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EDITORIALS
Mar 28, 2005

Quicker domestic farm reform

Japanese agriculture is beleaguered. Farmland keeps shrinking as aging farmers retire. Collective farming is all but stalled as prospective partners stay on the sidelines. The domestic market faces strong pressure for liberalization. For all this, structural reform is making little headway. No wonder...
COMMENTARY
Mar 28, 2005

Positive media shock waves

Internet entrepreneur Takafumi Horie has sent shock waves reverberating through the Japanese media industry with his hostile takeover bid for Nippon Broadcasting Co., a member of the Fujisankei media conglomerate.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Mar 28, 2005

A fundamentalism of sorts affected Japan

NEW YORK -- The influence of fundamentalist and evangelical religion on U.S. politics, both domestic and abroad, is growing, but something similar happened during the early part of the Showa Era (1926-89). I thought of this recently when I read Daikichi Terauchi's "Kejo no Showa Shi" (A History of Showa...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 28, 2005

Low rates endanger South Korean banks

GUATEMALA CITY -- Misguided central-bank policies are wreaking havoc around the world. From Seoul to Washington and back, central bankers have forced down short-term interest rates in an orgy of monetary promiscuity.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Mar 28, 2005

The 'Vision Thing' comes to Japan in blurry fashion

"Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old people shall dream dreams, and your young people see visions . . ." (Joel, 3:1). This particular daughter is not up to much in powers of prophecy, but this does seem to be the season for visions in Japan.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Mar 27, 2005

Free tickets for Diamondbacks Day on April 17 at Tokyo Dome

The Pacific League Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters will continue their tradition of holding Arizona Diamondbacks Day at one of their home-away-from-home games at Tokyo Dome.
SUMO
Mar 27, 2005

Asashoryu downs Kaio to clinch Osaka Basho

OSAKA -- Yokozuna Asashoryu upended ozeki Kaio on the second to last day of the Spring Grand Sumo Tournament on Saturday to win his 11th Emperor's Cup.
Features
Mar 27, 2005

Mrs. Matsui

It was an open secret in my husband's course on modern Japanese literature at Radcliffe in the 1960s that his inspiration came not directly from the prose and poetry of Japan but from his absolute devotion to me.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 27, 2005

Erykah Badu

When Erica Wright changed her name to Erykah Badu, donned exotic headgear, and staked her place among the crowd of new female soul singers in the late '90s, her voice was compared favorably to Billie Holiday's; and while the compliment helped her gain some critical distinction, it was about as helpful...
Japan Times
Features
Mar 27, 2005

Meister of all he sautes

French, Italian and Spanish are the most familiar European cuisines in Japan. As for Austrian -- well, most people probably don't even realize that the country famed for "The Sound of Music" is also noted for its venerable and enormously varied fare.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 27, 2005

Rice shows her mettle in Asian gauntlet

HONOLULU -- A Korean journalist in Seoul last weekend asked visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice how she coped with a bureaucracy staffed largely with white men.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 27, 2005

A fully not-boring Indian adventure

SHANTARAM, by Gregory David Roberts. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2004, 936 pp., $24.95 (cloth). The lives that some people lead can put fiction to shame. One such example would be Australian novelist Gregory David Roberts, a former heroin addict who held up banks with a toy pistol. Apprehended and...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 27, 2005

Ten years of tero in Japan: Notes on usage

Japanese language purists carp about the surfeit of katakana, but as with all cultural manifestations, from bossa nova to breakfast cereals, the Japanese manage to make these linguistic borrowings their own in an unmistakable way, the most obvious being abbreviation.
COMMENTARY
Mar 27, 2005

Who decides life and death?

WASHINGTON -- Last week the U.S. Congress voted to try to save, at least temporarily, the life of Terri Schiavo, who otherwise would slowly starve to death at the hospice in the state of Florida in which she is confined.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 27, 2005

Testing Karzai's politics of inclusiveness

CANBERRA -- Whatever Washington's expectations, Afghan President Hamed Karzai is certainly instituting what he has called "Afghan-style democracy." His inclusion in the government of some individuals who in the past had been highly criticized as "warlords" might be prudent under present circumstances,...
EDITORIALS
Mar 27, 2005

Warning to Japan and the world

A um Shinrikyo's terrorism of 10 years ago has traditionally been viewed though a domestic political prism, one that saw the act as the outgrowth of a uniquely Japanese set of circumstances. In fact, Aum was a harbinger of the future: It was less interested in political theater than killing large numbers...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Mar 27, 2005

Yankee's Matsui visits lectures kids in his hometown on NHK's "Kagai Jugyo" and more

A year ago, SMAP member Tsuyoshi Kusanagi gave a speech at the United Nations University in Tokyo about children.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 27, 2005

First, stop, look and listen

THE SINGLE TONE: A Personal Journey into Shakuhachi Music, by Christopher Yohmei Blasdel, Tokyo: Printed Matter Press, 2005, 168 pp., with photographs and glossary, 1,500 yen (paper). In the summer of 1972 Christopher Blasdel first came to Japan. He was from West Texas, "a landscape dominated by strip...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 27, 2005

Sonny Landreth: "Grant Street"

After regular studio-made blues outings over the last decade, slide-guitar genius Sonny Landreth finally releases a great live CD.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / JAZZNICITY
Mar 27, 2005

Swing is the thing for bassist Nakamura

Not many Japanese jazz musicians have played in front of a President of the United States, but Kengo Nakamura is one. After leaving his hometown of Osaka to study at Boston's esteemed Berklee College of Music in 1988, where he switched from electric to acoustic bass, and struggling for a while to find...
BASEBALL / MLB
Mar 26, 2005

Hillman's Fighters poised to win it all

In just two seasons American manager Trey Hillman has taken the perennial second-division finishing Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters to the Pacific League playoffs.
BASEBALL / MLB
Mar 26, 2005

Iwakuma determined to help Eagles soar in Sendai

Hisashi Iwakuma started playing baseball as an elementary school first grader at the age of 6, by throwing a ball against a wall in a game of catch with himself and dreaming of becoming a professional. Now, at age 24, he is arguably the best pitcher in Japanese pro baseball.
MORE SPORTS
Mar 26, 2005

Ando to skate under foreign coach

Japanese figure skater Miki Ando will part company with coaches Nobuo and Kumiko Sato and train under a foreign coach in a bid for a podium finish at next year's Winter Olympic Games in Turin, skating sources said Thursday.
MORE SPORTS
Mar 26, 2005

Toshiba bags JBL Super League

Tom Kleinschmidt hit a key shot late in the fourth quarter as the Toshiba Brave Thunders edged the Aisin Sea Horses 75-73 in the decisive Game 5 to win their second JBL Super League title and first in five years. Toshiba, which trailed 57-54 after three quarters, mounted a comeback in the final period...

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight