Mainichi Daily News articles from April 2002

Mainichi Daily News archives from April 2002

Financial services agency was out to lunch.
April 15, 2002... Computer glitches are continuing to wreak havoc on Mizuho Bank's automatic settlement operations. With each passing day, it is becoming more apparent that the new bank, which was launched on April 1, got off to a late start in combining the...

Giants' Matsui still undecided about major leagues.
April 13, 2002... Tokyo Giants' slugger Hideki Matsui is still undecided on whether to follow the path of Seattle Mariners star Ichiro Suzuki and play in the U.S. major leagues, he said Saturday. Many baseball fans in Japan have been interested in Matsui's...

Man snared over mummified body.
April 12, 2002... FUNABASHI, Chiba -- The former lover of a woman whose badly decomposed boy was discovered in the closet of an apartment he owns has been arrested for her murder, police said. Takashi Sato was arrested for murder after he allegedly...

Gangster busted over sex shop slaying.
April 12, 2002... FUKUOKA -- A member of Japan's biggest underworld syndicate has been arrested for the murder of a Fukuoka sex shop operator, police said Friday. Daisuke Nakamura, 28, a member of the Yamaguchi-gumi, was arrested for the murder last year...

Mizuho bigwigs under pressure to give up retirement pay.
April 12, 2002... The former heads of the three banks that formed the problem-plagued Mizuho financial group are under pressure to give up their retirement pay to take responsibility for the automatic teller machine (ATM) blunder that has inconvenienced...

Tokyo residents lose suit over US aircraft noise.
April 12, 2002... Residents in western Tokyo lost a damages suit over aircraft noise at the U.S. Yokota Air Base because the American military's operations are "beyond Japan's judicial rights," the Supreme Court ruled Friday. In the damages suit,...

Toward an East Asian free-trade agreement.
April 12, 2002... Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi announced at the Boao Forum for Asia on the Chinese island of Hainan that the Japanese government would expand its economic cooperation with its Asian neighbors. The announcement at the economic conference...

Kato must come clean to restore trust in politics.
April 11, 2002... Testifying before the House of Representatives Budget Committee as an unsworn witness on Monday, Koichi Kato, a former secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), announced that he would resign his Diet seat to take...

Tokyo gives green light to environment-friendly trucks.
April 11, 2002... It's late at night in Tokyo, but the Metropolitan Tsukiji Central Wholesale Market in Chuo-ku is buzzing with activity. For hundreds of truckers arriving from all over Japan in their diesel-powered vehicles, however, it's the start of...

2 jobless men arrested for dumping body of ex-boss.
April 11, 2002... ICHIKAWA, Chiba -- Two jobless men have been arrested for dumping the body of their former employer whose was found on the shore of the coast here late last month, police said Thursday. Chitaru Ryu, 24, of no fixed address, and Naohito...

Senior police officers found guilty of drug cover-up.
April 11, 2002... TOYAMA -- A former Toyama Prefectural Police chief and a former senior officer evaded imprisonment even though they were convicted Thursday of hushing up drug abuse by a man who was cooperating with the force in an investigation. The...

Salaryman found beat up in front of station dies.
April 11, 2002... A company employee who was found lying unconscious near a Tokyo railway station Saturday morning died at a hospital in the predawn hours of Thursday, police said. Investigators said they suspect that Hiroshi Hasegawa, 43, of Adachi-ku,...

US won't bend on steel tariffs.
April 11, 2002... The showdown talks between Japan and the United States over Washington's controversial decision to slap tariffs of up to 30 percent on imported steel made no progress, government officials said. During Thursday's meeting in Tokyo,...

Fingerprint fails to finger thief.
April 11, 2002... NAGOYA -- A man was declared not guilty of robbery Tuesday by the Nagoya District Court following a long legal battle that centered on one of his fingerprints found at the scene of the crime. A jubilant Takashi Aoyama had long held that...

Tokyo cabby slain, robbed.
April 11, 2002... A Tokyo taxi driver was robbed and brutally murdered before his killer shoved the corpse into the trunk of his car, police said Sunday. Yusuke Yamaguchi's body was found Saturday night in his car, which had been parked on the side of a...

