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COMMENTARY / World
Jan 21, 2002

A rightist revival in Europe

LONDON -- For the past five years, the center-left has held the whip hand in Western Europe. Whether in the shape of Prime Minister Tony Blair's New Labour administration in Britain or the more traditionally leftwing Socialist-led government in France, social democracy has ruled in the major countries...
SOCCER / J. League
Jan 21, 2002

Dutch double act reunited at Urawa

SAITAMA -- Former Japan and Jubilo Iwata manager Hans Ooft and former Celtic and Sanfrecce Hiroshima manager Wim Jansen have formed a coaching tag team at the Urawa Reds in an attempt to rebuild the struggling J. League Division One club into a successful outfit.
JAPAN
Jan 21, 2002

Aid group barred from Afghan confab

Peace Winds Japan, a major Tokyo-based nongovernmental organization, said Sunday the Foreign Ministry has barred it from attending a two-day ministerial meeting on the reconstruction of Afghanistan that begins in the capital today.
MORE SPORTS
Jan 21, 2002

Toyota hands Waseda lesson in rugby football

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EDITORIALS
Jan 20, 2002

The Segway's Japanese roots

At the end of December, Emeritus Professor Kazuo Yamafuji of Tokyo's University of Electro-Communications had something interesting to add to the buzz of talk about the Segway Human Transporter, the self-balancing robotic scooter unveiled earlier in the month by U.S. inventor Dean Kamen.
JAPAN
Jan 20, 2002

Entrance exams begin for university hopefuls

Annual preliminary university entrance examinations administered by the government began Saturday at 684 locations nationwide to screen 602,089 applicants with tests in six subjects.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 20, 2002

Lingual skills key to global communication

You would think that four national languages would be enough. Not for the Swiss. Along with German, French, Italian and Romansh, English is making considerable inroads.
JAPAN
Jan 20, 2002

3,000 officers to police Afghan talks

The Metropolitan Police Department will mobilize about 3,000 officers to guard this week's international conference on reconstruction assistance for Afghanistan in Tokyo, MPD officials said.
JAPAN
Jan 20, 2002

American brings kabuki to Japanese as well as foreigners

Mark Oshima never imagined he would appear on a kabuki stage when he first arrived in Japan in 1981, taking a year off from university to write his senior thesis on a theme that had nothing to do with the classical Japanese theater.
BASEBALL / MLB
Jan 20, 2002

Kawajiri taken off roster, wants a move to majors

OSAKA -- Hanshin Tigers right-hander Tetsuro Kawajiri, who has requested that he be put up for a possible auction to the major leagues, has been removed from the roster for spring training, Hanshin officials said Friday.
JAPAN
Jan 20, 2002

Kato's secretary resigns over allegations of tax evasion

Saburo Sato, senior secretary to former Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Koichi Kato, has resigned from Kato's office to take responsibility for a scandal involving allegations of income tax evasion, sources close to Kato said Saturday.
BUSINESS
Jan 20, 2002

Metalworkers' union accepts pay-cut and work-share plan

A labor union for firms in the metal and machinery industries has agreed to accept a work-sharing system in which basic daily pay would be reduced by up to 5 percent for each hour cut from a day's work, union officials said.
JAPAN
Jan 20, 2002

DPJ's Hatoyama vows to challenge Koizumi

Yukio Hatoyama, leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, underlined Saturday his newfound resolve to challenge Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's structural reform drive.
JAPAN
Jan 20, 2002

Man injured by bomb in park trash can

An explosion in a trash can Saturday morning at a park in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward seriously injured a homeless man, police said.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 20, 2002

Building a brighter future for Afghans

WASHINGTON -- The rebuilding of a peaceful Afghanistan requires a commitment to protecting the human rights of all Afghan citizens, including women and ethnic minorities. The International Conference on Reconstruction Assistance to Afghanistan taking place in Tokyo should take action to support the institutions...
BUSINESS
Jan 20, 2002

