Mainichi Daily News articles from November 2000, page 4

Mainichi Daily News archives from November 2000

Asiascope: Odor of trade wars wafts over S. Korea.
November 16, 2000... A Seoul dealer in brand-name goods waxes eloquent on the subject of Chinese tourists. "There are lots of them these days, and they really know their brands," he tells foreign affairs analyst Yoichi Funabashi, whose World Briefing column...

Courts up heat on corporate raider: Share price manipulator fingered for second scam.
November 16, 2000... A corporate raider arrested Tuesday for setting up a fake takeover of a top restaurant chain also tried to manipulate the share price of an audiovisual equipment company years earlier, prosecutors said Wednesday. Yoshikazu Horibe...

Homeless shelter riles Osakans.
November 16, 2000... Opposing a municipal government plan to build a temporary shelter for homeless people in Osaka's Nagai Park, about 50 local residents stood blocking the gate of the construction site Wednesday morning to prevent building materials from being...

JR Tokai displays wrong fares.
November 16, 2000... Fares for 66 destinations displayed on signs at 17 stations under the jurisdiction of Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai) were incorrect, company officials said Wednesday. The announcement came only days after East Japan Railway Co. (JR...

Tokyo to see 'AIDS-friendly' dentists.
November 16, 2000... The Tokyo Metropolitan Government will from next fiscal year designate some 60 dental clinics in the metropolitan area as "AIDS-cooperative dental treatment clinics," officials said. The move, which is intended to help HIV-infected...

Mother kills child for 'not listening'.
November 16, 2000... SAGA -- A 31-year-old woman has been arrested apparently after she bound her 3-year-old son and brutally battered him to death because he wouldn't listen to her, police said Wednesday. Paramedics received an emergency call sometime past 6...

Gov't slackers lose free lunch.
November 16, 2000... A number of officials of the Osaka Municipal Government's payroll department skipped work halfway through the day on the last day of work last year, sources have revealed. In doing so, they defied a local government instruction to stop...

Briefly: Police arrest Sumitomo Bank swindler.
November 16, 2000... KADOMA, Osaka -- Police on Wednesday arrested a former Sumitomo Bank deputy branch manager who is suspected of swindling customers out of 27 million yen in deposits. Toshifumi Mashiko, 37, former deputy manager of the Sumitomo Bank's...

Takemura mulls bid for Upper House.
November 16, 2000... Opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) leader Yukio Hatoyama has asked former Finance Minister Masayoshi Takemura to run in the next House of Councillors election on its ticket through the proportional representation system, party sources...

Osaka cops seek bat-wielding robber.
November 16, 2000... Police are looking for a bat-wielding robber who assaulted three women and robbed them of a total of 250,000 yen in a street in Osaka in the predawn hours on Wednesday. According to police, at around 2:45 a.m., a 29-year-old restaurant...

Editorial: Piling up more debt.
November 15, 2000... The Cabinet approved a supplementary budget for fiscal 2000 on Friday. The budget allocates funds to promote information technology (IT) and fund environmental and elderly care policies, and also provides outlays for the national revival...

Sidelight: All eyes on Florida.
November 15, 2000... I was watching a satellite TV program on the deepening confusion over the U.S. presidential election when a newscaster was heard saying, "There's no hurry. They have until Jan. 20 next year to pick the new president." The inauguration...

Miho Museum opens world of Shirasu.
November 15, 2000... Museums often focus on late novelists and hold exhibitions featuring their publications and personal belongings. Usually, these exhibitions give only a glimpse of the life of the writers unless the visitor has a deep knowledge of the author....

Hizen fires up world of yakiniku.
November 15, 2000... The Humax Group bandwagon rolls on. Regular readers of this space will doubtless recall Kai Ruthrof's missive on the fishy delights of Sashimi-ya and possibly this writer's venture down to Odaiba to check the sophisticated world of Tokyo...

