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JAPAN
Jan 12, 2004

Tanigaki: Coordinated yen action difficult

Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki said Sunday that Japan will take action against the yen's continued rise but coordinated intervention with U.S. or European monetary authorities will be difficult.
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Jan 8, 2004

Move for Marbury was a winner for New York Knicks

NEW YORK -- The answer: Burberry, Blackberry and now seats to see Marbury.
BUSINESS
Jan 8, 2004

Decision on beef ban will wait for fact-finding team

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said Wednesday the government will not rush to decide whether to lift a ban on U.S. beef imports following confirmation that an American cow infected with mad cow disease was born in Alberta, Canada.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 1, 2004

High-tech 'smart homes' just get smarter

Japanese companies are rapidly commercializing the so-called Net Kaden system for electronic control and monitoring of homes through links with mobile phone and high-speed broadband systems.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Dec 3, 2003

Take a closer look

Contemporary art sure can be divisive. Every year, the British press fills with angry opinion pieces lambasting the finalists for that nation's Turner Prize. In the United States and elsewhere, citizens' groups regularly mobilize against the controversial in art exhibitions -- be it Robert Mapplethorpe's...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Dec 2, 2003

Could fear derail bold tourism bid?

There's a great irony in the Japanese government's "action plan" to double the the number of tourists who come to these shores by 2010.
EDITORIALS
Dec 1, 2003

Kashmir cools off

India and Pakistan have begun a ceasefire in Kashmir. The two nuclear-armed neighbors have fought three wars, two over the disputed region. While every ceasefire is to be applauded, this one is likely to be more symbolic than substantive. Still, it may permit the leaders of the two countries to meet...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / FRONT-RUNNERS
Oct 15, 2003

Shopping site Rakuten thinks empire

The nation's largest online shopping mall operator appears to be building an empire, or what its president calls a new zaibatsu in the world of Internet retail.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Oct 2, 2003

"The House of Windjammer," "Boolar's Big Day Out"

"The House of Windjammer," V.A. Richardson, Bloomsbury; 2003; 349 pp. No matter where you grow up, whether it's in 21st-century Japan or in 17th-century Europe, some things never change. People everywhere, at every time, are at the mercy of larger forces -- political upheavals, market fluctuations,...
BUSINESS
Sep 23, 2003

Takenaka to keep pushing banks on loans

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's controversial reappointment Monday of Heizo Takenaka as financial services minister means banks will still be under pressure to clean up their bad loans.
COMMENTARY
Sep 20, 2003

Economic policies confused

In his campaign for re-election as leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, has made much of the current mild economic revival. He sees it as vindicating his economic policies.
COMMENTARY
Sep 19, 2003

Old political drum beats on

LONDON -- "Seen it all before" and "the more it changes the more it remains the same" are phrases that immediately spring to the mind of the foreign observer of Japanese politics in the runup to Saturday's election of the president of the Liberal Democratic Party.
COMMUNITY
Sep 14, 2003

Plenty of ways to escape debtors' hell

Lenders loathe him, and Hiroyuki Yagi, Buddhist monk-in-training and president of consultancy Central Research Institute, Inc., loves this reputation.
EDITORIALS
Aug 2, 2003

Mounting pressures to revalue yuan

International pressure is mounting on China to let its currency appreciate. Beijing seems to have no choice but to respond one way or another. The prevailing belief in the United States and Europe as well as in Japan is that the yuan is undervalued in light of China's rapidly increasing economic strength....
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 12, 2003

S. Korea emerges from Japan's shadow

NEW DELHI -- Despite resentment against Japan for its colonial domination of the Korean Peninsula (1910-1945), South Korea followed Japan in its model of postwar economic development. In both countries, the central government established close links between commercial banks and companies while ensuring...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 19, 2003

View talks with skepticism

HONOLULU -- The North Koreans have set both doves and hawks all a-twitter in Washington, Tokyo and Seoul by agreeing to discuss its nuclear plans with American diplomats. But a word of skepticism is in order.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Apr 17, 2003

