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JAPAN
Jan 20, 2000

DIC to allow banks early repayment

The Deposit Insurance Corp. announced Thursday a guideline for allowing banks that have borrowed money for recapitalization to repay the funds earlier than scheduled. The DIC guideline was approved the same day by the Financial Reconstruction Commission. The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, which has asked...
JAPAN
Jan 20, 2000

Four candidates begin campaigning for Osaka governor

OSAKA -- In what is expected to be a hard-fought campaign with repercussions for the ruling coalition, the race for the Osaka governor's seat officially kicked off Thursday morning. Disagreement between Liberal Democratic Party headquarters in Tokyo and its Osaka chapter over who to nominate has led...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jan 19, 2000

Space on the range

When the deliciously innovative iMacs were unveiled last year there was a collective gasp: What?! No floppy drive? How do I transfer files?
BUSINESS
Jan 19, 2000

Manufacturing, outlays need watching

Although industrial production accounts for only a little more than 20 percent of the nation's overall economic activity, we cannot take our eyes off developments in the manufacturing industries in assessing economic prospects.
EDITORIALS
Jan 18, 2000

Furor over 'Frankenfoods'

Worries about genetically modified foods are on the rise. Consumers around the world are increasingly concerned about the effects such organisms have on human health and the environment. Just as troubling is their suspicion of the companies and regulatory authorities who assure the public that those...
JAPAN
Jan 18, 2000

Regional Special: Okinawa

Isle's airport between reef and a hard place> Staff writer ISHIGAKI ISLAND, Okinawa Pref. -- Passengers stare dreamily from the plane. Some crane their necks for a glimpse of the cobalt coastline and Ishigaki's famed coral reefs. But all are jerked back to reality when the plane touches down and suddenly...
JAPAN
Jan 18, 2000

State plans bill to bolster technological competitiveness

The government will submit to the upcoming Diet session a bill to strengthen competitiveness in industrial technology through measures supporting collaboration among industry, academia and the government, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi said Tuesday. "It is imperative for Japan to develop creative technology...
JAPAN
Jan 17, 2000

Police raids target illicit brokerage

Police searched the head office of a Tokyo-based financial company and several dozen other locations on Monday on suspicion that the company unlawfully served as a stock brokerage intermediary. Law-enforcement officials from both the Metropolitan Police Department and Shizuoka Prefectural Police were...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jan 16, 2000

Masayuki Kurokawa

At the recent Art of Dining Exhibition sponsored by Refugees International-Japan, Masayuki Kurokawa and his wife, Taki Katoh, cooperated in presenting a table setting profoundly and strikingly simple. It symbolized, they said, "the harmonization of natural and man-made phenomena."
JAPAN
Jan 16, 2000

Tough town beaten to despair as jobs dry up

For 70-year-old Mikami, winter life on the streets of Tokyo has become so unbearable that flirting with a suicide fantasy has become his favorite pastime.
JAPAN
Jan 13, 2000

Kobe's recovery at 80%, but new industries still scarce

While Kobe has managed to rebuild its social infrastructure and housing facilities after the devastation of the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995, it must now develop new industries for its complete reconstruction, Mayor Kazutoshi Sasayama said in Tokyo Thursday. Speaking at the Japan National Press...
EDITORIALS
Jan 11, 2000

Declaring war against AIDS

It is reckoned that the AIDS scourge began about 20 years ago. In the two decades since then, it has claimed more than 16 million lives. The World Health Organization estimates that 33.6 million people, 1.2 million of them children, live with the HIV infection that is the disease's precursor. The speed...
JAPAN
Jan 11, 2000

LDP downplays Osaka rift, backs Ota for governor

Top executives of the Liberal Democratic Party formally decided Tuesday to back a former trade ministry official for the upcoming gubernatorial election in Osaka, despite a rebellion from its Osaka chapter, which supports a different candidate. On Tuesday evening, LDP Secretary General Yoshiro Mori...
CULTURE / Music
Jan 11, 2000

Ani DiFranco's hard road leads her to a higher plane

Last year, the prolific Ani DiFranco released three albums. Any record company marketing executive would tell you that's more than the market could take. But then, DiFranco doesn't have to answer to any record company. She owns her own.
JAPAN
Jan 11, 2000

Yachiyo Bank to take over failed Kokumin

Yachiyo Bank and state-appointed administrators of Kokumin Bank announced Tuesday that the two parties have reached a basic agreement to have Yachiyo take over the failed second-tier regional bank. Of the five second-tier regional banks that went under after the financial reconstruction law took effect...
JAPAN
Jan 9, 2000