Art Bites: Guggenheim mulls museum in Brazil.
November 15, 2000... A Guggenheim museum on Copacabana beach? It could happen, says museum director Thomas Krens. "It's kind of some place between a kind of done deal and a scouting expedition," Krens said Friday when asked about reports in the Brazilian...

Art Bites: Cache of Cassatts displayed for 1st time.
November 15, 2000... A century-old collection of 204 artworks by the American Impressionist Mary Cassatt is seeing the light of day almost for the first time. Houston's Meredith Long and Co. and New York's Adelson Galleries opened the first exhibit of the pieces....

Gum smokes the patch.
November 15, 2000... So you've stopped smoking, at least for now. But when the urge to puff away arises again, how do you extinguish that cigarette once and for all -- how do you fight that craving to suck in some smoke and satisfy that nicotine addiction? ...

Donated sperm, ova to get in vitro OK.
November 15, 2000... Infertility treatments that utilize sperm and ova donated by parties from outside of a marriage, as well as implantation of embryos produced with those gametes in vitro, will be widely available when guidelines being finalized by a Health...

Kato campaign to unseat Mori gains ground.
November 15, 2000... The bold campaign of Koichi Kato, a former secretary-general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), to remove faux pas king Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori from his throne gained momentum Monday as another LDP faction leader promised to...

JR East apologizes for fare-listing blunders.
November 15, 2000... Fares for at least 290 destinations, posted on signs at 147 stations under the jurisdiction of East Japan Railway Co. (JR East) have been labeled incorrectly for the past 31/2years, it was learned Monday. JR East officials discovered 145...

US pilots eject after collision off Hokkaido.
November 15, 2000... OTARU, Hokkaido -- Two U.S. F-16 fighter jets collided in mid-air and crashed into the Sea of Japan off southwestern Hokkaido early Monday during a Japan-U.S. joint drill, Defense Agency officials said. Both U.S. pilots ejected directly after...

Tokyo official suspected in bribe case: Politician's secretary nabbed last week on similar charges.
November 15, 2000... A Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly member whose secretary has been arrested for receiving illegal commission fees under a government loan-guarantee program may have also received unlawful payments, investigative sources have said. Assembly...

Man arrested for trying to blackmail Giants.
November 15, 2000... A 31-year-old man was arrested on Monday for apparently trying to extort 10 million yen from the Yomiuri Giants baseball club over a sex scandal involving slugger Akira Eto. Eiichi Hirano, a leading member of a right-wing political...

Ex-Dietman pleads guilty to fraud.
November 14, 2000... Shamed former Diet member Joji Yamamoto pleaded guilty to fraud charges Friday as his trial opened at the Tokyo District Court. Yamamoto, once seen as a young star of the nation's political circles, apologized profusely for ripping off...

Kato says unpopular Mori should resign.
November 14, 2000... Koichi Kato, a Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) kingpin who aspires to succeed Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, on Friday made controversy within the ruling party by saying that unpopular Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori should resign. "We cannot...

Man sues male boss over 'sex attacks': Company chairman admits touching worker to 'relieve stress'.
November 14, 2000... FUKUOKA -- A young man in his 20s has sued the company he worked for, accusing its septuagenarian male chairman of sexually harassing him, sources said Friday. Sickened by the lecherous sex attacks of the man in his 70s, the 24-year-old...

Cabinet OKs 4.78 trillion yen extra budget.
November 14, 2000... In order to bolster the still sluggish economic recovery, the Cabinet approved Friday a 4.78 trillion yen supplementary budget for the current fiscal year, a large chunk of which is covered by the ever-increasing national debt. The...

Editorial: IY Bank ushers in fresh air.
November 14, 2000... Ito-Yokado Co. on Monday applied to the Financial Reconstruction Commission (FRC) for a preliminary license to open a bank. If the FRC's screening proceeds smoothly, Ito-Yokado could be permitted to begin operations of its bank, to be called...

kyushu grand sumo tournament: Kaio cuts 1 down: Miyabiyama stays in lead with two yokozuna.
November 14, 2000... Local hero Kaio thinned the top rank in the battle for sumo supremacy in Kyushu after he sent Dejima to a loss on Friday. The victory for the ozeki, a native of Fukuoka, left him tied in the traffic jam for second position with a 5-1...