A natural sense of belonging

I pass through the Heidelberg area of Baden-Buerttemberg in southwest Germany several times a year, and though I am transient there, I feel that I have roots -- roots that come from a natural connectedness with the earth. The several thousand hectares of land sandwiched between the gently rising hills...
EDITORIALS
Apr 5, 2003

A partially changing land-price map

Falling land prices are symptomatic of Japan's deflationary economy. Banks sell collateralized land to write off dud loans. Companies dump their land holdings to pay off debts. Land prices drop further as the property market weakens. As things stand, there seems to be no way to halt this vicious circle....
BUSINESS
Mar 25, 2003

Fukui weighs up asset risk options

BOJ Gov. Toshihiko Fukui indicated Monday that he is willing to consider measures such as buying riskier assets from banks to help money flow into the economy, although he added that the central bank must tread lightly.
BUSINESS
Mar 8, 2003

Nikkei sinks to 20-year low as nerves fray over Iraq war fears

The Tokyo Stock Exchange tumbled Friday, driving the benchmark Nikkei index to a 20-year closing low on growing fears that a military strike will be launched on Iraq.
COMMENTARY
Jan 16, 2003

Japan plods path of isolation

HONOLULU — Japan continues to be the odd man out in Northeast Asia. While the other states in the region have been forging ties and building networks with each other — even North Korea — Japan has lagged behind. Tokyo could be marginalized in its own neighborhood. That risk has motivated Japanese...
JAPAN
Jan 16, 2003

Pampered pets seen turning porky

People seem to be handing out too many treats to their cats and dogs, as there are growing signs that household pets are getting a bit chubby these days.
EDITORIALS
Dec 27, 2002

Resuscitate local economies

Japan's economy for 2003 poses inevitable questions. Will deflation get worse or better? How far will banks go to shed their dud loans? If the United States goes to war with Iraq, how will it affect the economy? In these increasingly uncertain times, forecasting is a tricky business. Offering stock answers...
BUSINESS
Nov 30, 2002

Industrial production fell 0.3% in October

Japan's industrial production fell a seasonally adjusted 0.3 percent in October from September for the second straight monthly decline, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said Friday in a preliminary report.
EDITORIALS
Nov 28, 2002

Staving off banking disaster

The latest financial reports from Japan's major commercial banks tell more of the same story: The huge overhang of nonperforming loans continues to block a return to health. To be sure, banks made a profit in their main lines of business in the first six months of fiscal 2002, as they did in previous...
EDITORIALS
Nov 22, 2002

Achilles' heel in FTA progress

In a major shift of trade strategy, Japan is moving toward concluding bilateral and regional free-trade agreements. In January of this year the nation signed its first FTA with Singapore. Now it is negotiating a similar arrangement with Mexico. And looming over the horizon are FTAs with South Korea and...
BUSINESS
Nov 20, 2002

Monetary policy to go unchanged

As stock prices continue to slide, the Bank of Japan made a rare announcement Tuesday that it will flood the market with yen to the limit of its current policy.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 2, 2002

Back to the future via broken promises

BRUSSELS -- Next year's crisis on the Korean Peninsula has come early. The year 2003 was to see an explosive conjuncture of events: a change of regime in South Korea, markedly less sympathetic to engagement with the North than that of current President Kim Dae Jung; the final failure of the United States...
COMMENTARY
Oct 26, 2002

Sino-Indian war still haunts New Delhi

NEW DELHI -- Forty years after China humbled India in a two-front Himalayan war masterminded by Chinese leader Mao Zedong, the lessons of that crushing defeat still reverberate in New Delhi. The war was Mao's attempt to demolish India as an alternative democratic model and geopolitical rival to communist...
EDITORIALS
Oct 2, 2002

High-stake games on the Peninsula

For North and South Korea, the Asian Games that opened on Sunday in the South Korean port city of Pusan are not only an arena of competition, but also an opportunity for reconciliation. Following an earlier decision by Pyongyang to join the games, their teams paraded together under a single flag at the...

Longform

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.