Search - question

 
 
JAPAN
Jan 31, 2006

Man loses racial discrimination suit against shop

OSAKA -- In a case that human rights lawyers and activists worry could condone racial discrimination against foreigners by Japanese businesses, the Osaka District Court rejected a lawsuit Monday that was filed by a black American man who was denied entry to a store apparently due to his color.
COMMENTARY
Jan 30, 2006

A way past Kyoto's 'hot air'

In a Jan. 7 symposium at Dalian University of Technology, I delivered a keynote speech on the possibility of Japan's implementing the clean development mechanism in China.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 29, 2006

Graphic view of Pyongyang

PYONGYANG: A Journey in North Korea, by Guy Delisle, translated by Helge Dascher. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly, 2005, 176 pp., $19.95 (cloth). A consideration of North Korea must be, one supposes, a howl of rage, a moan of despair, or some combination, and this anger and despair must certainly be molded...
JAPAN
Jan 22, 2006

Japan to lodge protest over shoddy U.S. beef inspection

Top government officials said Saturday they would lodge protests with the United States after it was found that lack of knowledge on the part of an inspector allowed a banned material that poses a risk of mad cow disease to be included in a shipment of beef to Japan.
EDITORIALS
Jan 17, 2006

Return to normal interest rates

For Japanese business people and policymakers, the biggest question of this year is whether Japan's economy will be able to rid itself of deflation. Asking the question itself is right. The problem is that many continue to overestimate the impact of deflation, real or perceived. The result is a gridlock...
COMMENTARY
Jan 16, 2006

Heretical to the Asia concept

The European Union is a community founded on the concept of Europe. This concept has been nurtured by the historical consciousness of Europeans to overcome national rivalries and to maintain European traditions. The process of consolidating such consciousness has, however, been accompanied by a process...
EDITORIALS
Jan 11, 2006

Integrate decentralization efforts

This is likely to be a watershed year in the government's drive toward decentralization. The challenges are many, including "second-phase" reform of central and local government finances, debate on streamlining the prefectural system (designed to create larger administrative zones), and development of...
COMMENTARY
Jan 9, 2006

Post-Kyoto wind picking up

The 11th Conference of Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change was held in Montreal from Nov. 28 to Dec. 9, more than a year after Russia ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, thus enabling it to take effect last Feb. 16.
EDITORIALS
Dec 25, 2005

Ground floor of a scandal

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and the Chiba and Kanagawa prefectural police launched a joint investigation Dec. 20 into Japan's building-design scandal, raiding more than 100 locations in Tokyo and five prefectures -- Chiba, Saitama, Fukuoka, Kumamoto and Miyazaki.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Dec 24, 2005

Mourinho alienating everyone but his players, Chelsea fans

LONDON -- Jose Mourinho seems to have found the 30-hour day.
COMMENTARY
Dec 20, 2005

A job dogged by historical comparisons

HONG KONG -- Not all modern Chinese leaders are alike. First there was Mao Zedong. History's judgment suggests he could and should have done a lot better as boss man of the Middle Kingdom after the World War II, to say the least.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Dec 19, 2005

Time to remove life support: Government should heed BOJ

To end or not to end. That is the question. The Bank of Japan says yes. The government says no. The BOJ feels the time is ripe to do away with the policy of "quantitative easing." The govern- ment feels it is premature to do so. Dueling time is here again over the conduct of monetary policy.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 8, 2005

Inside the belly of the beast

Jennifer Abbott's entire career as a filmmaker and editor has been involved with challenging people's perceptions. Her first documentary, "A Cow at My Table," was on the horrors of factory farming, and Abbott met her co-director Mark Achbar while working as an editor on his documentary on lesbian marriages...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 19, 2005

Certifier hoodwinked on quake-proofing

A Tokyo-based company that state-certifies construction applications said Friday it noticed no problems during its examination of faked applications by a Chiba-based architectural firm.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / U.S. THINK TANK SYMPOSIUM
Nov 10, 2005

Beijing's increase in military spending has multiple targets

Rapid increases in China's defense spending alone do not indicate its future direction -- or what the nation intends to do with its new military strength, Evan Medeiros, a political scientist at the RAND Corp., told the Oct. 28 Keizai Koho Center symposium.
EDITORIALS
Nov 8, 2005