Lazy cops left abductor untouched on: Woman's alleged attacker only arrested after Mainichi pushes police to act.
November 14, 2000... HIROSHIMA -- Lazy police officers apparently refused to help a female stalking victim, lying about the case, ignoring repeated complaints and allowing her captor to remain on the loose for four months -- acting only after prompting from the...

Terrorists plotted to form united front: Japanese Red Army looked at China base.
November 14, 2000... Exiled radicals met regularly in foreign safe havens from the late-'70s, possibly to set up an overseas-based Japanese terrorist organization, public safety commission officials revealed Friday. The terrorists were probably considering...

Fan-tastic.
November 14, 2000... Matsuko Ishizumi sits in front of her 4-meter-wide giant fan at her Kyoto home earlier this week. She intends to donate the Meiji Era (1873-1912) fan, which was crafted by her fan-making ancestors, to the British Museum in London.

Tokai nuclear plant to reopen.
November 14, 2000... TOKAI, Ibaraki -- An accident-ridden nuclear fuel reprocessing plant here is slated to reopen nearly four years after a 1997 explosion -- to the mixed reactions of local residents still reeling from the nation's worst nuclear disaster at...

Dirty diggers dealt another credibility blow.
November 14, 2000... SAPPORO -- The nation's reeling archaeological academics have suffered another blow with a scholar admitting that he did not bother to check the age of soil that artifacts were dug up from before boasting they were 500,000 years old. ...

School hopes to fix jobless woes.
November 14, 2000... Jobless workers fighting the weak economy can now turn to a school run by the unemployed for help to get back into the workforce. Tokyo's unemployed worker's union on Thursday opened the school in Suginami-ku where the jobless will be...

Lottery punter bags 400 mil. yen jackpot.
November 14, 2000... The first prize winner of the LOTO 6 lottery collected a 400 million yen jackpot -- the highest lottery prize money ever in the nation, officials have announced. Sales of LOTO 6 started last month and the lottery takes place every...

Yomiuri Giants star grilled over sex scandal.
November 14, 2000... Yomiuri Giants player Akira Eto was questioned as a witness on Friday after an unnamed political organization allegedly tried to extort 10 million yen from the baseball club over a sex scandal involving the slugger and an unidentified woman...

Ex-minister's bribery conviction upheld.
November 14, 2000... Former Administrative Vice Health Minister Nobuharu Okamitsu is guilty of accepting some 60 million yen in bribes from a nursing home operator, the Tokyo High Court ruled Friday in upholding a lower court decision. Okamitsu, 61, was...

Rightists force school to can China trip.
November 14, 2000... TSUKIGASE, Nara -- Faced with enraged protests from a rightist group, a local municipal school here decided to cancel an annual school trip to China, it was revealed on Friday. Although the head of the board of education in Tsukigase...

Job chances brighten for graduates.
November 14, 2000... Job prospects for university graduates appear slightly rosier for the first time in three years, according to reports by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Labor. The unofficial percentage of next year's graduates who secured...

Rape suspect admits meeting Blackman.
November 14, 2000... Alleged rapist Joji Obara on Friday admitted having met missing Briton Lucie Blackman, but denied having anything to do with her disappearance. He is under arrest on suspicion of molesting a foreign woman, and has been grilled over the...

Exclusive: Celebrities cozying up to gangsters: Entertainers' attendance at wedding stirs controversy.
November 14, 2000... Revelations that more than 10 singers, actors and TV personalities attended the wedding reception of a daughter of a gang boss late last month have sparked a storm of controversy over celebrities' ties with gangsters. While some...

2,800 foreign students go missing.
November 14, 2000... Nearly 3,000 foreigners who entered Japan under government-sponsored or private company-organized training programs went missing between 1994 and 1999, the Mainichi has learned. Many of them are thought to still be in the country, working...

