Mainichi Daily News articles from December 2000

Mainichi Daily News archives from December 2000

Jobless rate hits 4.8%: 3.09 million people still without work.
December 30, 2000... The nation's jobless rate rose 0.1 percent from October through November to a seasonally adjusted 4.8 percent, edging ever closer to the worst postwar figure of 4.9 percent marked earlier this year, the Management and Coordination Agency said...

Jogger set ablaze.
December 30, 2000... YAMAGUCHI -- A man is in critical condition after he was doused with a flammable liquid and set alight while jogging down a road here early Tuesday morning. Police received an emergency call around 6:40 a.m. from a woman who said she saw...

EDITORIAL: Fiscal black magic.
December 30, 2000... The generations responsible for Japan's economic miracle can take pride in many accomplishments. At the top of the list would be the fact that Japan has caught up with the United States and Europe in terms of social capital and the quality of...

Service dog helps disabled Gifu girl attend university.
December 30, 2000... KYOTO -- A 21-year-old wheelchair-bound woman who relies on a service dog to get around became the first such student ever admitted to a university in Japan when she was accepted by Kyoto's Doshisha University last month. Chikako...

Kyoto geisha becomes sommelier.
December 30, 2000... KYOTO -- There was a time not so long ago when wine would never have been served at the traditional establishments that employ geiko, as Kyoto's geisha are known. Today, however, wine is an integral part of the menu at many such...

ALS patient attends Danish meet.
December 30, 2000... AMAGASAKI, Hyogo -- When Toshimi Kumagai traveled to Denmark earlier this month to attend an international medical conference, she took with her a simple message -- people who suffer from incurable diseases can lead productive, fulfilling...

Furthermore: USJ commercial complex to open next March.
December 30, 2000... A commercial complex that will open in late March next year near Universal Studios Japan (USJ) in Konohana-ku, Osaka has been named "Universal CityWalk Osaka." The complex is being built by a consortium of companies led by Sumitomo Corp....

SDF thumbs nose at tender laws.
December 30, 2000... Over 80 percent of defense supply contracts concluded by the Maritime and Air Self-Defense Forces were done so without being put to tender against government recommendations, the Management and Coordination Agency said Tuesday. The study...

Teen killer to get psychiatric help.
December 30, 2000... NAGOYA -- A youth who brutally murdered a housewife because he wanted to "experience killing someone" will receive treatment at a medical reformatory, the Nagoya Family Court decided Tuesday. Judge Yoshihiko Iwata said that the teen,...

Briefly: Girl leaps to her death in downtown Osaka.
December 30, 2000... A 14-year-old girl leaped to her death from a high-rise building in downtown Osaka on Monday, local police said Tuesday. According to police, a passerby found a girl lying on a street just east of Hankyu Grand Building in the Kakudacho...

Briefly: Two killed in Fukui expressway car crash.
December 30, 2000... FUKUI -- Two people were killed and three injured in a collision that occurred Tuesday morning on the snow-covered Hokuriku Expressway, police said. Katsu Nakanishi, 61, and Masayo Kimura, 63, were thrown out of a van they were riding in...

Briefly: Cops collar robber hanging from neon sign.
December 30, 2000... A would-be thief was arrested Tuesday after police found him dangling from the neon sign of an electronics appliance shop in Tokyo's Chiyoda-ku -- after he tried to elude police because he'd triggered the alarm. Police said a 45-year-old...

EDITORIAL: Rethinking aid to China.
December 30, 2000... A panel that advises the chief of the Foreign Ministry's Economic Cooperation Bureau recently completed a report that proposes that Japan should change the way it doles out assistance to China by de-emphasizing the construction of large-scale...

ASIASCOPE: ROK turns into land of Mourning Fury.
December 30, 2000... Were South Korean President Kim Dae-jung to leave office tomorrow, his legacy would depend on who was writing the post-mortem. His supporters are fond of phrases like "roaring back from the brink," a reference to what the economy seemed to be...