Bank employee held over fraud

Tokyo police on Saturday arrested a former employee of Dresdner Bank's Tokyo branch on suspicion of swindling about 30 million yen from the bank.
BUSINESS
Jan 20, 2002

Nankai to slash staff, cut pay, close units

OSAKA -- Financially ailing Nankai Electric Railway Co. has unveiled a radical restructuring program, saying it will slash more than 20 percent of its workforce, reduce pay and close down unprofitable subsidiaries.
COMMUNITY
Jan 20, 2002

Tandoori meets takoyaki in Kansai's Little India

KOBE -- The port city of Kobe, with the largest concentration of Americans and Europeans in the Kansai region, a few of whom have lived in Japan since the Taisho Era (1912-1926), has long been known as one of Japan's most Westernized cities.
COMMUNITY
Jan 20, 2002

Japan's homogeneous diversity

More than one in 100 people residing in Japan is a foreign national -- but not all of them are immigrants or expatriates from overseas. Koreans are the largest foreign ethnic group in Japan, numbering some 635,269 persons (or 37.7 percent) of a foreign population put at around 1.7 million. Many are the...
JAPAN
Jan 20, 2002

Ogata expects $5 billion in aid to Afghans

The total amount of money pledged by countries at the upcoming Afghan reconstruction conference in Tokyo will be close to $5 billion over the next 2 1/2 years, Sadako Ogata, Japan's special envoy on Afghanistan and joint chair of the conference, said Saturday.
COMMUNITY
Jan 20, 2002

Kabukicho: where worlds collide

About 1 a.m. on the morning of Sept. 1, 2001, a fire of undetermined origin swept through the No. 56 Myojo Building in Shinjuku's Kabukicho district, resulting in the deaths of 44 people on the upper two floors. While investigators say they have ruled out arson, stories in the tabloid press continue...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 20, 2002

Ladakh: India's timeless Buddhist jewel

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- Once again tensions are mounting on the famous Line of Control that separates India and Pakistan. The crisis brings to mind images from an earlier pilgrimage I made to that area when I visited Ladakh, an almost inaccessible region in the state of Jammu and Kashmir that is known...
JAPAN
Jan 20, 2002

Agencies seek help for Aral Sea

When top officials from dozens of nations and international organizations convene in Tokyo on Monday for two days of discussions on the rebuilding of Afghanistan, they may not be aware that their efforts could spark unintended environmental and political side effects, according to experts.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 20, 2002

Murder and mass suicide? Now that's entertainment

CHUSHINGURA AND THE FLOATING WORLD: The Representation of Kanadehon Chushingura in Ukiyo-e Prints, by David Bell. Richmond, Surrey: Japan Library, 2001. 170 pp. with 41 b/w plates, 45 British pounds (cloth) One spring day in 1701 there was an altercation in Edo Castle. Perceiving insult, a local lord...
COMMUNITY
Jan 20, 2002

When something Western this way came

Like a Yankee daimyo, on Nov. 23, 1857, Townsend Harris made a progress to Edo (now Tokyo) from his residence in Shimoda on the Izu Peninsula. Proceeded by an American flag made of Japanese crepe, Harris, on horseback, was escorted by a guard of six whose costumes bore the coat-of-arms of the United...
JAPAN
Jan 20, 2002

Kyoto pact bills head for the Diet

The government will submit three bills to the ordinary Diet session that convenes Monday to realize Japan's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on curbing global warming, government sources said Saturday.
CULTURE / Music
Jan 20, 2002

Blonde Redhead: Melody of the inexpressible

New York's Blonde Redhead is an excellent reminder of what made "indie" rock independent in the first place. Trying to pin them down, to encapsulate their music in a pithy phrase or two is, to quote the title of their fourth album, like trying to give "an expression of the unexpressible."

Longform

Sociologist Gracia Liu-Farrer argues that even though immigration doesn't figure into Japan's autobiography, it is more of a self-perception than a reality.
In search of the ‘Japanese dream’