WAIWAI: Da Capo puts the spotlight: On the colorful history of ever-changing Kabukicho.
November 14, 2000... Is Kabukicho losing its virtue? It seems so, says Da Capo (11/15). There are those who would demur that Tokyo's favorite adult playground, located in Shinjuku north of Yasukuni Dori, hadn't much virtue to lose. That depends on what you mean...

Cops probing student job scam.
November 14, 2000... A group that led about 80 Chinese students to believe they would be given part-time jobs has swindled the students out of a total of 12 million yen, police said on Saturday. Police said a man introducing himself as the president of a...

Red Army leader linked to '96 rally.
November 14, 2000... Japanese Red Army leader Fusako Shigenobu, arrested last week for alleged involvement in the group's seizure of the French Embassy in the Netherlands, may have visited North Korea in 1996, public safety officials said. The officials said...

Airport raises that sinking feeling.
November 14, 2000... The operator of Kansai International Airport on a man-made island off southern Osaka Prefecture will likely revise upward its prediction of the pace of the ground's subsidence, company sources have said. The semigovernmental Kansai...

Kato's attack on Mori throws LDP into chaos.
November 14, 2000... The governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was thrown into chaos after non-mainstream faction leader Koichi Kato hinted Friday of his bid to unseat Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori. Legislators belonging to the Kato faction who are staying...

Historic movie theater flickers back to life.
November 14, 2000... Bungeiza, a historic movie theater that was demolished in 1997 to make way for an amusement company's new building, is getting a new lease of life. The theater, which once stood at a site in the busy Ikebukuro district of Tokyo's...

Drowning lands whirlpool maker in trouble.
November 14, 2000... The government has begun questioning officials of a whirlpool bath manufacturer after a girl was found dead with her hair sucked into the drain of the company's product earlier this year, officials said on Saturday. It is unknown whether...

Cops suspect foul play in forest deaths.
November 14, 2000... URAWA -- Saitama Prefectural Police began investigations on Saturday to identify two bodies they found in a forest after receiving a call from a passerby, officials said. Officials at the Yorii Police Station said that they suspect the...

Late-night train kills Saitama cow.
November 14, 2000... RANZAN, Saitama -- A Tobu Tojo Line train was forced to return to a station here Saturday after it collided with and killed a cow that had strayed onto the tracks, police officials said. The officials said an express train hit the cow at...

Enka singer's hubby nabbed for drugs.
November 14, 2000... The husband of noted enka singer Miyuki Kawanaka has been arrested for allegedly possessing illegal drugs, Tokyo's Shibuya Police Station said. Kazuo Yamada, 42, an employee of the Osaka-based Kansai Telecasting Corp., was nabbed in...

Nakagawa sues weekly magazine Focus.
November 14, 2000... Former Chief Cabinet Secretary Hidenao Nakagawa has filed a libel suit with prosecutors against the managing editor of the weekly magazine Focus, saying that pictures and articles carried in the publication defamed him. Focus, published...

Waiwai: Face of the weeklies.
November 14, 2000... If, as Shukan Gendai (11/18) says, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori has "zero sense of crisis," why should the rest of us worry? The country is being run on bluff and bravado, and Weekly Playboy (11/21), for one, thinks it's rather amusing. If...

Editorial: Anti-graft bill loopholes.
November 14, 2000... The private secretaries of two politicians were arrested on Thursday for abusing a government loan-guarantee program designed to rescue smaller businesses from the credit crunch. The two aides are charged with accepting illegal commissions...

Aides to politicians nabbed for loan misdeeds.
November 11, 2000... The secretaries of two politicians were arrested Thursday on suspicion of abusing a government loan-guarantee program by accepting illegal commissions for their roles in helping small businesses obtain loan guarantees. Kazuhiko Nunokawa,...