ASIASCOPE: Pedophiles rejoice in Cambodia heaven.
December 30, 2000... 'Give me little girls any day. Adult women I feel nothing for. Maybe I'm sick." If he is, it's OK with him. A Japanese salaryman in his late 30s, he is in Phnom Penh to do a little "Lolita shopping," he quite unabashedly tells journalist...

ASDF pilot training slashed: Tight defense budgets reduce flying time.
December 30, 2000... Training hours for Air Self-Defense-Force (ASDF) pilots in managerial positions will be dramatically reduced starting from next fiscal year as part of a five-year program to introduce new equipment and improve overall defense capability,...

Disgraced lawmaker cheated on taxes.
December 30, 2000... Former House of Representatives lawmaker Yojiro Nakajima failed to declare more than 19 million yen in taxable income, including an amount he misappropriated from public subsidies, it was revealed Wednesday. The Tokyo Regional Taxation...

Mori Cabinet plans aid for working mothers.
December 30, 2000... In a bid to improve its flagging popularity, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's Cabinet has decided to place the introduction of support measures for child-rearing working women at the top of its agenda, the Mainichi has learned. A group of...

Briefly: Man nabbed for drugs at Narita.
December 30, 2000... NARITA -- A Nigerian man has been arrested on suspicion of attempting to smuggle marijuana into Japan through Narita Airport earlier this month, customs officers and police here said Wednesday. Kenneth Emoefe Evuarherhe, 34, a factory...

Elderly couple perish in Tokyo blaze.
December 30, 2000... An elderly couple burned to death in a fire that destroyed their Tokyo apartment room in the predawn hours of Wednesday, police said. According to police, a fire broke out in the apartment of Iwao Nagumo, 76, in Arakawa-ku at around 1...

Cops eye suicide in blazing jogger death.
December 30, 2000... YAMAGUCHI -- A man who police initially believed had been murdered after being doused with gasoline and set alight may have committed suicide, police said Wednesday. Investigators said they have found fingerprints on a container and...

Pair steal 1.3 mil. yen from pachinko affiliate.
December 30, 2000... UJI, Kyoto -- A local couple who work for a shop buying pachinko prizes from customers of a nearby pachinko parlor were attacked by a pair of men and robbed of about 1.3 million yen. When Mikio Izumi, 58, an employee of the shop adjacent...

Kumagai Gumi gets 430 bil.yen debt waiver.
December 30, 2000... In one of the largest attempted rescue projects of debt-ridden Japanese big businesses, creditor banks have agreed to forgive debts of 430 billion yen they loaned to Kumagai Gumi Co. Ltd., the president of the second-tier construction company...

EDITORIAL: Work and family.
December 30, 2000... Last year, the Ministry of Health and Welfare caused quite a stir with its campaign to reverse the decline in the birth rate by distributing posters bearing a controversial slogan -- "Men who don't play a role in raising children shouldn't be...

Readers' Forum: Cops and the diesel menace.
December 30, 2000... To the Editor: Having recently been voted "Man Of The Year" in a Japanese poll, Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara should be rightly proud of the stance he has taken against the "diesel menace" we all face once we step outside our front doors....

Readers' Forum: Recovery requires sacrifices from the top.
December 30, 2000... To the Editor: Why can't Japan's top bosses each make a small personal sacrifice to help achieve economic recovery? Over the last eight years the Japanese government has tried to stimulate the economy with measures involving tons of...

Sidelight: Yangtze valley civilization.
December 30, 2000... A boat-shaped coffin carved out of a camphor tree has been unearthed in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in China. It is believed to have been the final resting place for a member or a relative of the royal family of Shu, one of the...

Low-lying Kiribati keeps treasures afloat.
December 30, 2000... A string of far-flung islands stretching across the mid-Pacific, the Republic of Kiribati (formerly the Gilbert and Ellis Islands) in Micronesia hosted the world's first sunrise of the new millennium, and captured one of the largest...

