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JAPAN
Mar 3, 2001

Penal Code change would target credit card fraud

The government endorsed a bill Friday that increases the maximum jail term for credit card fraud to 10 years from the current five years and imposes heavier fines, officials said.
JAPAN
Mar 3, 2001

Jobless rate stays at 4.9%; spending remains in a lull

Dour economic indicators released Friday provided further evidence that Japan's economic recovery is stalling, with unemployment staying at a record-high level of 4.9 percent in January and consumer spending remaining flat.
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 3, 2001

Wake us for the next dance

The abundance of new dance and theater available in Tokyo during the months of February and March is a sure indicator of just how profoundly new work in this city depends on grants and other handouts from funding bodies. These budgets, such as they are, must be used by the end of the fiscal year, and...
JAPAN
Mar 2, 2001

Murakami arrested over bribes

Prosecutors on Thursday arrested Masakuni Murakami, a powerful member of the LDP who quit the party last week in the midst of an ongoing scandal, for allegedly accepting bribes from mutual aid foundation KSD.
JAPAN
Mar 2, 2001

Researcher publishes third study on toilets

OSAKA -- A 53-year-old civil servant in Osaka Prefecture who has been researching the history of toilets in Japan for more than 30 years has published his latest findings in what he calls "The Journal of Toilet Culture."
JAPAN
Mar 2, 2001

Unlicensed nurses under scrutiny in obstetrics

More than 10 percent of students completing mid-career courses at nursing schools operated by the Japan Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists between 1990 and 1999 were unlicensed nurses and midwives, according to a government survey.
CULTURE / Film
Mar 2, 2001

Dogmatic 'King Lear' stranded in the dunes

The Dogma '95 film movement, started by a group of Danish filmmakers, is a short-list of 10 rules known as the "vow of chastity" -- a pledge to eschew action, sets, props, soundtracks, lighting, stable camerawork, genre conventions and directorial credit. Like many a radical movement, it is entirely...
MORE SPORTS
Mar 2, 2001

Marathon champion set to profit

Kyodo News Sydney Olympic gold medalist Naoko Takahashi appears set to join the ranks of other prominent figures who have attained fame and fortune after becoming champions in major sporting events.
JAPAN
Mar 2, 2001

Earth Summit has to keep up with times

Globalization and scientific advances are reshaping the debate over environment and development policy and will merit attention at next year's Rio Plus 10 Earth Summit, according to a senior World Bank official.
JAPAN
Mar 1, 2001

Yamamoto receives 18 months for fraud

The Tokyo District Court on Wednesday sentenced former Lower House lawmaker Joji Yamamoto to 11/2 years in prison for defrauding the state out of more than 25 million yen.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 1, 2001

The spy game: high stakes, low payoffs

LONDON -- It's an impressive list: CIA official Aldrich Ames jailed for life in 1994 for spying for Moscow; CIA agent Harold Nicholson jailed for 23 years in 1997 for the same offense; FBI employee Earl Pitts sentenced to 27 years later the same year for passing information to Moscow; U.S. Army Col....
JAPAN
Mar 1, 2001

Assemblies favor tough stance on diesel

In a growing trend among local governments to assert their authority, prefectural governors and some municipal leaders in the Tokyo metropolitan area are inclined to take tougher measures than the state against diesel-powered vehicles.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 1, 2001

Don't bet against China's industrial policy

Cambridge, ENGLAND -- At a recent conference in Berlin organized by the Institute of Asian Affairs of Hamburg, Ireland's leading China specialist said quite unequivocally that China's industrial policy has failed. As the speaker has long been known as one of the most vocal supporters of China's state-owned...
EDITORIALS
Feb 28, 2001

Pirates without the romance

It is not just children who play pirate these days. The International Maritime Bureau reports that there were 469 attacks on ships last year, a 56 percent increase over 1999. That number has increased throughout the last decade; without concerted action by governments -- and especially those in Southeast...
EDITORIALS
Feb 28, 2001

The legal drug menace

We like to think of drug abusers as "them," people other than us. That is wrong, says the International Narcotics Control Board in its annual report released last week. It highlights the over-consumption of controlled drugs in developed countries. And it underlines the culture that makes drug use so...
COMMENTARY
Feb 28, 2001

Alleviating anxiety in Seoul

SEOUL -- On the surface, U.S.-South Korean relations have seldom seemed better. Last fall's contentious issues -- negotiations over revisions to the Status of Forces Agreement and over South Korean missile-development plans -- were settled amicably. The new U.S. administration has firmly endorsed the...
LIFE / Travel
Feb 28, 2001

Potholes on the road to preservation in China

China's former communist radicals and today's capitalist developers appear, in some respects, to have much in common. During the Cultural Revolution, with its almost visceral hatred of tradition, Red Guards were instructed to destroy anything "bourgeois," or tainted by the past. A decade earlier, Chairman...
ENVIRONMENT / GARDENING FOR ALL
Feb 28, 2001

Rare mangroves left unprotected

Tanegashima in Kagoshima is well-known in Japan both as the first place where Western-style muskets were introduced by the Portuguese in 1543 and for the Tanegashima Space Center, which opened in 1988 and is located in the southeast corner of the island.
JAPAN / EMBASSY ROW
Feb 27, 2001

Sweden stresses political ties with EU

As the country currently representing the European Union, Sweden hopes that the coming decade will see the Japan-EU relationship broaden into the political arena, based on the solid economic ties that have been developed between the two countries, according to Swedish Ambassador Krister Kumlin.
JAPAN
Feb 27, 2001

Mori faces difficult week as KSD scandal widens

Another critical week for Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori began Monday with the Upper House approving the resignation of Masakuni Murakami, one of the embattled prime minister's staunch backers.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 27, 2001

Soar with Madame Butterfly

MADAME BUTTERFLY: Japonisme, Puccini, and the Search for the Real Cho-Cho-San, by Jan van Rij. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2001, 192 pp., 24 b/w photos, drawings, map, $24.95 (casebound). Giacomo Puccini's "Madame Butterfly" has become more than just a pretty piece of music. It has turned into something...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 27, 2001

Fairy tales for modern Japan

GHOST OF A SMILE: Stories, by Deborah Boliver Boehm. Kodansha International, 2000, 288 pp., 2,900 yen (cloth). Imagine Lafcadio Hearn venturing to 21st-century Tokyo reincarnated as a single American woman with a penchant for the exotic and erotic, and you will have a sense of the stories in "Ghost of...

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