59-year-old woman KOs knife-wielding burglar.
November 11, 2000... MATSUBARA, Osaka -- A 59-year-old woman became a hero here Thursday after she fought off a knife-wielding burglar who threatened the life of her daughter, police said. The elderly woman smashed the assailant's head against a wall,...

Tottori voluntarily discloses cops' partying expenses.
November 11, 2000... TOTTORI -- The Tottori Prefectural Government on Thursday became the first prefectural government in the nation to voluntarily disclose the details of the food and travel expenses of its police force. The Miyagi and Shiga prefectural...

EDITORIAL: Arrest of terrorist leader.
November 11, 2000... Fusako Shigenobu, the 55-year-old leader of the terrorist Japanese Red Army, was arrested on Wednesday in Osaka. Her father, a former teacher who participated in the Blood League Incident of 1932, told her to "come back as the sky" when she...

Sidelight: Survivors of a grueling race.
November 11, 2000... Diplomats may be silver-tongued at formal functions, but they can be quite sarcastic on informal occasions. A European diplomat reportedly compared the U.S. presidential election to a choice "between the Terminator and Charlie Brown."...

TRAVEL: Amazing Africa - The continent's wildlife and pristine nature attract visitors from all around the world.
November 11, 2000... A certain excitement was building in the group I was traveling with at least three days prior to our first game drive. The conversation had taken a turn to one of travel's greatest attributes: anticipation. When the moment of that first...

Reel Talk with James Bailey: Numbers add up in youth saga "9-Nine".
November 11, 2000... Kotaro Takada is an impossibly lanky, no-hipped actor with the most Serious Hair this side of "Blonde on Blonde"-era Bob Dylan. It's a pity and a shame whenever he has to open his mouth and deliver a line, but, fortunately, his role in...

Latest buzzword in rock: Husking Bee could spell it out for you, but that would be too easy.
November 11, 2000... 'I don't like it when something's too simple," declares Husking Bee guitarist and vocalist Masafumi Isobe. "It's better if you have to work it out." The something in question is his band's name, which isn't just another one of those...

World Music: There's just no stopping Cuba's comeback kids.
November 11, 2000... Many a musician has attempted a comeback in their ripe old 40s only to fade into often well-deserved oblivion, but few have made the transition as successfully as Cuba's Compay Segundo. His reappearance on the music scene, largely engineered...

Cinema Guide: Week of Nov. 11 - 17.
November 11, 2000... Angela's Ashes (Angela no Hai) -- Emily Watson, Robert Carlyle, Dir.: Alan Parker; drama (U.S.-Ireland) Yurakucho Hibiya Chanter Cine: (03) 3591-1511; Shinjuku Cinema Qualite: (03) 3354-5670; Osaka OS Gekijo: (06) 6311-2478; Kobe...

Gig Spotlight.
November 11, 2000... A band that's got the staying power to last 20 years and still sound vital is the kind of outfit that inspires almost religious devotion among its fans. So, go ahead and get religion -- Bad Religion. Pioneers of the melo-core sound long...

Kyushu grand sumo tournament: Good planning keeps Miyabiyama on top.
November 11, 2000... It pays to always have a Plan B. Just ask Miyabiyama. After having run roughshod over four straight foes using his Plan A, a strong thrusting attack, Miyabiyama finally met an immovable object in Hayateumi Thursday. No problem. With...

$13 mil. bid for Ichiro.
November 11, 2000... KOBE -- Batting champion Ichiro Suzuki's dream of playing Major League Baseball has come 13.12 million steps closer, according to Orix BlueWave officials Thursday. An MLB team has bid 13.12 million dollars for the exclusive right to...

Wife beats adulterous hubby dead dead: Woman admits to wielding frying pan in fatal attack.
November 11, 2000... YOKOHAMA -- A woman who killed her cheating husband by repeatedly and viciously bashing him with a frying pan has been arrested, police said Thursday. Housewife Keiko Hirai unleashed a savage outburst against her husband, Hiromitsu,...

