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BUSINESS
Apr 4, 2001

State may help stock-buying body

The government is likely to provide 33 percent of the funds for a proposed stock-buying body at the center of plans that will help banks divest themselves from the stock market, a senior official from the Liberal Democratic Party said Tuesday.
BUSINESS
Apr 3, 2001

LDP must balance fiscal, party interests

While Tokyo stocks continue to fluctuate wildly, some market participants are saying that stocks have bottomed out and have started an upward surge, following the Bank of Japan's effective return to a "zero-interest-rate" policy and commercial banks' accelerated disposal of bad loans.
BUSINESS
Apr 3, 2001

Three megabanks make debut

Three new megabank groups started their operations Monday morning, raising hopes that the presence of the new entities will further accelerate the disposal of bad loans held by Japanese banks.
COMMENTARY
Apr 2, 2001

Japan's economic 'kuroko'

For more than a decade, Japan's financial authorities have been trying to treat the growing mountain of bad loans at Japan's banks as a "kuroko" of the Japan economy.
BUSINESS
Mar 30, 2001

Mitsui Construction gets 142 billion yen debt waiver

Mitsui Construction Co. said Thursday its nine main creditors have agreed to waive 141.97 billion yen in claims on outstanding loans to the financially troubled construction company.
JAPAN
Mar 30, 2001

Heo gets 71/2 years for breach of trust

OSAKA -- The Osaka District Court on Thursday sentenced former fugitive real estate executive Heo Young Joong to 71/2 years in prison and fined him 500 million yen for aggravated breach of trust and tax evasion.
COMMENTARY
Mar 29, 2001

Time to act is running out

The captain of a sinking cruise ship was trying to persuade his male passengers to let women and children board the lifeboats first. But he quickly learned he'd have to customize his pitch according to the nationalities on board. The Englishmen were easy; the captain simply appealed to their sense of...
JAPAN
Mar 29, 2001

Fukutoku Bank execs cleared

OSAKA -- The Osaka District Court found two former executives of the now-defunct Fukutoku Bank not guilty Wednesday of aggravated breach of trust in connection with some 8.2 billion yen in loans illegally extended in a bid to realize the smooth merger between the bank and another financial institution....
COMMENTARY
Mar 26, 2001

Too little too late for reform?

In a dramatic policy reversal, the Bank of Japan has shifted its priority from cutting interest rates to expanding the money supply. The shift involves changing the key target for monetary adjustment from uncollateralized call-money rates to private banks' demand-deposit balances in the central bank....
BUSINESS
Mar 24, 2001

Asahi Bank faces 10 billion yen loss

Asahi Bank announced Friday that its efforts to write off 50 percent more of its nonperforming loans than initially targeted will result in a consolidated net loss of 10 billion yen for the business year ending March 31.
JAPAN
Mar 24, 2001

Owing 980 billion yen, Tokyo Mutual fails

In the insurance industry's fifth failure in fiscal 2000, midtier insurer Tokyo Mutual Life Insurance Co. filed for court protection from its creditors Friday after it was denied capital assistance from its main bank, Daiwa Bank.
BUSINESS
Mar 23, 2001

Land prices seal decade of decline by falling 4.9%

Land prices in Japan declined by an average of 4.9 percent in the year to Jan. 1, falling for the 10th consecutive year amid the nation's prolonged economic slump, the Land Ministry said in a report released Thursday.
JAPAN
Mar 23, 2001

Ex-driver to be hanged for role in dual murder

OSAKA -- The Osaka District Court on Thursday sentenced a 58-year-old former driver to death for murdering a man and his wife in 1997 and stealing cash from their home in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture.
BUSINESS
Mar 23, 2001

Don't keep all eggs in one falling yen basket

On hearing that deposit interest rates in Japan are near zero, an investor from Jakarta said in apparent disbelief "You must be joking."
BUSINESS
Mar 22, 2001

Tertiary industry index slips

The government said Wednesday that an index designed to gauge economic activity in Japan's tertiary industries slid 0.5 percent in January from the previous month.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 20, 2001

Shanghai, the heart of China

NEW SHANGHAI: The Rocky Rebirth of China's Legendary City, by Pamela Yatsko. Wiley, 2001, 298 pp., 2,300 yen (paper). Few doubt that Shanghai is the nerve center of China's second "Great Leap Forward." This metropolis -- long considered the most cosmopolitan of all Asian cities -- is the cornerstone...
JAPAN
Mar 16, 2001

Miyazawa proposes stock fund guarantee

Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa presented a scheme Thursday that would extend a government guarantee to a proposed private-sector fund that would purchase cross-held shares from ailing institutions, Financial Services Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa said.
BUSINESS
Mar 15, 2001

Bankruptcies rise, but less debt remains

The number of corporate bankruptcies rose 0.3 percent in February from a year ago to 1,448 for the first increase in two months, but debts left behind fell 7.6 percent to 1.115 trillion yen, a research institute said Wednesday.
JAPAN
Mar 6, 2001

Notes on debts link Obara to Blackman

Notes apparently written by Lucie Blackman, a British woman whose dismembered body was discovered last month, have been seized at a Tokyo condominium owned by the prime suspect in her case, police sources said Monday.
BUSINESS
Mar 3, 2001

Coalition eyes stock-revitalization package, job-creating steps

The government and ruling coalition are devising tax-incentive and other measures as an emergency package to turn around the nosediving stock market and thaw the frozen real estate market, coalition officials said Friday.
BUSINESS
Mar 1, 2001

Moody's expects securities to grow

Moody's Investors Service Inc. said Wednesday that Japan's securitization market is expected to grow 20 percent to 40 percent in 2001 from the previous year to be worth between 3 trillion yen and 3.5 trillion yen.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 1, 2001

NHK's hollow take on easy-money bubble era

What's impressive about the new Steven Soderbergh film, "Traffic," which opens here in April, is how thoroughly it presents all the ramifications of America's drug war by exclusively dramatic means: no charts, no explanations of cause and effect, no polemics. The movie's three separate plot vectors intersect...
JAPAN
Mar 1, 2001

105 million yen stolen from man's home

Five or six masked men entered the Tokyo home of a major telephone dating club operator and stole around 105 million yen in cash and 30 million yen in jewelry from three safes, police said Wednesday.
LIFE / Travel
Feb 28, 2001

Asia's heritage boom

Call it nostalgia or call it a self-awakening, but Asians are rediscovering the value of their architectural heritage. From ancient police courts in Shanxi, China to forest temples in Thailand, from colonial quays in Singapore to the brick kilns and iron smithies of Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, the...
JAPAN
Feb 25, 2001

Freeze on beltway complicates lives of residents

Shozaburo Kon did not expect to face the ordeal he eventually had to endure when he took the plan of his new house to a local office of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government 10 years ago.
BUSINESS
Feb 16, 2001

Bankruptcies down but liabilities rise

Corporate bankruptcies declined 5.8 percent in January from a year earlier to 1,358 for the first decrease in 15 months, but the failed firms' liabilities jumped 60.6 percent to 969.65 billion yen, a private research institute said Thursday.
BUSINESS
Feb 16, 2001

Bankruptcies down but liabilities rise

Corporate bankruptcies declined 5.8 percent in January from a year earlier to 1,358 for the first decrease in 15 months, but the failed firms' liabilities jumped 60.6 percent to 969.65 billion yen, a private research institute said Thursday.
BUSINESS
Feb 15, 2001

Care for elderly to generate 24% of GDP by 2015

The aging population will cause the medical and nursing-care sector to help generate about one quarter of Japan's gross domestic product in 2015, a think tank under the Japan Medical Association said Wednesday.

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?