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COMMENTARY
Aug 4, 2004

Despite errors, Iraqis are now better off

LONDON -- Is Iraq getting better or worse? One side thinks things are settling down under the new Iraqi government and that, while security is still very bad, the prospect is opening for a democratic Iraq that is prosperous and benign, and exerts a positive and stabilizing influence on the whole of a...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 4, 2004

No winners or losers in 'The Face of Jizo'

In the early 1960s, Hisashi Inoue, the author of the original play "The Face of Jizo," was working under contract as a writer at NHK. The idea for the play came when he was sent to Hiroshima in the summer to do a program about the anti-nuclear movement.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 4, 2004

Guggenheim's show harks back to modern times

Several years ago, Thomas Krens, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, approached Mori Building Co, Tokyo, about setting up a Guggenheim branch in Tokyo. The Guggenheim has recently opened centers in Bilbao, Berlin and Las Vegas. The idea was, in the end, rejected, but it did inspire...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Aug 3, 2004

Is your diet healthy in Japan?

Alexander Mande Student, 25 I think it's very, very good. Even eating day-old sushi is fresher than what I can get at home in Germany, except I don't like natto.
COMMENTARY
Aug 2, 2004

Global warming remains the deadliest foe

LONDON -- Perhaps philosophers have a name for it -- this modern phenomenon of continuing to enjoy life in a way that we know is leading to destruction because we feel that there is nothing we can do about it anyway.
Japan Times
Features
Aug 1, 2004

Violin maestro with many strings toher bow

Violinist Midori Goto was only 14 when, in 1986, she played with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the late maestro Leonard Bernstein at the annual Summer Festival at Tanglewood in rural Massachusetts. That was remarkable enough, but what made Goto world-famous was not simply that she...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jul 30, 2004

How green is my Happy Valley

While Tokyo is unbearably hot and humid in the heat of the summer, in Karuizawa verdant grass and moss carpet the floors of forests and the mountain air is perfumed with the scent of larch leaves and wild flowers. The area is a little over a one-hour train ride from Tokyo, enabling visitors to quickly...
JAPAN
Jul 30, 2004

Supporters seek asylum for chess legend Fischer in Germany

Supporters of fugitive chess legend Bobby Fischer said Thursday in Tokyo that they are asking several nations, including Germany, to offer the American political asylum.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 30, 2004

Activist sees Japan as war addict, like U.S. in comic

The Japanese people should learn from their World War II defeat and put pressure on the government to stop the country from sliding back into militarism, the author of an American antimilitarist comic book says.
JAPAN
Jul 30, 2004

Supporters seek asylum for chess legend Fischer in Germany

Supporters of fugitive chess legend Bobby Fischer said Thursday in Tokyo that they are asking several nations, including Germany, to offer the American political asylum.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jul 29, 2004

Who prefers concrete and cars to Tokyo's natural gem?

With its oddly ear-shaped black-and-white striped body, the hammer-size mimigata tennannsho, a grass that grows in the depths of Mount Takao's forests, has long been an object of fascination and loathing to hikers in the western Tokyo quasi-national park, where it's not just its grotesque shape that...
BASEBALL / MLB
Jul 29, 2004

Nozaki proposes interleague play

Hanshin Tigers President Katsuyoshi Nozaki said Tuesday he has proposed a two-league system that would involve intensive interleague play as an "ultimate" plan to settle the dispute over realigning the professional baseball system.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 29, 2004

Ogi set to become first female president of Upper House

Former transport minister Chikage Ogi will become the first female president of the House of Councilors this week at the extraordinary Diet session, party sources said Wednesday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 28, 2004

Something for your head

Animators have always had a thing for Surrealism, going back to Disney's "Silly Symphonies" in 1934 and beyond. (Disney, in fact, collaborated with the most notorious Surrealist of all, Salvador Dali, on 1946's fabled "Destino" project.) Japanese animators, however, are the arch Surrealists of the movie...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 28, 2004