Osaka radicals tied to terrorist boss.
November 11, 2000... Terrorist Fusako Shigenobu appears to have been supported for decades by a band of die-hard Osaka radicals in frequent trips in and out of the country, police said Thursday. Though investigators have not disclosed why Shigenobu returned...

Tokyo politico busted for child sex.
November 11, 2000... A municipal assembly member from Tokyo who paid for videotaped sex romps with teen-age prostitutes was arrested Thursday for breaking the law banning child prostitution and child pornography, police said. Arrested together with Edogawa...

Diet uploads IT legislation.
November 11, 2000... As part of ongoing all-out government efforts for the nation to become an information technology (IT) superpower, the House of Representatives on Thursday passed a bill designed to make "cheap, quick" access to the Internet available. ...

Helicopter ride ends tragically.
November 11, 2000... TAKASU, Gifu -- Two men died when their helicopter crashed into a golf course here Thursday just hundreds of meters from a landing field, police said. The pilot of the two-seater craft, Yuichiro Sugiyama, and Makoto Saito, the co-pilot,...

Ex-bigwig handed friend 200 mil.yen of bilked funds.
November 11, 2000... The arrested former president of a Labor Ministry-linked foundation apparently forked out a whopping 200 million yen of embezzled funds as a "monthly allowance" to a woman friend over the last 20 years, sources familiar with the organization...

Apologetic Tokyo husband kills self, spouse.
November 11, 2000... A broke suburban Tokyo man killed his disabled wife, then hanged himself, begging his neighbors to forgive him for causing a disturbance, police said Thursday. Minoru Tanabe, a 53-year-old president of a company burdened with hundreds of...

Man blames debts for strangling aged mom.
November 11, 2000... A Tokyo man who strangled his octogenarian mother but gave up his planned attempt at suicide was arrested Thursday, police said. The suspect, Yukio Yamamoto, admitted using a towel to choke to death his 87-year-old mother, Motoe, as she...

Lawman faces heat after beating foreigner.
November 11, 2000... NIIGATA -- A police officer who bashed a Pakistani student because he wrongly believed him to be in the country illegally faces charges, police said Thursday. Niigata Prefectural Police are poised to send documents to prosecutors...

Cops claim scourge of hostesses behind bars.
November 11, 2000... KOBE -- A man suspected of doping and robbing hostesses throughout the nation has been arrested, police said Thursday. Manabu Seno was arrested for robbery after he allegedly drugged senseless a hostess from a swank club in Ginza, stole...

Kiddie-snatcher gets 7 years in slammer.
November 11, 2000... FUKUOKA -- An "inherently twisted" man who has carried out a series of abductions and bashings of little girls over decades has been put behind bars. Tadashi Kubo was convicted by the Fukuoka District Court of abduction, kidnapping and...

Skeletal remains ID'd as stray pensioner.
November 11, 2000... FUKUOKA -- Badly decomposed remains found in a Fukuoka Prefecture pine forest last month were confirmed by DNA tests Thursday as belonging to missing pensioner Utako Fujio, police said. Bloodstains surrounded the area where 70-year-old...

Ex-Yomiuri catcher escapes sex charges.
November 11, 2000... MIYAZAKI -- Axed Yomiuri Giants catcher Naoki Sugiyama escaped a sex crime indictment after paying his victim hush money to drop the charges, prosecutors said Thursday. The Miyazaki District Public Prosecutors Office allowed shamed...

Red Army founder nabbed in Osaka.
November 10, 2000... Fusako Shigenobu, the Japanese Red Army founder, who was an instrumental figure in a series of bloody international terrorist acts in the 1970s, was arrested in Takatsuki, Osaka Prefecture, on Wednesday, police said. Shigenobu, 55, was...

ASIASCOPE: Posing 2nd thoughts on E. Timor.
November 10, 2000... Much is made, in reports out of East Timor, of the stark contrast between history and scenery, the latter idyllic, the former a 500-year nightmare from which even the awakening crackles in flames. A long and brutal Portuguese occupation was...