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Japan Times
BUSINESS / U.K. JOURNALIST SYMPOSIUM
Jun 9, 2007

Sustained growth needs more access, ambition

Despite its demographic problems, Japan has room to aim at higher growth by pushing harder on reforms, opening up more to foreign capital and making better use of unused female labor, visiting journalists from Britain told a recent symposium in Tokyo.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jun 9, 2007

Hubert Durt

Japan's constitutional peace guarantee was, and still is, the main cause of Dr. Hubert Durt's admiration for this country. It was the magnet that drew him here.
EDITORIALS
Jun 8, 2007

Popularity takes a tumble

The approval rating for the Cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has hit a record low since he came into power last September. A telephone poll at the beginning of this month by Kyodo News shows that the support rate has sunk to 35.8 percent, a drop of 11.8 points from mid-May and a big slide from the...
JAPAN
Jun 8, 2007

Lower House approves 'amakudari' bill

With the crucial Upper House election looming next month, the House of Representatives approved a controversial bill Thursday aimed at curbing "amakudari," the notorious practice of handing retiring top bureaucrats lucrative jobs in private-sector firms and quasi-government entities in the sectors they...
JAPAN
Jun 8, 2007

Blame game on pensions begins

The ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito attempted Thursday to shift blame for the pension data fiasco onto former opposition leader Naoto Kan, who was health minister at the time the government decided to computerize the records.
EDITORIALS
Jun 8, 2007

Defection from the North

Four North Koreans — a married couple and their two adult sons — were spotted in a small boat off Fukaura port in Aomori Prefecture last Saturday and are now in custody. They arrived in a 7.3-meter-long open wooden boat equipped with an old outboard engine. They say they left a port near the northeastern...
COMMENTARY
Jun 8, 2007

When getting rich impoverishes society

NEW DELHI — Serious social tension roils here and there across the globe. Gaps between poor and rich rarely seem to shrink and in most places continue to enlarge. The fairest assessment of economic and informational globalization (the greatest pretender as an income gap-narrower since orthodox Marxism)...
JAPAN
Jun 8, 2007

Lee courts discord with Yasukuni visit

Just being here has caused a political stir, but former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui upped the ante Thursday by visiting Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine to offer a prayer for his brother, who died while fighting for Japan in World War II.
BUSINESS
Jun 8, 2007

Sony looking to cut jobs at U.S. video-game unit

Sony's U.S. video-game unit is cutting jobs to become more competitive, the company said Thursday, as the PlayStation 3 machine struggles against rival offerings from Microsoft and Nintendo.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jun 8, 2007

Animated dolls, singing birds in cages in Yamanashi

The Kawaguchi-Ko Music Forest Museum in Yamanashi Prefecture is currently holding an exhibit through November 18 from its own collection of animated dolls (automata) and singing mechanical bird boxes.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 8, 2007

'Kantoku Banzai!'/'Dai Nipponjin'

It was a marketing gimmick of the first order to open Takeshi Kitano's "Kantoku Banzai!" and Hitoshi Matsumoto's "Dai Nipponjin" on the same weekend. This head-to-head duel between films by the two reigning kings of Japanese comedy can only boost the box office of both.
CULTURE / Music
Jun 8, 2007

Michael Brecker "Pilgrimage"

Tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker assembled some of his friends and favorite players on "Pilgrimage," his last album recorded shortly before dying of leukemia in January this year. Though in ailing health during recording, the compositions (in a first for one of his albums, all are Brecker originals)...
CULTURE / Music
Jun 8, 2007

PanicSmile "Best Education"

The old cliche about The Velvet Underground was that few people bought their records, but everyone who did formed a band. Something similar is probably true of Tokyo-based experimental punks PanicSmile, whose early fans included indie-rockers Number Girl and quirky J-pop singer Shiina Ringo. PanicSmile's...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / SHORT TAKES
Jun 8, 2007

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Director: Gore Verbinski Language: English
JAPAN / Q&A
Jun 8, 2007

What's behind the measles outbreak?

A measles epidemic is spreading, especially among people in their teens and 20s, forcing weeklong closures at 29 universities and 22 high schools nationwide between April 1 and May 26.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 8, 2007

James Chance

The saxophonist-singer- bandleader James Chance is one of those canny musicians who assumes a variety of professional guises to hide the fact that he always does pretty much the same thing. Born James Siegfried in Milwaukee, he moved to New York in the late 1970s, immediately becoming a central player...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 8, 2007

'Zodiac'

Newton's third law of motion tells us that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This certainly applies to the physics of Hollywood releases: As the studios increasingly turn to bombastic, over-the-top SFX movies, the critics react by praising every studio release that still has...

Longform

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.
The second life of Japan's net cafes