Reel Talk with James Bailey: Shadow of contempt darkens tale of trials.
December 30, 2000... Relentlessly retrograde in his attitude towards women, Danish director Lars Von Trier makes deadpan misogynist William Burroughs look like Susan B. Anthony. With an intensity that is almost frighteningly contemptuous, he has put the...

Cinema Guide: Week of Dec. 30 - Jan. 5.
December 30, 2000... Ai no Corrida 2000 -- Tatsuya Fuji, Eiko Matsuda, Dir.: Nagisa Oshima; drama (Japan-France) Shibuya Cine Amuse East/West: (03) 3496-2888 (Please note there will be no screening with English subtitles this Sunday); Nagoya Cinema Scole:...

Gig Spotlight: Air Jam 2000.
December 30, 2000... Not in the mood for NHK's annual "Kohaku Utagassen" songfest this New Year? Can't get out from under the kotatsu long enough to get to a club? Slip "Air Jam 2000" into your VCR, and you'll get 135 minutes of music and all the heat you can...

Police trumpet anti-stalking law success: Law enforcers arrest 20, warn 86 in 1st month.
December 30, 2000... Police have stepped up their investigations of alleged stalkers since an anti-stalking law went into effect in late November, arresting 20 suspects and warning another 86, the National Police Agency (NPA) revealed Thursday. The new law,...

Failed rescue kills truck driver.
December 30, 2000... OTSUKI, Yamanashi -- A 32-year-old man was fatally run over by a truck while apparently attempting to rescue the driver of another vehicle that his truck had struck on an expressway early Thursday morning, police said. The driver of the...

Cop nabbed for leaking secret info.
December 30, 2000... KYOTO -- Police have sent prosecutors papers accusing a 49-year-old assistant police inspector of leaking the confidential criminal files of three people -- including a gangster -- to a female acquaintance apparently because they owed her...

Prosecutors drop wire-tapping case: Cite lack of evidence in TV Asahi, lawmaker case.
December 30, 2000... Charges that a telephone conversation between a House of Representatives member and a TV Asahi reporter was tapped have been dropped for lack of evidence, prosecutors said Thursday. Social Democratic Party member Nobuto Hosaka and TV...

Appeal abandoned against arsonist.
December 30, 2000... KATSURAGI, Nara -- Prosecutors have given up appeals against a recent Nara District Court ruling that acquitted a man, who was charged with seven counts of purse snatching, breaking and entering as well as arson, in three of the cases. A...

[0] Dance, drama, music & events.
December 28, 2000... EXHIBITIONS The Itami City Museum of Art is holding an exhibition of watercolors by Noble Prize-winning novelist Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) through Jan. 28. Hesse, who was born in Germany and later became a naturalized Swiss citizen, is...

IT revolution means little in everyday life.
December 28, 2000... Despite the Y2K farce of last year-end, information technology (IT) became the buzzword of the year 2000. IT gadgets such as computers and mobile phones connected to the Internet flooded the nation's offices and streets, while the...

Digger's deeds bury book.
December 28, 2000... A respected academic publication on Japanese history is to be withdrawn from bookshelves because it devotes a whole chapter to praising the works of disgraced archaeologist Shinichi Fujimura, some of whose work was exposed as a hoax by the...

Public safety boss quizzed for cover-up.
December 28, 2000... FUKUSHIMA -- A former Fukushima Prefectural Public Safety Commission chief, a police station head and five others will face charges of covering up a drunken driving incident two years ago, officials said on Thursday. The incident was...

EDITORIAL: Reforming NTT.
December 28, 2000... An advisory panel to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications has compiled a report that proposes several measures to reform Nippon Telegraph and Telecommunications (NTT). The report recommends that companies in the NTT Group that command...