Giving thanks on a day of cinema

The Dreamers Rating: * * * 1/2 (out of 5) Director: Bernardo Bertolucci Running time: 117 minutes Language: English/some French Currently showing [See Japan Times movie listings] As a child, I was raised as a Catholic, and went to church on Sunday, um, religiously. I can still remember...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 28, 2004

Women on the verge of adoption

Casa de los babys Rating: * * * 1/2 (out of 5) Director: John Sayles Running time: 95 minutes Language: English/Spanish Opens July 31 [See Japan Times movie listings] Gender roles are becoming increasingly fuzzy, even in Hollywood. As women go all out for traditionally male stuff (murderous...
EDITORIALS
Jul 28, 2004

Making the farm sector competitive

The government's economic and fiscal report for 2004, which was released last week, has a subtitle that sounds only too familiar: "No growth without reform." Yet the report deserves attention for two reasons. First, it focuses on the regional economy, a subject that has been more or less overlooked in...
JAPAN
Jul 28, 2004

Nuclear fuel report just another coverup?

Revelations that the government apparently buried for a decade a report that says reprocessing spent atomic fuel is much more expensive than burying it is causing a political furor that industry analysts say may pull the plug on the nation's nuclear recycling policy.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Jul 28, 2004

Photos bloom in Ebisu's garden

Conceived during the halcyon days of Japan's economic boom, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (TMP) has seen plenty of ups and downs in its 10 years of operation. The fact that the TMP's entrance is hidden within Yebisu Garden Place has been one issue, but the bigger problem is that the TMP...
BUSINESS
Jul 27, 2004

Like NTT phone fee, line brokers face extinction

Kanji in the window of a three-story building near JR Okachimachi Station in central Tokyo advertise "denwa tokubai" (discounted telephone lines).
COMMENTARY
Jul 27, 2004

Rumor, fear and innuendo fuel tensions

LOS ANGELES -- Anyone who knows anything about China knows that it's not just its current government but its people, too, who are ultraprotective and ultra-sensitive about the Taiwan issue.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 26, 2004

Flawed homeland security

LAS VEGAS -- The dispute between Washington and Tokyo over the fate of Army Sgt. Charles Jenkins, whom the United States accuses of defecting to North Korea some 40 years ago, is more than a case of American legalism vs. Japanese ad hoc policy and humanitarian instincts. The issue goes much deeper into...
COMMENTARY
Jul 26, 2004

Lifting women's job status

Women's status in male-dominated Japan remains alarmingly low, according to a recent international survey. A U.N. Development Program survey showed that Japan ranked 38th among countries of the world in the gender empowerment index, which measures women's participation in political and economic decision-making....
EDITORIALS
Jul 25, 2004

The governor and the 'girlie men'

Say this much for California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger: He is never boring. The "Governator" proved that again recently when he said that opposition lawmakers campaigning against his budget proposals were "girlie men." The remark caused a furor among U.S. Democrats. It also reignited a more general...
EDITORIALS
Jul 24, 2004

Use and abuse of intelligence

Two official reports come to disturbing conclusions about intelligence failures in the United States and Great Britain. Both identify systemic flaws in the collection and analysis of critical intelligence that resulted in the invasion of Iraq. There is much to learn from these episodes, but the most...
BUSINESS
Jul 24, 2004

Japan, China urged to cooperate on energy

OYAMA, Shizuoka Pref. -- Japan and China must find ways to cooperate over energy resources, business leaders said Friday during an annual Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) forum.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jul 24, 2004

Morio Matsui

In times of difficulty and pain, Morio Matsui says he has always been saved by his painting.
JAPAN / BY THE NUMBERS
Jul 22, 2004

Forex trading is a popular but risky business

Once considered the exclusive realm of the wealthy and the reckless, foreign-exchange trading is now being touted as accessible to everyone even though it is still a high-risk game.

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