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COMMENTARY / World
Sep 9, 2003

Using the right words in Kosovo

When it comes to media access, Kosovo's population is spoiled for choices. No apartment block is complete without its symmetrical rows of white satellite dishes scanning the heavens for news and entertainment. One estimate has it that 75 percent of the population has media access. BBC and MTV are just...
JAPAN
Sep 8, 2003

Ishihara could form new party if Koizumi loses

Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara is likely to form a new political party should Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi lose in the Sept. 20 Liberal Democratic Party presidential election, Ishihara's son said Sunday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Sep 7, 2003

Boiled alive . . . all for rock 'n' roll

It's hitting 40 degrees in the concrete badlands of Odaiba and the asphalt beneath our feet is attaining the viscosity of quicksand. We wanna run for cover, but this stuff sucks at your sneakers and makes the beer tent slower to get to. The only sea breeze today is the cocktail mixed by the bartender,...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 7, 2003

Searching individuality

JAPANESE WRITERS AND THE WEST, by Sumie Okada. Hampshire: Palmgrave Macmillan, 2003, 216 pp., £45, (cloth). Though not nearly as inclusive as the title suggests, Professor Sumie Okada's small but earnest book does contain an amount of interpretation not elsewhere found.
EDITORIALS
Sep 7, 2003

Rabindranath Tagore and Japan

Last week, a prominent Liberal Democratic Party member made waves by calling openly for an amendment to the nation's pacifist Constitution. Coincidentally, a quiet announcement in a distant country served to put the familiar debate over Japanese military affairs and ambitions in a longer perspective...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 7, 2003

North Korea unveils secret weapon: It's an attack of the clones

This year's World University Games, held in the South Korean city of Taegu from Aug. 21 to 30, drew a record 7,000 young athletes from 174 countries. The Games also drew daily Japanese media coverage, with some news shows running lengthy special reports on all the excitement in Taegu.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 6, 2003

Suu Kyi's hunger strike raises the ante

MEDFORD, Massachusetts -- If news coming out from Myanmar is to be believed, Aung Sang Suu Kyi is now on a water-only hunger strike.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 5, 2003

The little town with a big name

You've hauled your bags off the conveyor belt onto the cart, you've skulked through Customs and you're staring blankly at an electronic board, trying to fathom which Limousine Bus is going where. You've heard that there is another Narita apart from this one dedicated to air travel, but somehow you've...
JAPAN
Sep 4, 2003

Kan looks to downsize Diet, narrow single-seat vote disparity

Naoto Kan, president of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, unveiled Wednesday a set of political reforms that includes downsizing the Diet and narrowing the disparity in vote value for single-seat constituencies.
Japan Times
JAPAN / AFTER 2 1/2 YEARS
Sep 4, 2003

Koizumi half way toward reforming public firms

Can Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi live up to his pledge to save the nation's ailing economy by reforming monstrous public corporations?
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Sep 4, 2003

Labrador tea and forests to walk on

During the heat of a Honshu summer it is hard to imagine that there are hints of tundra here, or that refreshing tea might come from an unusual source. However, the alpine regions of high-altitude Japan, and small areas of the cool, fog-shaded regions closer to sea level in southeast Hokkaido, not only...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 3, 2003

LDP's Hashimoto faction torn apart over election

The largest faction of the Liberal Democratic Party could not heal a critical rift Tuesday, with the group failing to field an official candidate for the party's Sept. 20 leadership poll.
BUSINESS
Sep 3, 2003

Japan will fight lower tariffs at WTO talks

Japan will oppose a proposal to cut tariffs and expand import quotas at global trade talks next week, agriculture minister Yoshiyuki Kamei said Tuesday.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 2, 2003

Lawmaker wants transplant law revised

Six years after the implementation of the Organ Transplant Law, moves are afoot to alter one of its core conditions for using organs from brain-dead donors -- the donor's prior consent.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 1, 2003

Japan's lesson for Europe

LONDON -- At some point last year, it became fashionable to compare the economic plight of Germany and, by extension, the euro zone as a whole with the situation in Japan. As recession bit into the country that used to be Europe's motor and as the 12-nation euro area began recording declining growth...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 31, 2003

Tips from the top

Feeling lucky? This time, you're certain, you just know the takarakuji is as good as yours.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 31, 2003

Enthusiasm for EU club has evaporated

PRAGUE -- When communism in Eastern Europe collapsed, the region's new democratic leaders agreed that joining the European Union -- fast -- must be their priority. "Back to Europe!" became the slogan, one enthusiastically backed by a majority of their populations. Yet eight months before that dream formally...
JAPAN
Aug 30, 2003

Rightist smashes his car into LDP headquarters gate

A man smashed his car into the gate of the Liberal Democratic Party's headquarters in central Tokyo on Friday, but nobody was injured, police said.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 29, 2003

Washington lays siege to WTO system

LONDON -- In the last few weeks the U.S. Congress has approved free-trade agreements with Chile and Singapore and has approved the opening of talks on FTAs with Bahrain and the Dominican Republic.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 29, 2003

Aussies discover cost of being Big Brother

SYDNEY -- No good deed goes unpunished, says the cynic. And that's the way it's looking for Australia's efforts to bring peace and stability to the South Pacific.
BUSINESS
Aug 27, 2003

Hiranuma calls WTO proposal unambitious

Trade minister Takeo Hiranuma expressed dissatisfaction Tuesday with a fresh World Trade Organization proposal to be adopted at a Sept. 10-14 ministerial meeting.
COMMENTARY
Aug 26, 2003

Fujimori case testing Japan

The Japanese government is facing mounting pressure from the Peruvian government for the extradition of former President Alberto Fujimori, who has been in exile in Japan since November 2000. Last March, Interpol issued an arrest warrant for the disgraced former leader and late last month, the Peruvian...
BUSINESS
Aug 26, 2003

Record exports to China boost trade surplus

Japan's trade surplus expanded in July for the first time in two months, up 7.3 percent from a year earlier to 799.2 billion yen, helped by record-high exports to China, the Finance Ministry said Monday.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Aug 26, 2003

Publishing, futons and more motors

Budding author Z. has written a book he thinks is ready for publication. "Can you give me guidance or advice as to how to go about getting published?"

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past