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EDITORIALS
Feb 28, 2005

Look for VAT hike on the agenda

It appears that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is pushing the consumption-tax issue onto the political agenda. During a Lower House plenary session earlier this month, he said, in effect, that the value-added tax should be increased as part of overall social security reform. Until recently, Koizumi...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Feb 28, 2005

Tracking Mishima's footsteps in Florida

NEW YORK -- Earlier this month, when our friends Lenore and Robert invited us to visit them in Naples, Florida, where they recently acquired a new apartment, I decided to accept their offer. Naples is where Yukio Mishima (1925-70) spent a few days during his first visit to this country in January 1952,...
BUSINESS
Feb 26, 2005

Mad cow panel prodded to reach decision on tests

Farm minister Yoshinobu Shimamura urged a government panel Friday to draw a conclusion quickly on whether to terminate the blanket testing for mad cow disease, in order to lift Japan's 14-month-old import ban on U.S. beef.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Feb 26, 2005

The woes of the misunderstood 'gaijin'

I've been a nonnative speaker of Japanese for 12 years now. I'll go weeks without speaking a word of English, since where I live, I'm the only "gaijin." But after several years of consistent hard work, I have trained the 700 people on my island to understand my gaijin Japanese. We are almost at the point...
EDITORIALS
Feb 25, 2005

Mr. Thaksin can't relax

Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections held earlier this month. That win followed a completion of a full term in office, a historic accomplishment in its own right. Yet victory has not ended Mr. Thaksin's worries. Violence in the country's southern...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 24, 2005

China can't use its leverage

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts -- In the North Korean nuclear crisis, there is a major difference between having leverage and the ability to use it. China has the former, but not the latter. North Korea has both.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / NAME OF THE GAME
Feb 24, 2005

A game darn near too scary

If you are looking for the biggest jolt video gaming has to offer, and you don't mind having nightmares, take a deep breath and try "Biohazard 4."
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Feb 23, 2005

Foreign stars to battle Japan stars in March 14 charity game

Kudos: To Bobby Valentine, Trey Hillman, Tsutomu Ito, Kazuhiko Ushijima and all the players who will participate in the Pro Yakyu Charity Game at Tokyo Dome on Monday, March 14.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Feb 20, 2005

There's big, and Hoover Dam big

Take 4,360 cubic meters of concrete (enough to pave a single-lane highway from San Francisco to New York), add 21,000 workers (but deduct an average of 50 a day due to injury or death), stir in 5 million, 8-cubic-meter buckets of cement and 950 km of steel piping, then garnish the lot with a dog that...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 20, 2005

Japanese sperm to hit the Big Apple

"You all have to pump this rhythm into your body," Daisuke Koshikawa shouted. "If you think this rhythm is not part of your body, you have to acquire it at any cost."
EDITORIALS
Feb 20, 2005

In praise of a 'billy sook'

With spring just around the corner, what images pop into the mind? Naturally, you're thinking cherry blossoms and daffodils, spring lambs and fluffy chickens, dolls and kites, eggs and chocolate. But some of you will also be thinking rabbits, and you are in luck, because next month brings the publication...
EDITORIALS
Feb 19, 2005

Missile defense and civilian control

The Cabinet earlier this week approved a bill that would provide a legal framework for a missile defense (MD) system. During the current regular session of the Diet, the government is seeking approval of the proposed amendment to the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) Law plus a bill for creating an integrated...
COMMENTARY
Feb 16, 2005

Answering Pyongyang's divisive tack

HONOLULU -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's initial response to Pyongyang's surprise announcement that it felt compelled to suspend its participation in the six-party talks and that it had manufactured nukes was exactly right.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Feb 15, 2005

Compromised NHK needs closer scrutiny

As someone who toiled for several years inside NHK during the early 1990s, it is bemusing to see the simplistic criticism of the quasi-official broadcaster by the Japanese media.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Feb 13, 2005

