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Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Jul 3, 2007

"Tunnels," "The Boy in the Biscuit Tin"

"Tunnels," By Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams, Chicken House; 2007; 463 pp. Books that lead to sequels are good news and bad news bundled into one. Good news because a sequel means that there's more where this came from, and bad news because the author is not obligated to resolving the plot by the...
BUSINESS
Jun 19, 2007

TBS' Rakuten snub reflects protected world

Hiroshi Inoue, president of Tokyo Broadcasting System Inc., does not hide his displeasure when he talks about online shopping mall operator Rakuten Inc.'s attempt to make the broadcaster its affiliate.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 12, 2007

Media scream 'yellow peril'

Days after the broken body of British teacher Lindsay Hawker was discovered in a fourth-floor flat in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, when the media feeding frenzy was at its most intense, a newspaper editor called me from London.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 20, 2007

Buy a car and drive up your grocery bill

Toyota Motor Corp. made headlines when it announced that its profit for 2006 was a record-breaking 2.24 trillion yen. In the United States, the news was greeted with some bitterness, since the Japan automaker had recently surpassed General Motors in terms of worldwide sales for the first time ever.
JAPAN
Mar 28, 2007

Reporter fails to clear name over '72 scoop

will not be reversed even if the claimed secret pact really existed, and the plaintiff needs to accept it even if the guilty verdict damaged his honor." Following the ruling, Nishiyama told a news conference, "I want to continue showing how the government illegally concluded the secret agreement with...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jan 10, 2007

New light cast on capital-punishment issues

It's not especially pleasing to write about death in the first column of the New Year, but there's a lot of it about.
JAPAN
Sep 7, 2006

Princess Kiko delivers a boy

Princess Kiko, the wife of Prince Akishino, the Emperor's second son, gave birth to a boy Wednesday morning, a long-awaited male heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jul 16, 2006

AFN changes may augur trends for other sports media

Recent news items indicate big changes are coming for the traditional form of broadcasting baseball games in Japan and the end of the line for baseball -- and other sports -- on Armed Forces Network radio in our world of high-tech, satellite and cable communications.
JAPAN
Jul 8, 2006

Tokyo snubs Pyongyang threat over sanctions

Japan rejected North Korea's demand Friday to drop new economic sanctions over the North's Wednesday missile launches, ignoring Pyongyang's threat of "stronger measures" and "devastating consequences" unless it reversed its decision.
BUSINESS
Mar 18, 2006

Softbank will buy Vodafone K.K.

Softbank Corp. said Friday it has reached an agreement with Vodafone Group PLC to buy 97.7 percent of its Japanese unit for 1.75 trillion yen in a move that will allow it to acquire Vodafone K.K.'s 15 million users and its nationwide mobile communications network.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 12, 2006

Weekly magazines joust over trillion-yen fortunetelling trade

It is often said that if you really want to understand what is happening in Japan you should read the weekly magazines. Though the weeklies' journalistic standards are considered less rigorous than those of the daily newspapers, they are less reluctant to step on toes that belong to people who might...
JAPAN
Jan 25, 2006

Horie no longer head of Livedoor; Fuji TV to sell

Takafumi Horie is out as head of Livedoor Co.
EDITORIALS
Jan 14, 2006

Catching the kabuki spirit

Kabuki, which dates back some 400 years to Izumo no Okuni, the leader of a women's theatrical troupe that caused a sensation in Kyoto, now appears to be riding an upsurge. Recently, the kabuki world saw a series of events that have caught people's attention and increased their interest.
EDITORIALS
Dec 28, 2005

Portrait of a year in buzzwords

If it's December, it's time for those list-loving dictionary folks to be announcing their Words of the Year again -- and in the process providing editorial writers with a revealing lens on the past 12 months. This year, their labors yielded a couple of startlingly different scenarios.
COMMENTARY
Dec 1, 2005

Trying to stem controversy in South Korea

LOS ANGELES -- The people of South Korea have responded to the stem-cell scandal involving genius-innovator Hwang Woo Suk with admittedly excessive passion and near-unanimous conviction. Still, by rallying around their amazing Seoul National University pioneer, their support should be a comfort to risk-taking...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Nov 26, 2005

Richard Quest

Almost 20 years ago, viewers of the BBC World Service used to watch a British television reporter whose agile, distinctive style excited comment. "Unconventional," some said. "Quirky," said others, "original and mold-breaking."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Nov 17, 2005

A new art center, in Kiyosumi

This week brings some good news and some bad news to Tokyo's contemporary art scene. The good news is that a group of galleries that have been sharing a building in Shinkawa since January 2003 have relocated en masse, and now all boast significantly bigger spaces. The bad news is that the galleries vacated...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 17, 2005

On the precipice in Iraq

WASHINGTON-- How are things going in Iraq? The short answer, unfortunately -- based on Brookings' Iraq Index and my own assessments -- is not very well. There is still considerable hope, and much that does go well in Iraq. But on balance, there is more reason for worry than optimism right now.
JAPAN
Oct 14, 2005

Reporter can conceal source; first time since '79

The Niigata District Court ruled Tuesday that an NHK reporter was justified in refusing to reveal a news source in connection with a suit a U.S. health food company filed in the United States over the taxation of its Japanese subsidiary in 1997, it was revealed Thursday.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Oct 2, 2005

Killing your career in the media to keep your superiors happy

The vocation of journalism in Japan is not exactly the same as it is in the West. The "kisha club" system makes reporters beholden to the bureaucrats and politicians they cover rather than to the public they're supposed to serve, while the Japanese corporate tradition of on-the-job training means that...
JAPAN
Oct 1, 2005

NHK censorship story had 'uncertain' info: Asahi

The Asahi Shimbun admitted Friday that an article it ran in January about an NHK documentary in 2001 contained "uncertain" information but the daily has no plans to correct it.
JAPAN
Sep 16, 2005

Asahi blames false reports on lack of communication

The daily Asahi Shimbun said in a detailed report in its Thursday morning edition that the publishing of inaccurate articles in August about the general election was caused by a lack of communication between reporters and editors.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 14, 2005

He hops onto a shuttle, jumps off to a media shuffle

Last Tuesday's landing of the Space Shuttle Discovery in the deserts of California capped a tense two weeks in which the safety of the vehicle and the seven astronauts it contained was never 100 percent assured. The loss of foam insulation during liftoff was eerily reminiscent of the last shuttle mission...
BUSINESS
Mar 25, 2005

Livedoor wants in Meteorological Agency press club

Livedoor Co. has applied for membership in the press club of the Meteorological Agency, officials of the Internet portal site operator said Thursday.
COMMENTARY
Jan 31, 2005

Zhao Ziyang: the death of a nonperson

HONG KONG -- While it seems unlikely that the death of China's former leader Zhao Ziyang will provoke mass unrest, the way in which it is being handled indicates the profound official insecurity still aroused by the mass unrest in 1989.
JAPAN
Jan 25, 2005

Panel set to ponder female on the throne

The government will kick off discussions this week that could result in changing the male-only Imperial succession rule which experts say has been practiced for more than 1,000 years.

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