'Super Osaka' bureaucracy floated

OSAKA -- Should the municipal boundaries of Osaka Prefecture be redrawn so that the city of Osaka is a ward of the prefecture? Or should the prefecture be scrapped entirely, leaving a "Super City Osaka"?
CULTURE / Art
Jan 8, 2000

Top of the line in toys

HIMEJI, Hyogo Pref. -- For a long time, koma (tops) were commonly given to children during the New Year's season. These days, however, the traditional toy is wobbling on the edge of extinction.
JAPAN
Jan 7, 2000

Nursing home in China advertising for Japanese

A Tokyo-based organization is advertising on the Internet a nursing care home in China that will take in elderly Japanese suffering from senile dementia, it was learned Friday.
JAPAN / Media
Jan 6, 2000

New Year's TV specials -- impersonating entertainment

The suicide rate goes up at the end of the year, an increase that's usually attributed to depression in the face of what is perceived as everybody else's high holiday spirits. In Japan, there's another reason for despair. That's the prospect of being stuck in the company of relatives you hate eating...
JAPAN
Jan 5, 2000

Privatization premature, JR Tokai says

Suffering from an increasing debt burden, Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai) voiced opposition Wednesday to the government's plan to fully privatize six JR group firms at the earliest possible date. During a meeting with Transport Minister Toshihiro Nikai, JR Tokai President Yoshiyuki Kasai said that...
JAPAN
Jan 5, 2000

Rural regions accentuate their pluses to lure city dwellers

Staff writer AYA, Miyazaki Pref. -- A small window on the upper floor of a two-story log house offers a magnificent view of mountains covered in dense deciduous forests of various color gradations. This landscape, coupled with the area's policy of promoting organic agriculture, prompted Teruhiko and...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 4, 2000

Take politics out of economic decisions

It is amazing how quickly conventional wisdom can shift. Just a few years ago, most people would have considered as heretical a proposal that central banks should make decisions independent of the influence of the executive and legislative branches of government. Today, central bank independence is universally...
JAPAN
Jan 4, 2000

No major Y2K errors reported at companies

On the nation's first trading day after the turn of the year, Japan saw no major problems related to the millennium computer glitch, Chief Cabinet Secretary Mikio Aoki announced on Tuesday. "We have received no report (of Y2K trouble) from companies, including financial institutions, which just reopened...
JAPAN
Jan 4, 2000

Court translators to be given formal training from spring

The Supreme Court will introduce this spring a new system of training for interpreters who translate courtroom remarks by judges, prosecutors, lawyers and witnesses for foreign defendants, court officials said Tuesday. The training sessions will be held at district courts around the country, with judges...
JAPAN
Jan 3, 2000

New Year's return rush peaks

The rush of New Year's travelers returning from their hometowns reached its peak Monday, in time to return to work today -- when most companies reopen for business. However, the number of train and airplane passengers returning to Tokyo and other big cities was smaller than usual, probably because Y2K...
COMMENTARY
Jan 3, 2000

Building peace in a new era

As we greet the new millennium, we should ask ourselves what Japan should do to contribution to peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region, establish military and nonmilitary security, help solve global problems and prevent conflicts.
COMMENTARY
Jan 1, 2000

Japan looks for a purpose

The 1990s is said to have been a "lost decade" for Japan. That may be true. In May 1991, Japan's economy plunged into a slump that would be called the "Heisei Recession." In October 1993, the economy "bottomed out," but ever since then it has remained in the doldrums. The protracted slump has had extensive...
JAPAN
Dec 30, 1999

Japan urged to consider free-trade pacts

Mazda Motor Corp. plans to start producing passenger cars in Europe by 2002, company sources said Thursday. Mazda will use the European production facilities of U.S. auto giant Ford Motor Co., its largest shareholder, and purchase engines from PSA Peugeot-Citroen of France, they said. The company plans...
JAPAN / Media
Dec 30, 1999

A recap of 1999's top media: mavens, meddlers, madmen

By Philip Brasor
JAPAN
Dec 30, 1999

Japan urged to consider free-trade pacts

Staff writer Japan should keep its commitment to trade liberalization under the World Trade Organization, but this must not prevent it from seeking free-trade agreements with its trading partners, according to Noboru Hatakeyama, chairman of the Japan External Trade Organization. Earlier this month,...

Longform

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