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EDITORIALS
Mar 22, 2007

Looking forward to the future

When The Japan Times was launched 110 years ago today, its first editorial, titled "Our Raison d'Etre," said, "His Majesty's subjects and the foreign residents remain to this day virtually strangers to each other." This was partly because of the system of extraterritoriality the great powers imposed...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 22, 2007

Beck: Too much information for an hombre to handle

Beck talks about his upcoming tour of Japan, a stockpile of songs that grows faster than he is able to record them and a trans-Pacific collaboration that will just have to wait
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 22, 2007

When Godot finally arrives

Minoru Betsuyaku wanted to be a painter, but his father died when he was 7, leaving him as the oldest of five sons. Everyone around him said that he would never be able to support his family as an artist, so he entered Tokyo's Waseda University, resolved instead to become a newspaper journalist.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 22, 2007

Why Musharraf survives

ISLAMABAD -- Recent threats by the Bush administration to cut off billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan have sparked panic in government circles. Likewise, according to the Pakistani ambassador in Washington, military strikes by the United States aimed at al-Qaida and Taliban havens inside Pakistan's...
BASKETBALL
Mar 21, 2007

Oita's Ellis earns weekly accolade

Oita HeatDevils center Andy Ellis, the team's go-to player all season, carried his club over the weekend as it beat the Tokyo Apache 114-78 on Saturday and 85-83 on Sunday. He is the Circle K Sunkus Player of the Week, the bj-league announced on Tuesday.
MORE SPORTS
Mar 21, 2007

Chinese champions steal on-ice spotlight

China's two-times world champions Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao stole the show in the second-to-last skate to lead after the pairs' short program on the opening day of the World Figure Skating Championships.
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Mar 21, 2007

Kobe's 65 proof he's Picasso on court

NEW YORK -- Since Kobe Bryant was an adolescent he has been consumed with visions of majesty.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 21, 2007

Costly family plots giving way to common, no-upkeep crypts

Misako Kubo and Sachiko Sakurai are the best of friends. The two seniors sing side-by-side in a chorus group, go out for lunch and dinner together, and even pray for each other.
Reader Mail
Mar 21, 2007

Is U.S. qualified to throw stones?

Why does the U.S. House of Representatives have to take up the "comfort women" issue now? Of course, the United States is a champion of basic human rights; it watches for any violation around the world. But shouldn't the U.S. make sure that its hands are 100 percent clean? Has it fully exercised its...
Reader Mail
Mar 21, 2007

Motivation to become bilingual

The March 13 editorial, "Japan's ambivalent English," came down too hard on students trying to learn English. At least, that's my observation. During the 28 years that I taught English at the same high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District -- the nation's second-largest -- Japanese and other...
Reader Mail
Mar 21, 2007

A weak case for 'coercion'

The writer of the March 7 letter "Just what is Abe trying to say?" should listen more carefully to what Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said. He did not say that no wrong was ever done to women in wartime brothels operated for soldiers in Japanese-occupied lands; he said there was no coercion against women...
BUSINESS
Mar 21, 2007

Daiei proposes Aeon Mall president to be its new chairman

Struggling Daiei Inc. said Tuesday it will invite Yoshiharu Kawato from the Aeon supermarket chain to be its chairman as part of the business and capital alliance between the two retailers.
Reader Mail
Mar 21, 2007

Japan's past already well known

If evidence ever existed that thousands of women were forced to work as sex slaves for the Japanese military in World War II, it may very well have been consumed in one of the countless bonfires used by Japanese military and civilian authorities to destroy incriminating evidence following Japan's defeat....
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 21, 2007

Bush must do far more to win over Latin Americans

LOS ANGELES -- After ignoring Latin America for years, President George W. Bush is desperately trying to improve hemispheric relations. But his just-completed trip to Latin America came too late. Years of neglect could not possibly be erased by a trip long in photo opportunities and short in substance....
Reader Mail
Mar 21, 2007

Variability in English instruction

A thousand or so complaints from students disgruntled over Nova's refund policy hardly sounds alarming to me, especially if one considers that Nova reportedly has around a half-million students. But Nova's comparison of its refund policy to a major train operator's cancellation refund policy hardly...
JAPAN
Mar 21, 2007

No common history view with China

Historians from China and Japan have given up cowriting a single history of Sino-Japanese relations in a joint study project sponsored by the two governments because of the apparent huge gaps in their views and time constraints, Japanese participants said Tuesday.
Japan Times
JAPAN / INNOCENT VICTIMS
Mar 21, 2007

Child-guidance centers lacking: experts

Child abuse in Japan may be expanding faster than social workers can keep pace, but there's another side to the story as well: Many people outside the government child-welfare system are working hard to push those figures down. Meet two of those people, lawyer Fumiaki Isogae and foster mother Kazuko...
EDITORIALS
Mar 21, 2007

Close expenditure loophole

If a lawmaker locates his or her political funds management body in an official Diet office, rent and utilities are free. Now it has come to light that two lawmakers' funding bodies reported unusually high utility expenditures. Earlier, it was found that the political funds reports of education minister...
EDITORIALS
Mar 21, 2007

Educators need support, not orders

A report presented by the Central Council for Education to education minister Bunmei Ibuki on revisions to three education-related laws favors increased government control over education. Regrettably, under pressure from the education ministry, the council spent only about a month on discussions that...

Longform

Mamoru Iwai, stationmaster of Keisei Ueno Station, says that, other than earthquake-proofing, the former Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen (Museum-Zoo) Station has remained untouched.
Inside Tokyo's 'phantom' stations — and the stories they tell