Moscow refuses territory talks by Japan's rules.
April 11, 2002... MOSCOW -- In a diplomatic fiasco, Moscow has forced Japan to scrap its long-running strategy in a dispute over Russian-held islands by dismissing the nation's negotiation framework out of hand, officials said Thursday. Now that Russia...

FTC to put brakes on Japan Airlines, JAS merger.
April 11, 2002... Planned business integration by Japan Airlines (JAL), and Japan Air Systems Co. (JAS), the nation's first and third biggest airlines, could constitute violation of anti-monopoly laws, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) has declared. In...

Porn producer convicted over sneaky bathing videos.
April 11, 2002... A porn video producer was slapped with a suspended jail sentence Thursday for selling secretly filmed images of women taking a bath. Presiding Judge Nobuyuki Kiguchi said the soft-porn maker, Kengo Ariyoshi, was guilty of violating the...

Pakistani President Musharraf expounds on regional affairs.
April 11, 2002... Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's primary mission in Japan during his four-day visit is apparently to receive debt relief on Japanese loans, but he is also sharing views on developments in his region. In a press conference in Tokyo...

Cops searched for Kitakyushu captor couple for years.
April 11, 2002... KITAKYUSHU -- Police searched vainly for years for a mysterious couple accused of murdering a man and torturing his daughter while they kept her prisoner for years, the Mainichi learned Thursday. Futoshi Matsunaga and Junko Ogata were...

19 hurt in Yokohama apartment block blaze.
April 11, 2002... YOKOHAMA -- Nineteen people were hospitalized Sunday after their apartment block was struck by a fire started after an old man forgot to turn off his heater, police said. Residents of the Chambour Isesaki apartments panicked when they...

Sick e-mailer faces charges.
April 11, 2002... A man who sent a "joke" e-mail to a friend claiming his plane had been hijacked just days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States may be charged after Japan Airlines (JAL) filed a criminal complaint against him. JAL...

Man kills father for not getting pocket money.
April 11, 2002... ANAN, Tokushima -- A man has been arrested for unleashing a fatal attack on his father for refusing to give him pocket money, police said Saturday. Hiroshi Yoshinaga, 26, was arrested for the murder of his 67-year-old father, Yoshiyuki...

Cabby throttles ex-wife.
April 11, 2002... KASHIWA, Chiba -- A man was arrested Saturday for strangling his ex-wife and torching her remains two years after their bitter divorce, police said. Kazuo Ebihara, 45, a taxi driver from Tone, Ibaraki Prefecture, was arrested for the...

Kato owes Japanese people an explanation.
April 11, 2002... Koichi Kato officially resigned from the Liberal Democratic Party on Monday. The former LDP secretary-general says he decided to leave the ruling party because he has a "moral and political responsibility" for crimes committed by his...

Man stabs self to death in front of police.
April 10, 2002... YOTSUKAIDO, Chiba -- A man killed himself by stabbing his own stomach Tuesday evening immediately after police officers showed him a search warrant accusing him of possessing stimulants, police said Wednesday. At around 6:20 p.m., police...

2 die in Chiba fire.
April 10, 2002... TONOSHO, Chiba -- Two people died in a fire that burned down a house here in the predawn hours of Wednesday, police said. At around 3:50 a.m., a fire broke out at the home of Keiko Miyazawa, 45, in the Oma district of Tonosho, and burned...

Tokyu Agency concealed 1 bil. yen in income.
April 10, 2002... Tokyu Agency Inc., a Tokyo-based major advertising agency, failed to declare about 1 billion yen in income over a five-year period until March 2001, sources close to the case said Wednesday. The Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau has...

Foul play suspected in death of jobless man in Utsunomiya.
April 10, 2002... UTSUNOMIYA -- A jobless man who was found dead Tuesday in his apartment here had been assaulted, police said Wednesday. The caretaker of the Imamiyaso apartment in the Imamiya district of Utsunomiya visited Haruo Akutsu, 59, in his...

Sony Life Insurance looks at tie-up to survive.
April 10, 2002... Sony Life Insurance Co. is in talks with American and European firms for a capital tie-up to help it develop and survive, officials of the company said. Although the officials didn't name the firms they were in talks with, industry...