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BUSINESS
Sep 2, 2000

Auto sales up 4.1% in August

Domestic sales of cars, trucks and buses -- but excluding minivehicles with engine displacements smaller than 660cc -- rose 4.1 percent year-on-year in August to 243,088 units, the first increase in two months, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association said Friday.
JAPAN
Sep 1, 2000

Six held for Net fraud since new law enacted

The National Police Agency said Thursday police in Japan have arrested six people on suspicion of Internet fraud since a new law that bans unlawful access to the global online network came into force six months ago.
BUSINESS
Aug 31, 2000

Tsutaya eyes ads on cellphone Web sites

A graphic small enough to be hidden under your thumb is expected to bring in millions of yen in revenues for Japan's biggest rental video chain, Tsutaya.
BUSINESS
Aug 25, 2000

July department store sales fell for fifth month in a row

Sales at department stores in Japan dropped 4.5 percent in July from a year earlier to 873.73 billion yen, down for the fifth straight month, an industry group said Thursday.
CULTURE / Art
Aug 23, 2000

Vermont festival has quilters in stitches

NORTHFIELD, Vt. -- The joy of quilting must be implanted in women's DNA. What else can explain the cheerful excitement of the 24th Vermont Quilt Festival? My friend and I encountered very few men at New England's oldest and largest annual quilt show, but lots of high-spirited women. Together they created...
COMMUNITY
Aug 20, 2000

Contestants jump at chance to net annual award for catching goldfish

YAMATO KORIYAMA, Nara Pref. -- Similar to the high school baseball championships at Koshien, it is a national championship with 2,000 participants striving to be Japan's No. 1. It could even be compared to the Olympic Games, where contestants have to go through a qualifying round before they reach the...
COMMUNITY
Aug 20, 2000

A decade of anecdotes to order

There are books about spending time in Japan, written in the main by Alice-in-Wonderlands who believe a short stretch makes them authoritative on all things Japanese. And there are books about Japan. Bruce McCormack's "Tokyo Notes and Anecdotes: Natsukashi" falls into this second, far more recommendable,...
BUSINESS
Aug 17, 2000

Tokyo department stores take slump into fifth month

Sales at department stores in Tokyo's 23 wards in July fell 5.6 percent from a year earlier to 205.8 billion yen, down for the fifth consecutive month, the Japan Department Stores Association said Wednesday.
BUSINESS
Aug 10, 2000

Confidence among firms improving

A quarterly business and investment survey released Wednesday by the Economic Planning Agency shows confidence among Japanese companies about the domestic economy improved considerably in the April-June period.
JAPAN
Aug 5, 2000

Truancy reaches record high

More than 130,000 elementary and junior high school students were truant for 30 or more school days during the 1999-2000 academic year, according to an Education Ministry survey released Friday.
BUSINESS
Jul 29, 2000

Salaried households pare spending 2.6%

Average consumption spending by households of salaried workers fell an inflation-adjusted 2.6 percent in June from a year earlier for the second straight month of decline, according to a preliminary report released Friday by the Management and Coordination Agency.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 28, 2000

Pessimists in the mist: Japanese still mired in crisis of confidence

It's hard to find a word that has so traumatized a generation as has "globalization." The term has become a convenient shorthand for all the uncertainties and unknowns of daily life, a catch-all for the problems that tug at economies and threaten to unravel traditional social structures.
BUSINESS
Jul 27, 2000

Sony to consolidate domestic assembly to increase efficiency

Sony Corp. will unify its 13 domestic assembly facilities for electronic products under a new company to be set up next year in an attempt to enhance its engineering and manufacturing operations, the firm announced Wednesday.
BUSINESS
Jul 27, 2000

2000 first-half vehicle output up 4.8% to 5.2 million units

Japanese automakers built 5,172,216 cars, trucks and buses in the first half of 2000, up 4.8 percent from the corresponding period in 1999, the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association said Wednesday.
COMMUNITY
Jul 27, 2000

