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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 22, 2007

Feminine mystique

Bicultural superstar Anna Tsuchiya on her role in Mika Ninagawa's acclaimed debut film 'Sakuran'
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 21, 2007

SDF deploys perky mascot to boast cuddly image

Perky cartoon character Prince Pickles -- with saucer eyes, big dimples and tiny, booted feet -- poses in front of tanks, rappels from helicopters and shakes hands with smiling Iraqis.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 20, 2007

Cotton prices wrecking Indian farmers

MADRAS, India -- The western Indian state of Maharashtra, whose capital is the nation's financial capital Bombay, has made great strides in lifting cotton production. Land dedicated to growing cotton increased from 92,000 hectares in 2003 to 480,000 hectares in 2004, according to government sources....
JAPAN
Feb 20, 2007

Sexually abused intern wins settlement

A former foreign intern reached an out-of-court settlement Monday with her host company in Japan and a male executive at the firm whom she had accused of repeatedly sexually abusing her while she was in a trainee program.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 19, 2007

Rainy Tokyo Marathon draws 30,000 from around the world

time limit of seven hours. I wish I could run." The participants were picked by lot after 95,000 people applied for one of the largest marathons in Asia.
Reader Mail
Feb 18, 2007

A little late for the critics

One Japanese politician, Foreign Minister Taro Aso, has suggested that U.S. President George W. Bush has been "naive." Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma has said Bush was "wrong," and now the opposition party (Democratic Party of Japan) leader Ichiro Ozawa enters the Bush-bashing fray by saying the war in...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 18, 2007

Poet takes on the triads

A Case of Two Cities: An Inspector Chen Novel by Qiu Xiaolong. New York: St. Martin's Minotaur, 2006, 320 pp., $24.95 (cloth) In U.S. paperback fiction, the arrival of an American detective, or spy, in East Asia unleashes a predictable train of events. He will inevitably lock horns with a rich and powerful...
EDITORIALS
Feb 17, 2007

Qualified GDP growth

The government has announced that Japan's economy continued to grow for the eighth consecutive quarter in the October-December period. Gross domestic product in the quarter registered 1.2 percent growth in real terms from the previous quarter, translating to an annualized 4.8 percent. This growth rate...
JAPAN
Feb 17, 2007

Falling off the educational ladder

school or just a private cram school. I don't know what we are," said Saito, a second-generation Japanese-Brazilian. A change in immigration policy in 1990 enabled second- and third-generation Japanese-Brazilians to obtain long-term resident visas to work in Japan. That led to an influx of Japanese-Brazilian...
JAPAN
Feb 16, 2007

Bar not going to punish Asahara's lawyers for tardy court documents

The counsel for Aum Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara will not be penalized for missing the deadline for filing a document with the Tokyo High Court needed to appeal his death sentence, the Japan Federation of Bar Associations said Thursday.
EDITORIALS
Feb 15, 2007

Breakthrough with North Korea

After tumultuous negotiations, the six-party talks reached agreement on a deal that would end North Korea's nuclear-weapons program and end the country's international isolation. The agreement took three and a half years to conclude, during which the North exploded a nuclear weapon. There is no guarantee...
Reader Mail
Feb 14, 2007

Youth-dampers working overtime

Regarding Eddy Nelson's Jan. 28 letter, "Why are young adults so glum": I don't think Nelson's letter is a product of malice, but rather one of a naive understanding of young people similar to that which has become so popular among the Japanese media. What Japanese young people really need now is not...
BUSINESS
Feb 14, 2007

Nikko vows better internal controls

Scandal-tainted Nikko Cordial Corp. announced on Tuesday measures to boost the group's internal controls to prevent accounting irregularities, including creation of a new section to prevent fraudulent deals involving affiliated companies.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Feb 14, 2007

From rackets to real estate, yakuza multifaceted

The yakuza have long played a powerful, if often unseen, role in society. Romanticized in literature and film as noble outcasts replete with punch-perms, extensive tattoos and severed pinkies, the underworld is one of archaic language and secretive rituals and customs as well as extreme violence and...
EDITORIALS
Feb 14, 2007

Dignity for disabled people

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities on Dec. 13. The convention, which covers rights to education, health, work, cultural activities, etc., is the first human-rights treaty of the 21st century....
JAPAN
Feb 14, 2007

Aussie book on Crown Princess draws official wrath

The Foreign Ministry came to the defense of the Imperial family on Tuesday, saying it had lodged formal protests with the author and publisher of a new book about Crown Princess Masako that it called "contemptuous" and "insulting."
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Feb 11, 2007

The price of stalemate

One of the most controversial elements of Japan's campaign to overturn the International Whaling Commission's 1986 commercial whaling ban is the alleged use of official Overseas Development Aid to "buy" the votes of poorer IWC member-countries. That is an allegation vehemently denied by fisheries bureaucrats....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Feb 8, 2007

Blood, guts and bathing

Colonialism leaves a peculiar scar. As generations pass and ethnicities merge, the distinction between indigenous and invader becomes increasingly blurred until it is impossible for either side to regard the other without finding something of themselves reflected there. Some 500 years after the arrival...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 8, 2007

Rejecting kawaii culture

Momoyo Torimitsu (b. 1967) is a little tired of being remembered for Jiro Miyata, a life-size robot she created based on a middle-aged salaryman in 1994. But who could forget? Miyata, which Torimitsu had crawl around the streets of Tokyo, Paris, New York and other cities, so brilliantly embodied the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 8, 2007

Funny and dark, the Mori laughs

Known for its unique fare of thought-provoking and comprehensive exhibitions that give you the "greatest hits" of a theme or period, the Mori Art Museum is now tackling the complex topic of humor in a two-part exhibition running till May 6.

Longform

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