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COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Apr 9, 2006

Who out there cares about 'Cool Japan'?

These days the government is jumping on the bandwagon. The Foreign Ministry is singing in tune. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has hopped on, with a conductor's baton in his hand and a spring in his step that you don't even see when he's ascending the stairs to pay his public-private respects at Yasukuni...
JAPAN
Apr 9, 2006

Governor nixes Okinawa base relocation plan

shares our view that the Japan-U.S. security treaty is necessary. I think we can (settle the matter) through discussions," Nukaga said. Inamine said he appreciates the central government's efforts in the ongoing Japan-U.S talks to reduce the presence of U.S. military forces in Okinawa, including the...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Apr 9, 2006

Pa League needs to know 'summer game' no fun in snow

A request this week to the Pacific League to please move back next season's Opening Day closer to where it belongs -- in April. I know the Pa League likes to begin play a week earlier than its Central League cousin, but is it going to start the 2007 season on March 24? This year, it began on Saturday,...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Apr 9, 2006

TV Asahi's 'Shichinin no Onna Bengoshi,' TBS's "Bengoshi no Kuzu" and more

This Thursday at 9 p.m., TV Asahi presents episode 1 of "Shichinin Onna Bengoshi (Seven Women Lawyers)," which sounds like the "Seven Samurai" of the briefcase set.
Japan Times
Features
Apr 9, 2006

Off the road from Damascus

Megumi Yoshitake's experience of living with the Bedouin is quite probably unique. Although her primary medium is photography, here she also offers some written snippets of memory and expression from her numerous sojourns in the Syrian Desert since the 1980s.
SOCCER / World cup
Apr 9, 2006

J. Village may host Japan's pre-World Cup training camp

Japan Football Association President Saburo Kawabuchi said Saturday he will propose that Japan's World Cup squad hold a training camp in the J. Village training facilities in Fukushima Prefecture before leaving for tournament hosts Germany.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 9, 2006

Could the U.N. have done more?

A NOT SO DISTANT HORROR: Mass Violence in East Timor, by Joseph Nevins. New York: Cornell University Press, 2005, 273 pp., $18.95 (cloth). This is a gripping and powerful saga rooted in the horrible atrocities and deprivation endured by the East Timorese following Indonesia's invasion in 1975. Indonesian...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 9, 2006

Bringing the lady-makes-tea debate to the boil

In the early 1990s I interviewed a representative of the vending machine industry who told me that one of the most revolutionary developments in his business was the installation of coffee and tea dispensers in new office buildings. "Think of it," he said excitedly, "women office workers will no longer...
JAPAN
Apr 8, 2006

Rights bill still on the burner

Justice Minister Seiken Sugiura on Friday suggested the government might be ready to resubmit the human-rights protection bill next year with revisions, including to the contentious media restrictions clause.
JAPAN
Apr 8, 2006

Guru's son sues school over rejection

A son of Aum Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara filed a 50 million yen damages suit Friday against a private middle school that refused to admit him even though he passed the entrance exam earlier this year.
COMMENTARY
Apr 8, 2006

Pack journalism can be lethal

Some call it pack journalism. It is also lazy journalism.
JAPAN
Apr 8, 2006

Japan struggles with the right-to-die issue

The revelation in late March that a Toyama Prefecture surgeon shut off the life support of six patients and let them die has raised once again the issue of how to treat the terminally ill.
BUSINESS
Apr 8, 2006

UBS, Sumitomo settle '99 copper suit

UBS of Switzerland said Friday it has reached an agreement with Sumitomo Corp. to settle the lawsuit brought by the Japanese trading house in 1999 in connection with copper-linked transactions.
JAPAN
Apr 8, 2006

DPJ elects Ozawa as new president

The Democratic Party of Japan elected veteran lawmaker Ichiro Ozawa, 63, as its new president Friday, ending his head-to-head race with rival and two-time President Naoto Kan.
JAPAN
Apr 8, 2006

Yokota's spouse South Korean

A DNA analysis suggests that the husband of Megumi Yokota, a Japanese national kidnapped by North Korean agents in 1977 at age 13, is a South Korean who was also abducted by the North, a Japanese government official said Friday.
BUSINESS
Apr 8, 2006

Yoshinoya halves loss, harbors high hopes

Yoshinoya D&C Co. President Shuji Abe on Friday painted a rosy picture for his company, one in which United States beef imports resume by September, sharply boosting profit at the restaurant chain famed for its beef-on-rice bowl dishes in time for the latter half of the business year.
JAPAN
Apr 8, 2006

Prosecutors file appeal in candy stick death case

Prosecutors on Friday appealed a Tokyo District Court ruling that cleared a doctor of failing to give proper treatment to a 4-year-old boy who died after a cotton candy stick pierced his throat and penetrated his brain in 1999.
JAPAN
Apr 8, 2006

Nago, Tokyo reach agreement on moving Futenma

, mayor of Nago, Okinawa Prefecture, meets Defense Agency chief Fukushiro Nukaga ahead of their talks at the agency.
BUSINESS
Apr 8, 2006

Panel gives options for fiscal health

A key government panel outlined a plan to overhaul of government spending and taxes aimed at restoring the country to fiscal health, but did not provide specifics on the size of expected budget cuts or consumption tax increases.
JAPAN
Apr 8, 2006

Review sought on privacy law uses

Japan's major newspaper association asked the government Friday to review its practice of "excessively" keeping information secret under a privacy law that came into force a year ago.
EDITORIALS
Apr 8, 2006

Problems in textbook screening

The Education, Science and Technology Ministry has screened and approved 306 textbooks, most of them for first-year high-school students, for use from next spring. Departing from the original screening policy, the ministry has accepted inclusion of topics and concepts beyond the scope of the current...

Longform

Sumadori Bar on Shibuya Ward's main Center Gai street targets young customers who prefer low-alcohol drinks or abstain altogether.
Rethinking that second drink: Japan’s Gen Z gets ‘sober curious’