A social clash of old values and new rules

The number of divorces in Japan, especially among couples who have been married for 20 years or more, has been increasing. According to a survey carried out by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, in 1999 there were a total of 250,538 divorced couples.
BUSINESS
Jul 26, 2000

Consumer confidence rose slightly in June, EPA reports

The Economic Planning Agency said Tuesday its quarterly survey of consumer confidence showed an improvement in June for the fourth consecutive quarter.
BUSINESS
Jul 26, 2000

S&P expects rate cuts to slow NTT in long term

Standard & Poor's said Tuesday that last week's agreement between Japan and the United States to lower Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp.'s interconnection fees may affect the telecommunication group's credit quality over the long term.
BUSINESS
Jul 25, 2000

Trade surplus down 4.6% in first half

Japan's customs-cleared merchandise trade surplus came to 5.73 trillion yen in the first half of fiscal 2000, down 4.6 percent from a year earlier as imports outgrew exports, the Finance Ministry said Monday.
CULTURE / Art
Jul 22, 2000

Frozen moments of photographers' lives

They might have been shot in a shadowy New York street in the '30s, at a Parisian cafe in the '50s, or in the middle of a Vietnamese battlefield in the '60s . . . The settings and contexts of the 260 photographs currently on display at "The Century of Photography Exhibition" at Ginza's Matsuya department...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 20, 2000

A chance for Japan to define and refocus the globalization debate

The world is in an uneasy mood.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 17, 2000

Private sector CCP's double-edged sword

BEIJING -- It is not often appreciated that accession to the World Trade Organization is a one-sided process: The applicant country has to make a series of concessions to existing members in return for gaining access to the trade concessions that existing members have extended to each other over a period...
JAPAN
Jul 16, 2000

The unrivaled madness of Shinjuku

When it comes to congestion, JR Shinjuku Station is king. This station is the Yamanote Line's undisputed champion of traffic, rowdy customers and sheer bedlam and confusion.
JAPAN
Jul 14, 2000

Steps urged for police to regain public trust

A government panel on police reforms recommended Thursday that police make greater efforts on information disclosure and require officers to issue written responses to complaints as measures to regain the public's trust in the nation's scandal-tainted force.
BUSINESS
Jul 5, 2000

Upbeat 'tankan' may lead to rate hike

Business sentiment among the nation's corporations improved over the past three months, underscoring a recent recovery trend, according to the Bank of Japan's "tankan" business sentiment survey for June.
BUSINESS
Jul 4, 2000

Domestic vehicle sales mark 2% first-half rise

Domestic sales of new cars, trucks and buses in the first half of 2000 increased 2 percent from the same period last year to 2,113,357 vehicles, the first year-on-year rise in three years, an industry association said Monday.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jul 2, 2000

Machiko Kobayashi

In "The Book of Tea," Okakura Kakuzo refers to the person "with no tea" in him, the one "insusceptible to the seriocomic interests of the personal drama." He mentions too the one "with too much tea" in him, "the untamed aesthete." Machiko Kobayashi, tea ceremony teacher and demonstrator, falls into neither...
BUSINESS
Jun 28, 2000

More young people take part-time jobs: report

The number of part-time workers between 15 and 34 years old stood at an estimated 1.51 million in 1997, an increase of 500,000 from five years earlier, the Labor Ministry said in an annual report on labor released Tuesday.
COMMENTARY
Jun 11, 2000

Mori casts doubt on Japanese democracy

When Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori said that Japan is a "kami no kuni" (country of the gods), it can be argued he was doing little more than expressing a personal religious belief before a group of like-minded, Shinto-supporting Diet members. U.S. media claims that he was trying revive Japanese nationalism...
BUSINESS
Jun 8, 2000

Nissho Iwai sees profits quintupling in five years

Restructuring trading house Nissho Iwai Corp. is hoping to increase its annual group pretax profit to 100 billion yen in five years, more than a fivefold increase from the 18.2 billion yen it registered in fiscal 1999, company sources said Wednesday.

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