange or groundbreaking...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 26, 2006

A change in gender for new political series

For more than two decades, Yasumasa Morimura, one of Japan's most internationally celebrated artists, has inserted his own face into iconic paintings by van Gogh, Manet and Rembrandt, as well as portraits of stars such as Marilyn Monroe and Vivian Leigh. With his elaborate, hilarious and often gender-bending...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Oct 24, 2006

Kumiko Taguchi

Kumiko Taguchi, 59, is deputy manager of Junkudo book shop in Ikebukuro in Tokyo, which boasts the largest floor space (nine-stories) of any bookstore in Japan. Before moving to Junkudo in 1997, she worked at another bookselling giant, Libro, located opposite Junkudo. After a long career in the industry...
EDITORIALS
Oct 23, 2006

Britons bridle over veil

The phrase "straw poll" has acquired some nuance in Britain this month. It used to mean asking people what they think about an issue -- any issue. Suddenly it seems to mean asking people what they think about Straw -- Jack Straw, that is, the former British foreign secretary -- and in particular his...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 21, 2006

India-American nuclear deal foundering

MADRAS -- The Indian-American nuclear deal signed in New Delhi in March seems to be foundering. The pact, which would give India access to American civil nuclear technology, must be approved by the U.S. Congress before it can become law.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 19, 2006

Playing with energy

Though on the surface it's easy to think everyone else has got it sorted out, things are not always what they seem. From time to time we all feel like a blip in the universe, trapped by things beyond our control -- whether unbending social powers, finicky laws, monetary limitations or annoying office...
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Oct 17, 2006

Small face

Dear Alice,
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 16, 2006

More deadly than Saddam

LONDON -- The final indignity, if you are an Iraqi who was shot for accidentally turning into the path of a U.S. military convoy (they thought you might be a terrorist), or blown apart by a car bomb or an airstrike, or tortured and murdered by kidnappers, or just for being a Sunni or a Shiite, is that...
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Oct 14, 2006

Baseball scribe breaks down exciting Pa League second stage

SAPPORO -- Here is a look back at the second-stage Pacific League playoffs, in which the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters swept the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks in two games, winning the series 3-0 under the PL postseason's new format, which gives the No. 1 seed a one-game advantage before the series begins.
COMMENTARY
Oct 14, 2006

Get tough with Pyongyang

HONOLULU -- Virtually every statement issued in response to North Korea's apparent first-ever nuclear-weapons test has included an admonition (or plea) for Pyongyang to return to the moribund six-party talks. But, are all parties prepared to take "yes" for an answer?
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 13, 2006

Silent consent to lawlessness

NEW YORK -- It is time to end the fiction that Vladimir Putin's "dictatorship of law" has made postcommunist Russia any less lawless. The murder last Satur- day of Anna Politkovskaya, one of Russia's bravest and best journalists, a woman who dared to expose the brutal murders committed by Russian troops...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 12, 2006

Kim Jong Il is crying out for more help

LONDON -- In psychobabble, what North Korea has just done would be characterized as "a cry for help," like a teenage kid burning his parents' house down because he's misunderstood. Granted, it's an unusually loud cry for help, but now that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has got our attention, what...
EDITORIALS
Oct 9, 2006

Compensation from the accused

By May 2009, Japan will introduce a lay-judge system in which randomly chosen citizens will sit with professional judges to decide guilt or innocence in criminal trials involving charges such as murder, rape and arson, and then hand down sentences if the accused are found guilty. The aim is to insert...
Japan Times
LIFE
Oct 8, 2006

Japan Fashion Week tweaks time and place to suit style jet set

When Japan's beleaguered textiles industry belatedly decided to invest in organizing a fashion week to rival the best of Paris, Milan, New York and London -- and persuaded the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to back it -- they hoped a slick new event would garner valuable worldwide media coverage...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 8, 2006

Beware a 'beauty' that would deceive the nation

'Japan lost the war, and Bushido [the samurai spirit] perished. But then the human being was born for the first time in the womb of truth called decadence."
EDITORIALS
Oct 6, 2006

Encouragement for reporters

The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal filed by a U.S. health-food maker against a high court decision that upheld a reporter's right to keep a news source secret. The decision concerns an NHK report that the Japanese subsidiary of the company had underreported its revenues to reduce tax bills.

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight