search

 
 
JAPAN
Mar 15, 2000

Protect wildlife at dam site: groups

More than 30 environmental groups demanded that the government adequately survey and protect endangered species living near the site of a dam slated to be built on the Kawabe River in southern Kumamoto Prefecture, in a petition submitted Tuesday.
JAPAN
Mar 15, 2000

GMO standards talks kick off amid protests

MAKUHARI, Chiba Pref. -- A four-day conference opened here Tuesday to discuss international standards for genetically modified organisms and foods, bringing together some 300 participants from 36 countries.
JAPAN
Mar 15, 2000

Leader of Life Space indicted for murder

Life Space cult leader Koji Takahashi was indicted Tuesday on charges of murdering Shinichi Kobayashi, 66, a former company employee, whose mummified body was found in a Narita hotel in Chiba Prefecture in November. As well as Takahashi, nine other cult members were arrested last month in connection...
JAPAN
Mar 15, 2000

Russian writes about postwar Japanese prisoners

At the end of World War II, Soviet troops imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers and civilians in Asia, sending them to labor camps in Siberia. Tens of thousands subsequently died in brutal conditions.
JAPAN
Mar 15, 2000

Death-row inmates can hang if retrial unlikely, Usui says

Justice Minister Hideo Usui said Tuesday that death-row convicts seeking retrials could be executed if their demands for retrials are deemed highly likely to be rejected.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Mar 15, 2000

Seeds of knowledge

Welcome to the digital revolution, where we crunch numbers, process information and mine data. Maybe we don't get grease under our fingernails, but one wonders how far we've progressed beyond the industrial revolution. Though the metallic cling-clang of factories is rare, isn't there something familiar...
BUSINESS
Mar 15, 2000

Back in private hands, LTCB looks to expand

The Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, which has returned to private management after being under state control, is interested in taking over the operations of the failed Tokyo Sowa Bank, its top executive said Tuesday.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 15, 2000

Putting post-Seattle pieces back together

Billed as the most important meeting of the new millennium, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD X) in Bangkok in mid-February deserved its designation as "mother of all conferences." While it might not have had the cachet of a Davos World Economic Forum, it did not lack for luster and...
BUSINESS
Mar 15, 2000

eBay may herald an online revolution

The recent arrival of major U.S. online auction operator eBay Inc. may bring another online revolution to Japan, the world's second-largest Internet market.
BUSINESS
Mar 15, 2000

Number of companies going bankrupt climbs 51%

The number of Japanese corporate bankruptcies with liabilities of more than 10 million yen rose 51.1 percent in February from a year earlier to 1,443, a private credit research institute said Tuesday.
JAPAN
Mar 15, 2000

Dental exam questions possibly leaked

Questions to be used in today's state license examination for dentists may have been leaked, the Health and Welfare Ministry revealed Tuesday.
JAPAN
Mar 15, 2000

Coalition leaders agree on police system reform

The leaders of the coalition government agreed on new measures to reform the nation's scandal-tainted police system on Tuesday, during a review of recent police misdemeanors in Kanagawa and Niigata prefectures.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 15, 2000

The marketing that made Japan

ASSEMBLED IN JAPAN: Electrical Goods and the Making of the Japanese Consumer, by Simon Partner. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000, 317 pp., $19.95/12.50 British pounds (paper). I was standing on the corner by the Hachiko exit of Shibuya Station, looking at two giant television screens...
COMMUNITY / How-tos
Mar 15, 2000

No way out

Sometimes it seems my mailbox is a place for complaints. Today it is NHK fees. Wednesday's column will consider NTT's high initial charge for phone service. Don't look for ways to avoid the inevitable; your daily life entails certain obligations.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 15, 2000

Fertile soil for Japanese environmentalist groups?

ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS IN JAPAN: Networks of Power and Protest, by Jeffrey Broadbent. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 418 pp., $13.95, (paper). Given Japan's economic growth after World War II -- a period often termed "miraculous" -- it is not surprising that the worst problems of ecological...
ENVIRONMENT
Mar 15, 2000

Wild animal tales -- with a pinch of salt

The image of wild animals visiting a salt lick is probably a familiar one to you if you are a regular watcher of television natural history documentaries. The scene is repeated over and over again, as large African or Indian mammals approach this particularly rich source of minerals.
JAPAN
Mar 15, 2000

Afghan heads in Tokyo for peace talks

In a move that marks the resumption of Japan's mediation efforts in the civil war in Afghanistan, leaders of the country's two rival factions have been in Tokyo for secret talks with Japanese officials, diplomatic sources said Tuesday.
JAPAN
Mar 15, 2000

Tokyo hails progress in North Korea talks

Japanese leaders welcomed on Tuesday the results of a meeting Monday between representatives of the Red Cross societies of Japan and North Korea in which Pyongyang agreed to take appropriate steps if it locates any missing Japanese nationals.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 15, 2000

China remains a paradise for pirates

Even by the standards of China's billion-dollar piracy industry, it was a remarkable gaffe. The Guangzhou No. 11 Rubber Factory had opened its doors to London International Group executives, hoping to produce Durex condoms in China. As they moved from the latex dippers to the packaging lines, that something...
BUSINESS
Mar 15, 2000

Wage negotiations wind down

Japan's auto, steel, shipbuilding and electrical appliance industries on Tuesday came closer to wrapping up their annual spring wage talks with a record low wage increase for the third straight year, industry officials said.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 15, 2000

Simply extraordinary poetry

NOT A METAPHOR: Poems of Kazue Shinkawa. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. P.S., A Press, 1999, 116 pp., $12. Once in a while it happens that, when you haven't seen an old friend for a long time, you come upon something that reminds you of them and suddenly realize what it was that made you friends in the...
JAPAN
Mar 15, 2000

Three-bank tieup terms settled

Sanwa Bank, Tokai Bank and Asahi Bank formally announced Tuesday that they have reached a basic agreement to come under a joint holding company in April 2001, creating the world's third-largest banking group.
COMMENTARY
Mar 15, 2000

The task of policing the police

...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 15, 2000

Silent films cry out for attention

MASTERPIECES OF JAPANESE SILENT CINEMA. Bilingual (Japanese/English) DVD-ROM (Windows). Tokyo: Urban Connections, Inc. 18,900 yen. The Japanese silent cinema is almost unknown, so little has been available for viewing. Even in a medium where two-thirds of all silent cinema is lost (and perhaps a quarter...
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Mar 15, 2000

Baseball fantasies

www.padres.com/ballpark/index.html Larry Lucchino has been busy conceiving another baseball stadium, and this time he's convinced the city of San Diego to foot most of the bill and flesh out his dreams. The last time he turned on his charm, the result was Oriole Park at Camden Yards. He says A Ballpark...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Mar 15, 2000

Living the easy, or at least convenient, life

"Life ain't easy for a foreigner in Japan."
JAPAN
Mar 15, 2000

Trains kept running despite flaws

Despite irregularities found last year in subway trains operated by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, officials kept the trains in service and "saw no need" to report the irregularities to the Transport Ministry, officials admitted Tuesday.
BUSINESS
Mar 15, 2000

U.S. ready to go to WTO over NTT's connection fees

The United States is ready to file a complaint with the World Trade Organization over access to the Japanese telecommunications market if Tokyo continues ignoring its calls to substantially cut Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp.'s interconnection fees. Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Richard Fisher...
JAPAN
Mar 15, 2000

Hospitals overcharging for rooms

OSAKA -- Hiromi Hase, 58, and her husband, Michio, were shocked last August when they found out they might have overpaid about 4 million yen when she was hospitalized for leukemia in 1996 and 1997.
SUMO
Mar 15, 2000

Musashigawa pair remain unbeaten

The Musashigawa stable's pair of sekiwake wrestlers Musoyama and Miyabiyama posted convincing wins Tuesday to remain among the unbeaten leaders in the Spring Grand Sumo Tournament.

Longform

The students at Mitaka Municipal No. 7 Junior High School have access to various cooling devices for when they play sports.
Japan's extreme heat is causing a rethink of school sports