North Korea releases picture of leader's 'son'.
December 28, 2000... SEOUL -- A photograph of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and his "son," Kim Jong Nam, has been made public for the first time in the South Korean Joongang Ilbo daily. The picture, said to have been taken in 1981 in Pyongyang, shows the...

Sidelight: No thank you to GM corn.
December 28, 2000... The Japanese word for corn is tomorokoshi indicating that the cereal plant came from far away, for both to and morokoshi refer to Tang, the great dynasty in China that flourished between the seventh and tenth centuries. Whoever named the...

Rambling in Zambia.
December 28, 2000... Zambia is the 'real Africa,' as the travel brochures are fond of saying, a country where... it is possible to have an intimate experience of the primordial and vanishing world that is Africa. As the 727 bucked and jolted in the thermals...

A season of carnage.
December 28, 2000... During the late 1970s and 1980s, poaching was rampant in Zambia's national parks. It is estimated that poachers killed 1,000 elephants a year for their ivory in North Luangwa Park alone, and, by 1986, all 2,000 black rhino there had been...

SkyTeam alliance fuels Air France to greater heights in 2000.
December 28, 2000... The Air France manager for Japan, Korea is in a buoyant mood. Not only in possession of the soccer World Cup, France has recently added the European Championship trophy to its overloaded mantlepiece. But getting down to business, the...

Reel talk with James Bailey: Winners, losers and just plain snoozers.
December 28, 2000... With Christmas just around the corner, it's time to announce who was naughty and who was nice this year. What follows are our candidates for wish list fulfillment and anthracite gift certificates. The 10 Best Films of 2000, In No...

World Music: New Orleans guitarist Jun Yamagishi has ax, will jam.
December 28, 2000... "People say, 'Hey Jun, you don't play the blues no more?' A lot of people ask me that. I don't know what the blues is, actually. I just want to play my own music, my own style," said New Orleans-based guitarist Jun Yamagishi after his...

Gig Spotlight: Amnesty Lights to Rights.
December 28, 2000... While some lucky kids are nestled all snug in their beds with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads, an estimated 30,000 of their peers in more than 30 countries face the daily nightmare of life -- and death -- as child soldiers. To...

Boxer takes swing at asthma: Disease no obstacle for pugilist's title challenge.
December 28, 2000... Atsushi Tamaki knows pain. Both in the ring and out. For besides being a prizewinning boxer, Tamaki, 32, has waged a personal battle all his life to overcome a debilitating asthma condition he was diagnosed with as a child. Now for...

Teacher caned for 'killer' question.
December 28, 2000... NARA -- A local junior high school teacher is in hot water after asking students in an exam to write down two legal ways to kill a person, school officials have said. Officials on Wednesday said 135 students at Nara Ikuei Junior High...

Official burned for moonlighting.
December 28, 2000... A Tokyo Metropolitan Government health official used his annual leave to work for 100 days as a part-time lecturer despite a law banning the practice, it was learned Thursday. The metropolitan government's administrative supervision...

Assembly moves to oust 'violent' member.
December 28, 2000... KYOTANABE, Kyoto -- Exasperated at an assembly member who refused demands for his resignation after assaulting a staffer, the municipal assembly here has decided to give more weight to shove out the unpopular member from the assembly hall....

Ex-bigwigs' 'golden' descents revealed: Disgraced officials sail into cozy private jobs.
December 28, 2000... Top prefectural police officials who resigned or were dismissed over scandals that occurred under their command have landed cushy new positions at private or government-related foundations, it was revealed in a report released earlier this...

Thief kills potential witness during robbery.
December 28, 2000... A 29-year-old man who has been arrested for strangling a woman told police that he murdered her because she saw him break into her home over the weekend. Kunitaka Murase, an unemployed man of no fixed address, admitted, after being...

New Year's letters delivered 2 weeks early.
December 28, 2000... Some 200 New Year's letters have been posted and delivered already -- as they were mistaken for regular mail, officials at a local post office in Tokyo's Bunkyo-ku said Thursday. A letter of apology from the Koishikawa Post Office has...