Learn if your pet loves you in TV Tokyo's "Pochi-Tama" and more

Does your pet love you? It may sound like a pointless question, but this week the pet variety program "Pochi-Tama" (TV Tokyo; Fri., 7 p.m.) will offer a test that pet owners can take to determine the degree of affection that their dogs and cats feel toward them.
COMMENTARY
Feb 11, 2005

Accept U.N. for what it isn't

LONDON -- At first glance, the slightly dated, 30-story United Nations building in New York's Lower East Side looks like misery mansion. Everything seems to be going wrong these days.
BUSINESS
Feb 11, 2005

Tanigaki urges BOJ to keep system flush with ample liquidity

Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki urged the central bank Thursday to keep injecting the financial system with ample liquidity as a means of quelling deflation.
EDITORIALS
Feb 11, 2005

Middle East truce opens a door

How many times has the world observed an Israeli-Palestinian handshake and breathed a sigh of relief that hostilities in that sliver of the Middle East finally appeared to be ending? The answer, of course, is far too often for the latest declaration of peace to promise much. Camp David, the Rose Garden,...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Feb 10, 2005

DNA 'flip' highlights our ongoing evolution

Stung by the phenomenal success of the "Harry Potter" books, some people like to preach about the infantilization of culture, and some critics worry that adults are wallowing in childhood.
EDITORIALS
Feb 8, 2005

Concern over the first vCJD case

Japan last week confirmed its first case of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), the human version of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The disease is said to spread through the consumption of beef products from cows infected with BSE. In Britain, which reported a high...
COMMENTARY
Feb 8, 2005

LDP missing the big picture

How to privatize postal services is the biggest issue in the regular Diet session. The government plans to introduce a privatization package in mid-March, and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has vowed to "get it through the current session at all costs." But with many members of the Liberal Democratic...
EDITORIALS
Feb 6, 2005

Prohibition in Bhutan

The news out of the Himalayas last week was all about Nepal, where King Gyanendra on Tuesday dissolved the government and proclaimed a state of emergency. (The move was billed as an attempt to end an intractable Maoist insurgency; observers predict it will only feed the flames.) But if you think Nepal...
Japan Times
Features
Feb 6, 2005

Calls for change as WHS status threatens one of Japan's gems

The breathtaking mountain landscape of the Kii Peninsula, and its ancient temples, monasteries and shrines have captivated the Japanese people for more than 1,000 years.
EDITORIALS
Feb 5, 2005

Mr. Bush's ambitious agenda

In the first State of the Union address of his second term, U.S. President George W. Bush laid out an ambitious agenda that is designed to transform his country and the world. The speech marked the opening volley in Mr. Bush's attempt to shape his legacy. He reveled in the victory afforded by Iraq's...
EDITORIALS
Feb 1, 2005

Flying high over the Taiwan Strait

The victory of the opposition Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) in Taiwan's Legislative Yuan elections last December was widely seen as a rebuke of President Chen Shui-bian and an opportunity for the People's Republic of China. In theory, a democratic check on Mr. Chen allows Beijing to retake the initiative...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 31, 2005

Fires of hope for the leprosy-afflicted

There is a disease that is completely curable. It is phenomenally hard to contract. If caught early, it has little to no effect on those who have been touched by it. Yet, mention of this disease fills people with more dread, with more gut-level loathing, than any other. The disease is leprosy. It is...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 30, 2005

Neglect led to higher Indian casualty toll

MADRAS, India -- In India, very few people had heard the word tsunami, let alone understood what these waves could do. Until Sunday, Dec. 26, hardly anybody had the vaguest inclination of the destructive ability of the sea.
JAPAN
Jan 28, 2005

Hashimoto should be charged, inquest says

committee called (the prosecution's decision) unjust," DPJ Secretary General Tatsuo Kawabata said as he challenged Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi during a Diet session Thursday. He asked Koizumi, who heads the LDP, if he still believes Hashimoto's explanation that he probably received the JDA donation...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / INDUSTRY TRENDS
Jan 28, 2005

Epson's bold gamble leaves door ajar for Canon

Pole position in Japan's home printer market changed hands in 2004 for the first time in eight years, with the two principal rivals in the sector pursuing starkly contrasting product strategies.

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami