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BUSINESS
May 15, 2003

Takenaka told to settle with ruling bloc on yield cuts

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Wednesday he has told Financial Services Minister Heizo Takenaka to try to resolve differences within the ruling bloc over whether to allow life insurers to cut yields guaranteed to policyholders.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
May 15, 2003

Big-mouth bulbuls time it just right

Second of two parts Imagine, if you can, an opinion poll of Japanese forest plants. Question: which bird is most important to you? The brown-eared bulbul, or hiyodori, would have to take a bow.
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
May 12, 2003

Jordan has nothing to complain about

LOS ANGELES -- This is all you need to know about Michael Jordan's latest career move: Nixon left Washington with more credibility.
COMMENTARY / World
May 12, 2003

Time to push bigger deal with Pyongyang

WASHINGTON -- When South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun visits Washington this week, what can he and President George W. Bush possibly talk about?
EDITORIALS
May 11, 2003

Myanmar's gestures are not enough

Once again, the military government in Myanmar has made a symbolic gesture to placate international critics. The release of political prisoners is always welcome, but the government in Yangon does not question its right to use the opposition as pawns. The game must stop; nothing less than systemic reform...
COMMENTARY / World
May 10, 2003

End of the old world disorder?

Wars are cataclysmic events. Out of the destruction of major wars emerge new fault lines of international politics. To this extent, wars are the international, political equivalent of earthquakes, eruptions on the surface reflecting deeper underlying seismic shifts in the pattern of major-power relations....
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
May 8, 2003

Ethicists bid to unscramble egg argument

It's often been said that philosophy lags behind science. Bertrand Russell's "The ABC of Relativity," for example, was published in 1926, 21 years after Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity.
EDITORIALS
May 7, 2003

Ease lending to small firms

Small businesses in Japan continue to languish in the midst of a protracted economic slump. Compounding their predicament is the tight lending policy of private banks, which are said to be more selective toward smaller borrowers than larger ones. Banks may have their own reasons to restrict lending,...
COMMENTARY
May 5, 2003

Rudderless world economy

From 1993 to 2001, the administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton based its policies on the Democratic Party's platform of compassion toward the underprivileged and tolerance toward dissent. In the past, this ideology had prompted Democratic administrations to try to legislate an end to racial discrimination....
COMMENTARY
May 5, 2003

Unity needed on nuclear issue

North Korea's statement that it already has nuclear weapons is most likely an exercise in diplomatic brinkmanship aimed at drawing the United States into direct dialogue. But if the statement is true, the security environment surrounding Japan and Northeast Asia will undergo fundamental change.
COMMENTARY
May 4, 2003

Rare chance for U.S. to fix tort lottery

WASHINGTON -- Trial attorney and U.S. Sen. John Edwards is well-liked by the plaintiff's bar. Too well-liked perhaps, since the Justice Department is investigating apparently illegal contributions to his presidential campaign -- which have since been returned -- from an Arkansas law firm. Although Edwards...
COMMENTARY / World
May 2, 2003

U.S. sets the bar high in N. Korea talks

SEOUL -- The United States and North Korea finally have begun talking again. Or have they? Are they talking to each other, at each other or past each other? Although the two sides agreed to keep the diplomatic channels open, it's going to take a lot more meetings to get out of this crisis in one piece....
EDITORIALS
May 1, 2003

Privacy bills still have faults

The Diet debate on the government-proposed privacy legislation cleared a major hurdle last week as a Lower House special committee approved it with the support of the ruling parties. The controversial package, designed to protect personal information held by government offices and private companies,...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Apr 30, 2003

Pyongyang's actions shock few observers

MOSCOW -- When you are told that a person whom you don't know has won the lottery or lost a job, your feelings are pretty predictable and simple: Envy in the first case and empathy in the second. Yet if the person in question is somebody you know, your reactions get more complicated. You immediately...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 30, 2003

Now (and forever) a girl's best friend

Once the home of a prince, the Teien Art Museum is now playing host to a king's ransom in jewelry comprising a truly sparkling survey of the bijoutier's art in the four centuries spanning 1540-1940.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Apr 30, 2003

Japan Occupation turned foes into friends

Before Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed at a small airstrip outside Tokyo to begin the U.S.-led Occupation of Japan in 1945, Americans were the object of intense hatred, portrayed by propagandists as rapacious foreign devils.
COMMENTARY
Apr 29, 2003

Will Chirac's luck run out?

PARIS -- When he had to appoint a general, Napoleon Bonaparte would ask if the candidate possessed the main quality for the job: luck. No politician in French contemporary history meets that condition more than President Jacques Chirac.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Apr 28, 2003

Time for Japan to return to reality and give us safer reasons to invest

"Wonderful thing, death. So uncontroversial," said Jim Hacker, the hero of BBC TV's highly successful 1980s political sitcom "Yes Prime Minister."
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Apr 28, 2003

America is the greatest abuser of WMD

NEW YORK -- One duplicitous aspect of the United States' war on Iraq has been the use of the term "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD). No, I am not talking about the kinds of weapons that are assumed in the question raised by the conservative Chicago Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak on April 7 -- "Where...
JAPAN
Apr 27, 2003

1983 letter may link Akagi to abduction: police

Police suspect that Michiko Akagi, the sister of a Red Army Faction hijacker, is linked to the July 1983 abduction of Keiko Arimoto in Copenhagen after they learned Akagi mailed a letter to her family in Japan from the Danish capital at the same time Arimoto went missing.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Apr 27, 2003

The wandering laptop minstrel

With his long black hair pulled back in a tight, neat ponytail and his pale complexion, electronica musician Nobukazu Takemura has an otherworldly quality somewhere between a computer geek and a monk.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 27, 2003

War vindicates U.N. stance

Are not the scenes of joy and jubilation from Iraq an embarrassing indictment of the United Nations' failure to support the war? Well, no, not really. On the contrary, the course and outcome of the war is a strong vindication of the U.N. stance. To argue that military victory bestows legitimacy is to...
JAPAN
Apr 26, 2003

Electoral vows Koizumi has kept -- and the rest

Following is a summary of the campaign promises that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has kept -- and those he has not:
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 26, 2003

Weaving her way back to harmony with the gods

It was Leo Tolstoy who wrote (in "Anna Karenina"), "Happy families are all the same; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
COMMENTARY
Apr 26, 2003

A Pyrrhic victory in Iraq

When the war in Iraq began March 19, speculation was rife about its likely duration. Predictions ranged from very short (less than 10 days) to fairly long (over a month) to very long (a protracted Vietnam-type war). As it turned out, the fighting effectively ended in a little over three weeks. But it's...
JAPAN
Apr 25, 2003

Marathon trial could have gone on longer

The trial of Aum Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara is unprecedented both in the nature of the crimes involved and the way the court proceedings have progressed.
BUSINESS
Apr 25, 2003

Nissan, Mazda, Toyota saw domestic sales grow in fiscal 2002

Three of the nation's five major automakers saw their domestic sales grow in fiscal 2002, according to figures released Thursday by the firms in question.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 24, 2003

Responding to provocations

SINGAPORE -- In late February and early March, North Korea launched two antiship cruise missiles in the direction of Japan. Japan tried its best to downplay the events. In the first instance, it said the 90-km test did not technically violate the North's moratorium on ballistic-missile tests. After the...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Apr 24, 2003

Happy b'day double helix

This week is the anniversary of what some have called the most important intellectual innovation in human history, the discovery of the structure of DNA. From a paper originally published in Nature on April 25, 1953, DNA has made it into the pantheon of chemical structures instantly known to all members...

Longform

Totopa in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward was picked by consultants TTNE as the best sauna of the year.
Japan’s sauna movement: Relax, refresh, repeat