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COMMENTARY / World
Jan 20, 2003

Australian attitudes harden against illegals

SYDNEY -- Burn, baby, burn. That's how arsonists among illegal arrivals held in detention centers across Australia greeted the new year. What an inglorious way to start 2003!
JAPAN
Jan 20, 2003

Rare LDP plug to promote partner

Taro Aso, policy affairs chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, is expected to appear in a promotional video for ruling coalition partner New Komeito, it was learned Sunday.
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Jan 19, 2003

Paradise retained

Palawan is variously cited as the Philippines' "last frontier," "the world's best-kept secret" and "a nature-lover's dream."
CULTURE / Music / J-POPSICLE
Jan 19, 2003

Independent music was the smart alternative in '02

2002 was not a vintage year, to put it mildly, for the Japanese music industry. Sales of CDs were down for the fourth straight year, and just one single -- female vocalist Ayumi Hamasaki's "H" (Avex) -- topped the million-sales mark during the year, compared with five in 2001.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 19, 2003

Facts are first casualty in U.S. march to war

WAR PLAN IRAQ: Ten Reasons Against War on Iraq, by Milan Rai. Verso, 2002, 240 pp., $15 (paper) When Richard Butler, head of the first U.N. weapons inspections team in Iraq, said in 1997 that "Truth in some cultures is kind of what you can get away with saying," he was referring to the regime of Iraqi...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 19, 2003

Trail of tears from Deshima

TITIA: The First Western Woman in Japan, by Rene P. Bersma. Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing, 2002, 140 pp. with 37 plates, $17.50 (paper) One August afternoon in 1817, a Dutch ship entered Nagasaki and anchored in the bay. Waiting for clearance was Jan Cock Blomhoff, the new director of the Dutch trading...
COMMUNITY
Jan 19, 2003

fl 20030119a3.xml SUN YES DOJUNKAI Concrete ideals

The Great Kanto Earthquake on Sept. 1, 1923, devastated the capital and its vicinity, destroying 63 percent of homes in Tokyo and 72 percent in Yokohama. From the ashes of the fires that raged in the wake of the massive temblor, though, there arose a public-housing policy whose enlightenment was in many...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jan 18, 2003

Rachel Walzer

The play now in rehearsal for a Tokyo presentation "reflects in its crudeness the state of our world today," Rachel Walzer said. Preparing for her role in "What the Butler Saw," she has "strong opinions about this farce. In it, nothing is sacred, and it seems to offend everyone under the sun. Yet beneath...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 17, 2003

Photo tour shows Kobe before the quake

KOBE -- Pointing to photos posted along a quiet street in the Mikura district of Kobe's Nagata Ward, the head of a local community council explained how the area was once a shopping arcade.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 16, 2003

Berlin-Paris partnership faces challenges as EU grows larger

LONDON -- Forty years ago this month, President Charles de Gaulle of France and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of West Germany signed a historic agreement to consecrate the end of 75 years of conflict between their two nations. The Franco-German Friendship Treaty came six years after the establishment of...
BUSINESS
Jan 16, 2003

Seibu first in line for aid from new entity

Debt-swamped Seibu Department Stores Ltd. is expected to become the first company to seek rehabilitation under the planned government-backed industrial revival body, government and company sources said Wednesday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 15, 2003

Theater greats raise curtain on the new year

Have you made your first visit of the new year to the theater yet? If not, "Umi yorimo nagai yoru (The Night Longer than the Sea)," being staged by Seinendan at Theater Tram in Sangenjaya, will surely whet your appetite for what promises to be a lively and exciting year on the Tokyo drama scene.
JAPAN
Jan 15, 2003

Japan NGOs to hold antiwar rally

More than 30 Japanese nongovernmental organizations will stage a demonstration in Tokyo this weekend to protest a possible U.S.-led attack on Iraq, they said Tuesday.
EDITORIALS
Jan 11, 2003

A lead to the abduction mystery

A North Korean spy is now on the wanted list of the Japanese police for directing a plot to kidnap a Japanese national to North Korea in 1977. It is the first time that an arrest warrant has been issued for a North Korean directly involved in a kidnapping case. If he is arrested, it will shed light on...
JAPAN
Jan 11, 2003

Malpractice suits up sharply since 2000

In the last 10 years, 210 lawsuits and arbitration cases were brought against the government over incidents of malpractice at national hospitals and sanitariums, according to a health ministry report released Friday.
JAPAN
Jan 11, 2003

Security guard's 1970s abduction reads like novel

Police intercepted suspicious coded radio messages to and from a North Korean ship near the Noto Peninsula in 1977, shortly before security guard Yutaka Kume was apparently abducted nearby, sources said Friday.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jan 10, 2003

Focus on cheaper premiums pays off for AFLAC

Consumers going after cheaper products do little to help the nation's deflation woes and usually end up hurting companies in the form of declining sales revenues.
JAPAN
Jan 9, 2003

Goto tenders resignation from DPJ

Diet member Shigeyuki Goto submitted a letter of resignation Wednesday to the Democratic Party of Japan.
BASEBALL / MLB
Jan 8, 2003

BlueWave to sign Yoshii to one-year deal

The Orix BlueWave of the Pacific League and former Montreal Expos pitcher Masato Yoshii agreed to a one-year deal Tuesday, sealing Yoshii's return to Japanese baseball for the first time in six years, an official said.

Longform

A sinkhole in Yashio, which emerged in January, was triggered by a ruptured, aging sewer pipe. Authorities worry that similar sections of infrastructure across the country are also at risk of corrosion.
That sinking feeling: Japan’s aging sewers are an infrastructure time bomb