Tokyo's Ishihara plans to meet with Bush.
December 28, 2000... Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara plans to visit the United States to talk with President-elect George W. Bush after his inauguration, the governor told the Mainichi earlier this week. Ishihara apparently will discuss the status of the U.S....

NTT East warned for DSL obstruction.
December 28, 2000... The Fair Trade Commission has issued a warning to NTT East Corp. for allegedly using its monopoly in eastern Japan to prevent competing companies from entering a new Internet connection market. The commission claimed that NTT East, in...

Nepalese convicted of slaying: High court rejects man's acquittal for woman's murder.
December 28, 2000... In a ruling that has sparked debate on human rights in Japan, the Tokyo High Court on Friday found a Nepalese man guilty of a murder that a lower court had already acquitted him of. Govinda Prasad Mainali, 34, was sentenced to life in...

3 teachers sacked for sex offenses against students.
December 28, 2000... KUMAMOTO -- A 49-year-old elementary school teacher has been sacked after he admitted that he repeatedly molested lower grade school girls in his care, Kumamoto education authorities said. The incidents took place at a public school in...

Family of dead killer cop to get 10 mil. yen payoff.
December 28, 2000... YOKOHAMA -- Family members of a cop who earlier this month brutally murdered his colleague here for spurning his advances and then killed himself are to receive a "retirement bonus" of over 10 million yen from Kanagawa police, it was learned...

Editorial: The scattershot budget.
December 28, 2000... The draft budget for fiscal 2001, the first of the 21st century, could be described most aptly as a rehashing of the budgets that closed out the 20th century. Prior to the drafting of the fiscal 2001 budget, the Fiscal System Council, a...

Carrera y Carrera goes for gold with unique jewelry.
December 28, 2000... Spain conjures up a myriad of images. The dazzling scenery and historical architecture, the vibrant language, history and food leave most visitors waxing lyrical -- with passion, style, flair and elegance the buzz words of most...

Ark of Discovery invaluable for craftsmanship, historical study.
December 28, 2000... "The Ark was created to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the discovery of the Americas," says Manuel Carrera. "It is not just a very important work in terms of craftsmanship, but it is also a very important work in terms of...

Interview: Curtis Knapp, photojournalist.
December 28, 2000... "Prison's Inside Art" (Forward by Timothy Leary) Paperback, 3,000 yen (2000) Aspect Corp. Caged birds--singPrisoners, portraits and a 'punk' photographer By Adrian Smith Staff Writer American photographer Curtis Knapp's most recent...

Youth crime turns violent: NPA finds teen criminals likely to hint at intentions.
December 28, 2000... Crimes committed by teen-agers are becoming increasingly violent, statistics by the National Police Agency (NPA) have indicated. The number of teen-agers who were accused of murder over the January-November period of this year surpassed...

Biting loss.
December 28, 2000... A life-size model of tyrannosaurus, part of a collection that the city of Akita bought for over 40 million yen five years ago, will be sold off to Kumamoto Prefecture with other models for a meager 2.8 million yen, Akita officials said...

Slain student's parents sue Saitama.
December 28, 2000... URAWA -- The parents of a student who was murdered after being stalked by a former boyfriend last year sued the Saitama Prefectural Government on Friday, claiming the prefectural police's mishandling of her libel complaint led to the slaying...

Census shows lowest postwar rise: Populations of Akita, Chugoku and Shikoku drop.
December 28, 2000... The nation's population has increased over the past five years at the lowest rate in the postwar period, reflecting the declining birthrate, it was revealed in a government report Friday. As of October, the nation's total number of...

Suspect outwits cops by stealing their car.
December 28, 2000... BEPPU, Oita -- A suspected thief escaped from questioning police officers by stealing their car and driving away, the Oita Prefectural Police admitted. On Thursday afternoon, two highway police officers stopped a man for questioning at a...

