Search - 2003

 
 
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 10, 2003

Pulling away the curtains from the 'Princes of the Yen'

PRINCES OF YEN: Central Bankers and the Transformation of the Economy, by Richard A. Werner. London: M.E. Sharpe, 2003, 362 pp., $27.95, (paper). Richard A. Werner has written a rare book. "The Princes of the Yen" is a scholarly, thoroughly researched treatise on economics that reads like a detective...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 10, 2003

Foreign visitors who found the old in a new Japan

THE GREAT WAVE: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan, by Christopher Benfey. New York: Random House, 2003, 534 pp., with monochrome plates, $25,95 (paper). In the middle of the century before last, Japan was -- as the West termed it -- finally opened up. The mysterious...
COMMENTARY
Aug 9, 2003

Political world prepares for fall showdown

The first half of 2003 was volatile both internationally and domestically. Severe acute respiratory syndrome hit China, other Asian countries and Canada at the beginning of the year and spread around the world. Then, in the Middle East, war broke out when the United States and Britain invaded Iraq, overthrew...
BUSINESS
Aug 9, 2003

Softbank logs 34.73 billion yen loss in first quarter

Internet-related business investor Softbank Corp. said Friday it incurred a group net loss of 34.73 billion yen in the first quarter of fiscal 2003.
BUSINESS
Aug 9, 2003

Current account surplus shrank 8% in fiscal first half

Japan's current account surplus shrank 8 percent from a year earlier to 7.24 trillion yen in the first half of 2003, marking the first decline in three half-year periods, the Finance Ministry said Friday in a preliminary report.
BUSINESS
Aug 8, 2003

Fuji TV posts 9.02 billion yen profit

Fuji Television Network Inc. said Thursday its group net profit in the April-June period came to 9.02 billion yen, or 51.51 percent of its net profit projection of 17.5 billion yen for the full fiscal year ending March 31, 2004.
BUSINESS
Aug 7, 2003

Toyota rating unaffected by weak earnings: S&P

Standard & Poor's said Wednesday that Toyota Motor Corp.'s weaker earnings results for the April-June quarter will not affect its AAA long-term debt rating with a negative outlook or its A-1-plus short-term rating.
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Aug 7, 2003

A tale of two Afans reborn

Two thousand years ago, my native Wales had 98 percent forest cover. By 1950, when I was a little lad, woodland in Wales was down to 5 percent. I was born in Neath, where coal-mining wasn't particularly heavy, and where there were still wooded parks and groves of wild trees so I didn't really feel the...
JAPAN
Aug 7, 2003

2003 rice crop headed for 10-year low in yield

Due to the prolonged rainy season, Japan's rice crop this year will be the poorest since 1993, when unseasonably cool weather adversely affected the harvest, the Rice Databank said Wednesday.
BUSINESS
Aug 6, 2003

Bandai logs 4 billion yen profit in first quarter

Bandai Co. said Tuesday it posted a group net profit of 4.01 billion yen in the April-June quarter on sales of 58.12 billion yen.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Aug 6, 2003

Hanshin's magical season brings back memories of 1985

Sometimes history repeats itself. Eighteen years ago, in 1985, the Hanshin Tigers entered the month of August with a healthy lead in the Central League standings. The weather was as scorching as the Tigers who then, as now, played their home games at historic Koshien Stadium.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 3, 2003

War notes for the leaders in Pyongyang

WASHINGTON -- In recent weeks, as the heavy global workload and overcommitment of the U.S. armed forces has become apparent, some have asked if the United States could handle a major crisis or a war in Korea these days.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 3, 2003

Visitors to stay -- for the time being

GLOBAL JAPAN: The experience of Japan's new immigrant and overseas communities, edited by Roger Goodman, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka and Paul White. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, 241 pp., £65, (cloth). Many in Japan have been slow to accept the fact that international labor migration does...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 3, 2003

What will succeed the Korean armistice?

SEOUL -- One of the ironies of the Korean War, whose legacy was commemorated last Sunday, is that one cannot be sure that it is finally over. While the armistice has held for 50 years, the parties to it are still engaged in controversy, with the Korean Peninsula drifting deeper into crisis and the prospect...
BUSINESS
Aug 2, 2003

Main street land values fall again

The average price of land on main streets in Japan stood at 121,000 yen per sq. meter as of Jan. 1, down 6.2 percent, or 8,000 yen, from 12 months earlier, the National Tax Agency said Friday.
BUSINESS
Aug 2, 2003

Economy, deficit least served by budget caps

Although the government faces two important goals -- shoring up the fragile economy and cutting its enormous budget deficit -- the cap on core fiscal 2004 budget outlays the Cabinet endorsed Friday only increases concern that neither can be achieved anytime soon.
JAPAN
Aug 2, 2003

EBook market hit 1 billion yen in '02

The Japanese market for eBooks soared to 1 billion yen in 2002, according to a recent market survey conducted by publishing house Impress Corp.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Aug 1, 2003

New Korean films to debut in Japan

Several new Korean films will be shown Aug. 30-31 at Cinema Korea 2003 at Sogetsu Hall in Tokyo, with three of them being screened for the first time in Japan.
BUSINESS
Aug 1, 2003

ANA now anticipating bigger SARS hit

All Nippon Airways Co. said Thursday that it now expects annual group revenue from international passenger flights to fall 42 billion yen below the amount forecast in its original fiscal 2003 business plan.
BUSINESS
Aug 1, 2003

Bank execs face FSA ultimatum to lift earnings

The Financial Services Agency on Friday will order the management of five domestic banking groups to either improve their earnings by the end of the year or step down, FSA sources said Thursday.
BUSINESS
Aug 1, 2003

Full-year record for yen-bashing set in first half

Japan used more than 9 trillion yen to intervene in the foreign-exchange market between January and July, breaking its record for a full year, according to data released Thursday by the Finance Ministry.
BUSINESS
Jul 30, 2003

Honda saw net profit fall 5.4% in first quarter

Honda Motor Co. reported a consolidated net profit of 101.82 billion yen in the April-June quarter, down 5.4 percent from the same period last year, company officials said Monday.
BUSINESS
Jul 30, 2003

GDP growth could exceed forecast

The nation's gross domestic product growth in fiscal 2003 may exceed the government forecast of 0.6 percent, with stronger economic activity coming in the latter half of the year, Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa said Tuesday.
BUSINESS
Jul 29, 2003

Carmakers see rise in global output

Japan's five major carmakers all increased global production in the January-June period, supported by strong overseas demand, according to reports released Monday by the firms.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 27, 2003

Fabrics for summer fun

MATSURI: Japanese Festival Arts, by Gloria Granz Gonick. University of Washington Press, 2003, 256 pp., $40 (paper). The UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History has published eight books on Asian textiles in the past 14 years, and it seems particularly proud of this latest addition "Matsuri," which focuses...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 27, 2003

Brands vie for your thirst

"Advertising," as it's often defined, "is the creation of wants."
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 27, 2003

The art of redemption

YOSHIMASA AND THE SILVER PAVILION: The Creation of the Soul of Japan, by Donald Keene. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003, 10 illustrations, 224 pp., $29.95 (paper). In the appropriate volume of his monumental history of Japanese literature, Donald Keene only once mentions the eighth Ashikaga...
JAPAN
Jul 27, 2003

Quakes of last 20 years

The following is a chronology of major earthquakes in Japan since May 1983. As well as a magnitude reading, Japan operates a seismic intensity scale that ranges from 1 to 7. Levels 5 and 6 have had "lower" and "upper" categories since 1996.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 27, 2003

A laconic energy from days gone by

TALES OF DAYS GONE BY: Woodcuts by Naoko Matsubara, English translation and annotation by Charles De Wolf, design by Yoshiki Waterhouse. ALIS, 2003, 64 pp., 3,900 yen (cloth). ALIS (Arts & Literature International Service) is a small Japanese publisher that specializes in illustrated books and acts as...

Longform

Atsuyoshi Koike, the president and CEO of Rapidus, says there is a “sense of urgency” when it comes to Japan’s efforts in manufacturing semiconductors. “We have to make sure we are successful,” he says.
Atsuyoshi Koike’s big game: Fourth down and 2 nanometers to go