Ending the zero-rate policy

In March 2001, the Bank of Japan set short-term interest rates at near zero, declaring that the nation's economy had entered a period of deflation. That extra-loose monetary policy, which is said to have had few parallels in the world, is likely to change next spring, because an upturn in consumer prices...
Japan Times
Features
Nov 6, 2005

Surveying a state of change

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi led his Liberal Democratic Party to a landslide victory in the Sept. 11 general election he called as a de facto referendum on his drive to privatize postal services.
JAPAN
Nov 2, 2005

Suzuki gets manual, mocks ministry 'secrets'

House of Representatives member Muneo Suzuki said Tuesday he has received a copy of the so-called Muneo manual drafted by the Foreign Ministry to instruct its officials on how to deal with the lawmaker who once wielded enormous influence with the ministry.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Oct 24, 2005

Germany must be determined on reform: expert

Unless the forthcoming German government of conservative leader Angela Merkel bites the bullet and carries out painful reforms in a determined way, there will be no real domestic demand-led growth in the country, and its leadership in Europe will be limited, a German expert told a recent symposium in...
Japan Times
Features
Oct 23, 2005

A more dignified way to die

Many of us struggle with difficult decisions regarding, say, our careers or relationships. But one decision that many of us avoid is "How do I want to die?"
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 20, 2005

Visiting Yasukuni is constitutional right: Koizumi

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Wednesday rebuffed criticism of his recent Yasukuni Shrine trip, saying visiting the shrine is a right guaranteed by the Constitution.
EDITORIALS
Oct 19, 2005

What is Mr. Koizumi thinking?

His landslide victory in the Sept. 11 snap elections and the Diet passage on Oct. 14 of the postal services privatization bills apparently have emboldened Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. He made his fifth visit to the Yasukuni Shrine since he came to power in 2001 on Monday, which marked the start...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 12, 2005

Hashimoto still can't recall check

Former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto took the witness stand Tuesday over his party faction's unreported donation from the Japan Dental Association, but the 100 million yen question is: Who was controlling the purse strings at the time?
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 9, 2005

America's war criminals pass the buck to underlings

'I was only following orders." With these words, that have entered our language as a cliche reeking of bitter irony, SS-Obersturmbannfurer Karl Adolf Eichmann (1906-62) defended his part in the murder of innocent prisoners in Nazi death camps. The court in Jerusalem, where Eichmann was put on trial in...
JAPAN
Oct 7, 2005

22% of state offices coerced to buy wares: NPA

Nearly 22 percent of government offices were targets of some form of outside coercion during the year spanning August 2004 to last July, with at least 8.6 percent pressured into buying merchandise, subscribing to publications or making donations, the National Police Agency said Thursday.
EDITORIALS
Oct 6, 2005

Iran must heed the call

The 35-nation board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) late last month adopted a resolution that criticized Iran's response over its nuclear development problem and, although postponing referral to the United Nations Security Council, warned that the issue might be referred in the future....
COMMENTARY
Oct 4, 2005

DPJ out to change its ways

The rout of the Democratic Party of Japan in the Sept. 11 Lower House election raises the question: Will it be able to recoup its losses and make itself strong enough to snatch power from the Liberal Democratic Party?
COMMENTARY
Sep 18, 2005

Japan to go boldly backward for a while

HONOLULU -- No one predicted the size of Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro's election victory last weekend. The landslide win has transformed the landscape of Japanese politics.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 15, 2005

Betting on a bolder Japan

WASHINGTON -- A Latin proverb says, "fortune favors the bold but abandons the timid." That, more than any other explanation captures the drama of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's gravity-defying success in catapulting his Liberal Democratic Party to its biggest electoral success ever -- in...
JAPAN
Sep 11, 2005

Predict election winners and get a reward

An Internet site has been offering rewards of up to 100,000 yen for predicting the winners in Sunday's House of Representatives election.

Longform

Totopa in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward was picked by consultants TTNE as the best sauna of the year.
Japan’s sauna movement: Relax, refresh, repeat