Suspect in woman's murder found dead.
December 28, 2000... The live-in lover of a woman found stabbed to death in her apartment in Tokyo's Shibuya-ku on Thursday was found dead Friday, apparently after committing suicide, police said. A 45-year-old man from Hong Kong, who shared the apartment...

Man nabbed smuggling 350 mil. yen in heroin.
December 28, 2000... A Chinese man has been arrested at Kansai International Airport as he tried to smuggle in some 3.5 kilograms of heroin with an estimated street value of 350 million yen from Hong Kong, customs officials and police said Friday. Cheung...

Vice principal caned for stealing 100,000 yen.
December 28, 2000... YOKOHAMA -- An elementary school vice principal who pocketed 100,000 yen from a bag left accidentally on a train is to be suspended for six months, Kanagawa Prefecture education officials have announced. The Kanagawa Prefectural Board of...

Quake damage-assessment system fails.
December 28, 2000... The government's expensive disaster assessment system failed miserably to estimate damages caused by a huge earthquake that rocked Tottori and surrounding prefectures in October by calculating that the jolt had killed over 200 when in fact no...

Snow Brand to shut suspect Osaka plant.
December 28, 2000... The Snow Brand Milk Products Co. Osaka plant, which was at the center of the mass food-poisoning outbreak in the Kansai region this summer, will be shut down for good on Jan. 31, the dairy giant president, Kohei Nishi, said Friday. Nishi...

Phony Y10,000 notes turn up in Osaka.
December 28, 2000... Five fake 10,000 yen notes have been found in Osaka Prefecture since the middle of this month, the prefectural police said Saturday. It was earlier learned that more than 10 similar counterfeit notes had been found in Hiroshima and...

82.7 tril. yen budget OK'd.
December 28, 2000... The 82.65 trillion yen draft state budget for fiscal 2001 that the government adopted at a Cabinet meeting Sunday calls for the massive use of taxpayers' money to finance pump-priming measures while its reliance on bonds will decrease. ...

Thieves steal Y2 mil. in break and enter.
December 28, 2000... Two men broke into the home of a hospital director in Tokyo on Friday evening and made off with 2 million yen in cash, police said Saturday. At 7:20 p.m., two men rang the doorbell of the home of Masaaki Kanno, 76, in the Kameido...

Exec: Crooked loans cost failed insurer 10 bil. yen.
December 28, 2000... Most of the 10 billion yen that the failed Chiyoda Mutual Life Insurance Co. had extended in illegal loans to a dummy company for a real estate development project is irrecoverable, a former executive has told the Mainichi Shimbun. The...

Editorial: Revamping education.
December 28, 2000... The final report of the National Commission on Educational Reform -- submitted to Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori on Friday -- proposes sweeping changes to Japan's school system, including revisions to the 1947 Fundamental Law of Education that...

Kansai shrines to visit on the New Year.
December 28, 2000... Ise Shrine: The shrine is one of the oldest in Japan and is considered by many the headquarters of the Shinto religion. It is therefore one of the most popular places that Japanese visit during the New Year holidays. Most people visit the...

East: Events/announcements.
December 28, 2000... ANNOUNCEMENTS Japan-Sri Lanka National Council will hold its annual general meeting to celebrate its 10th anniversary on Jan. 7. The meeting will be followed by a party at 6:30 p.m. All Sri Lankans and their families are welcomed....

West: Events/announcements.
December 28, 2000... Ski Slopes in Kansai -- The Kannabe Plateau Kannabe Kogen, or Kannabe Plateau, is one of the resorts for skiing and snowboarding in western Japan. People come also to try the crab meat, a winter delicacy, and enjoy bathing in luxurious...

The World of Bunraku: Bunraku for January.
December 28, 2000... The celebration of the last Christmas of the second millennium and the beginning of the third millennium is a very special event. All of the artists and people working behind the scenes of this traditional performing art that has seen the...