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COMMENTARY
Feb 10, 2001

Upheaval on the horizon

Diet debate started Tuesday on the fiscal 2001 government budget. The debate is likely to see head-on confrontation between the ruling and opposition forces. The government and the ruling coalition are hoping to pass the budget before fiscal 2000 ends March 31 in order to prepare for an Upper House election...
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Feb 10, 2001

The beauty of the dark side

Black is usually associated with the "dark side" -- evil, frightening, and negative. But in the Way of Tea, a black chawan (tea bowl) is prized above all others.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 9, 2001

Musharraf blows chance to end impasse

NEW DELHI -- For a while, it almost seemed that the recent Gujarat earthquake would help advance the peace process for Kashmir, when Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, not only sent relief goods to the victims but also telephoned the Indian prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to convey...
JAPAN
Feb 9, 2001

Mori pledges to resolve territory row

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori has pledged to resolve the territorial dispute involving a group of Russian-held islands off Hokkaido.
BUSINESS
Feb 8, 2001

Towel firms seek curb on cheap imports

Domestic towel-makers will ask the government in the near future to impose an emergency curb on towel imports from China, officials of the Japan Towel Industrial Association said Wednesday.
BUSINESS
Feb 8, 2001

Sony builds largest color EL panel

Sony Corp. said Wednesday that it has developed the world's largest full-color organic electroluminescence display panel.
BUSINESS
Feb 8, 2001

Sony builds largest color EL panel

Sony Corp. said Wednesday that it has developed the world's largest full-color organic electroluminescence display panel.
LIFE / Food & Drink / NIHONSHU
Feb 8, 2001

Religion and health in the etymology of sake

Sake has not been around forever, and at one point in time, they had to come up with a name for this new stuff. Hooch, da good stuff, giggly juice . . . It is likely that the Japanese equivalents of these have all been used, but there must have been some point when the word "sake" itself came into being....
BUSINESS
Feb 8, 2001

Overseas sales lift JT to net profit

Japan Tobacco Inc. said Wednesday that it posted a net profit of $10 million in overseas cigarette sales in 2000, a turnaround from a net loss of $16 million the previous year.
BUSINESS
Feb 8, 2001

Overseas sales lift JT to net profit

Japan Tobacco Inc. said Wednesday that it posted a net profit of $10 million in overseas cigarette sales in 2000, a turnaround from a net loss of $16 million the previous year.
COMMUNITY
Feb 8, 2001

Kids who learn by doing what comes naturally

The melting snow has transformed the playground of Hiratsuka Yochien into a muddy winter wonderland, but the kids follow their own pace. Some plunge ecstatically into the puddles, some carefully make their way to the chicken coop, while still others keep warm in the library.
JAPAN / STAGING A COMEBACK
Feb 7, 2001

LDP still kowtows to vested interests at the economy's expense

Pop into a convenience store and you may still find inconvenience: They don't sell medicine and you may not find cigarettes or alcohol at some shops.
BUSINESS
Feb 7, 2001

NKK, Sumitomo Heavy, Hitachi Zosen agree to unite steel businesses

NKK Corp., Sumitomo Heavy Industries Ltd. and Hitachi Zosen Corp. said Tuesday they have agreed on a broad business tieup with an eye toward integrating steel plant and engineering operations by the end of March 2003.
MORE SPORTS
Feb 7, 2001

Tokuyama, Cho to fight for title

OSAKA -- Champion Masamori Tokuyama, a pro-Pyongyang Korean resident of Japan, will fight former champion Cho In Joo of South Korea on May 20 for the World Boxing Council super-flyweight title.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Feb 7, 2001

Top 10 alternative reasons to go ADSL

www.icebox.com Like most of the Net's other starving-artist showcases, there's an overwhelming choice here, but the favorite appears to be Queer Duck. The episodes, about a gay mallard, are sharp social satire in which it's difficult, at least at first, to determine whether the author is preaching discrimination...
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Feb 7, 2001

Why not join the marine corps?

Welcome to the second week of the second month of the United Nations-designated "International Year of Volunteers." To mark this joyous occasion, we are pleased to announce the release of a book named "Kokusai Volunteer Guido," aka "Inside International Volunteer Work," published by The Japan Times and...
BUSINESS
Feb 6, 2001

Suntory brewing up momentum in Chinese beer market

OSAKA -- Struggling to survive in the saturated domestic market, Suntory Ltd. has stepped up its operations in China in a bid to capture the hearts of beer lovers in the world's most populous country.
COMMENTARY
Feb 6, 2001

Civil servants are not serfs

The "shunju" (spring and autumn) column on the first page of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun often contains comments that are right on target. The Jan. 27 column commented on the sometimes arrogant and unwarranted demands made by Japanese politicians on Japanese diplomats in missions abroad.
CULTURE / Film
Feb 6, 2001

Trauma in a sepia-tinged Kyushu

It's not easy filming the inner lives of human beings. Novelists can go on at length about their protagonist's stream of consciousness (see "Ulysses") while filmmakers cannot show scene after voiced-over scene of that same stream without inducing audience catatonia. See Joseph Strick's misbegotten 1967...
JAPAN
Feb 6, 2001

Inefficient public works projects creaking under debt burden

KOBE -- The Akashi Kaikyo Bridge, the world's longest suspension bridge, looks superb as it spans the Akashi Strait, linking Kobe and Awaji Island in Hyogo Prefecture.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 6, 2001

Modernism revealed

FICTIONS OF DESIRE: Narrative Form in the Novels of Nagai Kafu, by Stephen Snyder. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000, 196 pp., $42 (cloth), $17.95 (paper). Recently, it has been argued that the 18th-century realist tradition (Balzac, Dickens and on to now) is not the only such tradition;...

Longform

The building of new high-rise residential buildings has some alarmed that they could empty and fall into disrepair as Japan's population shrinks.
The high cost of letting Japan's condos crumble