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COMMENTARY / JAPAN IN THE GLOBAL ERA
Sep 23, 2002

Youth must lead creative destruction

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- The turn of the century is an important opportunity to engage in questioning and re-evaluating some of the global community's basic tenets, assumptions, policies and directions. On these matters we are being well-served by some excellent books.
JAPAN
Sep 21, 2002

Media coverage of abductions criticized

OSAKA -- Korean residents of Japan expressed concern Friday over what they feel has been excessive coverage by the Japanese media of the North Korean abductions but comparatively scarce debate over Japan's legacy of its colonial rule of the Korean peninsula.
Japan Times
JAPAN / ENERGY EQUATION
Sep 21, 2002

Public role key to green-energy foothold

OSAKA -- While nuclear power provides about one-third of Japan's electricity, the government's goal for raising the share of alternative energy sources is a modest one -- from the current 1.2 percent to a mere 3.2 percent by 2010.
JAPAN
Sep 21, 2002

Koizumi hints rice aid to North Korea may resume

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi indicated Friday that Japan may resume rice aid to North Korea before normalization of bilateral relations.
EDITORIALS
Sep 20, 2002

Following up the Pyongyang summit

North Korea's acknowledgment of its involvement in the kidnappings of Japanese nationals marks a major milestone in the off-and-on normalization talks between Tokyo and Pyongyang that began in 1991. With the negotiations resuming next month, following Tuesday's summit agreement between Prime Minister...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 19, 2002

U.S. seeks Japan support on Iraq, come what may

Despite Iraq's pledge Monday to grant United Nations arms inspectors unconditional access to suspected weapons sites, the international community should keep a watchful eye on Baghdad's next move, according to a U.S. expert on Middle East and Asia-Pacific security.
BUSINESS / ANOTHER LOOK
Sep 16, 2002

Outsourcing offers Japan Inc. a viable, new cost-cutting option

Regardless of the size of a company's operations, one of the most pressing issues for management is reduction of costs. With very low economic growth likely to continue for some time and deflation placing pressure on prices in many different industry sectors, management is being called upon to make more...
BUSINESS
Sep 16, 2002

Mortgage-lending confab aims to fire up European market

The movers and shakers of Europe's mortgage-lending industry are to attend an unprecedented conference that starts in Madrid on Sept. 22 in an effort to find solutions in light of globalization and ensuing difficulties they currently face -- including dilution within the financial services industry and...
COMMENTARY
Sep 15, 2002

Weaning Afghanistan off militarization

ISLAMABAD -- The U.N. secretary general's special representative for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, could not have chosen a more precise way to underline Afghanistan's predicament. During his latest trip to the central Asian country, he favored spending more on reconstruction and development work to rebuild...
JAPAN
Sep 15, 2002

KANSAI: Who & What

Women execs offered medical system info: Foreign Executive Women in Kansai, an organization of non-Japanese professional women working in the region, is hosting a dinner meeting from 6 p.m. on Sept. 26 at Hilton Osaka in the city's Kita Ward.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 15, 2002

A river of ill repute

THE MEKONG: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future, by Milton Osborn. Allen & Unwin, 2001, 295 pp., b/w & color photos, $25 (cloth) The waters of the Mekong, the world's 12th-longest and Southeast Asia's foremost river, do not, like the Thames, run sweetly. Nor have they inspired poets to dream on the river's...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 15, 2002

The science of fiction: telling history as it was, and as it wasn't

DECEMBER 6, by Martin Cruz Smith (published in Britain as TOKYO STATION). Simon & Schuster: New York, 2002, 352 pp., $26 (cloth) THE MASTER OF RAIN, by Tom Bradby. Doubleday: New York, 2002, 452 pp., $24.95 (cloth) Try to imagine, for a moment, if Rick Blaine, the hardened expat cafe owner portrayed...
EDITORIALS
Sep 14, 2002

China's about-face on AIDS

After denying for years that it had a problem, China last week acknowledged the HIV-AIDS epidemic that is sweeping that country. But the relief that greeted this long-overdue candor was tempered by Beijing's admission that it has also detained the country's most outspoken AIDS advocate -- for exposing...
COMMENTARY
Sep 14, 2002

It's folly for U.S. to go it alone

LONDON -- "Go it alone" is clearly the prevailing mood in Washington. Officials and commentators alike argue that with the United States' overwhelming military might and Europe's alleged weakness, the world must be set right by unilateral American action, and the international community can either like...
EDITORIALS
Sep 12, 2002

The limits of military power

What a difference a year can make. Although the fear of terrorism continues to stalk the world, the popular perception of it has changed significantly over the past year. Following the atrocity of Sept. 11, 2001 -- an attack on freedom, as U.S. President George W. Bush put it -- the international community...
JAPAN
Sep 12, 2002

Public responds to mayors' U.S. barbs

Criticism leveled last month by Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba at the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has provoked a major reaction both at home and abroad.
COMMENTARY
Sep 12, 2002

Brave trip to settle the past

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's one-day visit to North Korea on Sept. 17 is likely to have a profound effect on the security situation in Northeast Asia. The two nations started normalization talks in 1991, but thus far no substantial progress has been made because of the alleged abduction of Japanese...
JAPAN
Sep 12, 2002

Colleagues remember 9/11 dead

Colleagues of Japanese victims of last year's terrorist attacks in the United States solemnly observed the first anniversary on Wednesday, with many companies holding a moment of silence in remembrance of those who died when the World Trade Center buildings collapsed.
Japan Times
JAPAN / WEEKEND WISDOM
Sep 8, 2002

Radio icon pulls plug on show after world-record 45 years

Her achievement is nothing special, she says. But the thing that has kept Chieko Akiyama going throughout her unprecedented career is the human energy radiating from the people she meets.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 8, 2002

Ethical dilemma in war of 'self-defense'

NEW YORK -- The recent unjustified killings of Palestinian civilians -- several children among them -- have not only raised the anger of the Palestinian population but also some of Israeli civilians. More importantly, those brutal killings endanger the withdrawal negotiations and threaten to condemn...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 7, 2002

Sept. 11 boosts Japan's interest in Islam

As kimono-clad people danced through the streets of the Minami Otsuka district of northern Tokyo during a summer festival last month, a small Pakistani curry stall was doing a roaring trade.
EDITORIALS
Sep 5, 2002

Psychiatric abuse in China

The abuse of psychiatry for political purposes has a long and sad history. Defining dissidents as "mentally ill" allows political authorities to evade many of the legal protections built into criminal codes, and oppressive governments have rarely hesitated to use that shortcut when convenient. Such abuses...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Sep 5, 2002

Reaching out to Japanese hit on Sept. 11

Nearly a year ago, on Sept. 11, the Japan Helpline undertook its most difficult aid effort since the Great Hanshin Earthquake struck Kobe back in 1995.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 4, 2002

U.S. alliance least served by genuflecting: expert

Japan needs to think strategically and hold dialogue with the United States in that light if it wants to be a true ally, according to a former deputy chief of the Defense Agency.

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