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JAPAN
Dec 23, 2000

Sanctions eased for Iraq, Yugoslavia

Japan has decided to partially ease economic sanctions against Iraq for humanitarian reasons and lift sanctions against Yugoslavia due to democratic reforms there, Foreign Minister Yohei Kono said Friday.
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 23, 2000

Anything but ordinary

With the title "Raj Packet -- Everything But Ravi," you can't help but be curious about the performance. "Raj" possibly indicates something to do with British sovereignty over India in the last century;"packet" could be compendium, maybe a selection box of performance chocolates; "everything" as in "everything...
CULTURE / Art
Dec 23, 2000

Freshly packaged desires on sale at Parco's "Point of Purchase"

Visually speaking, "Point of Purchase" has to be the busiest art exhibition in Tokyo at the moment. The pageantry of graffiti tags-cum-advertising signs is a lot of things: a throwback to yesterday's dorky company logos; a reminder that advertising is far more insidious these days; and a warning that...
JAPAN
Dec 23, 2000

Mother's death stands out in Emperor's remembrance

The Emperor said he was greatly supported by the Empress during the "busy and heavy-hearted days" after his mother died in June.
JAPAN
Dec 23, 2000

Muroto taps nearby depths to get competitive edge

MUROTO, Kochi Pref. -- At first glance, it is hard to see what the following products have in common: bottled water, miso paste, bread, snacks and skin lotion.
COMMENTARY
Dec 23, 2000

Robert Downey's problem is not criminal

Drugs can exercise a powerful hold over the human person. Witness American actor Robert Downey, Jr.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 23, 2000

Volunteerism: not just a Western idea

Even before global observance of the International Year of Volunteers begins in January, Japanese are deeply involved in a search for the spirit of international volunteerism. Some insist that it is based on the wisdom of Oriental thought.
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Dec 23, 2000

A life fired by devotion to ceramics

Many a foreign Japanese pottery scholar or collector owes a great debt to the life and work of Fujio Koyama (1900-1975). He wrote countless books and articles and some were fortunately translated into English; they are still a great source of knowledge and pleasure. These include the wonderful "The Heritage...
COMMENTARY
Dec 23, 2000

Cabinet reshuffle solves little

Just a week remains until the curtain comes down on the 20th century. We are, in the true sense of the phrase, at the end of a century. Words like fin de siecle and millennium tend to be tossed about, but this year really can only be described as one of end-of-the-century blues.
BASEBALL / MLB
Dec 23, 2000

Giants give Kiyohara 20 million yen raise

Infielder Kazuhiro Kiyohara agreed Thursday to a 20 million yen pay hike and signed a new one-year deal with the Japan Series champion Yomiuri Giants worth an estimated 300 million yen.
EDITORIALS
Dec 22, 2000

Punishing 'a haven of lawlessness'

That is how the United Nations Security Council justified its vote earlier this week to impose new sanctions against the government of Afghanistan. Voting 13-0, with two abstentions, the Security Council has demanded that the Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist regime in Kabul, close "terrorist" training...
JAPAN
Dec 22, 2000

DPJ to seek 30% cut in public works spending

Executives of the Democratic Party of Japan adopted a pledge Thursday to seek a 30 percent cut in public works expenditures over five years in the runup to next summer's House of Councilors election.
JAPAN
Dec 22, 2000

Regulations set for new banking entrants

A government advisory panel on nonfinancial firms' entry into the banking and insurance sectors issued a final report Thursday that was slightly watered down from an interim report.
JAPAN
Dec 22, 2000

Ministry to map ways to protect unpaid wages

The Labor Ministry is considering ways to guarantee that workers receive unpaid wages in the case of corporate failures.
BUSINESS
Dec 22, 2000

Firms' entertainment outlays off 13.3%

Japanese firms nationwide spent 4.39 trillion yen on entertainment, gifts and other expenses in the year through last Jan. 31, marking a 13.3 percent drop from the previous year, according to a government survey released Thursday.
BUSINESS
Dec 22, 2000

World's stock markets battling pessimism

Pessimism abounds in stock markets worldwide. New York share prices have taken a beating amid concern over corporate earnings and economic prospects. The tumble in New York quickly spilled over to Tokyo, sending key market gauges to their year-to-date lows.
JAPAN
Dec 22, 2000

TSE dives to 13,500 in high-tech sales spree

Tokyo stock prices continued to take a beating Thursday, as sharp declines on Wall Street overnight coupled with indications of a faltering economic recovery at home depressed the benchmark stock index to below the 13,500 mark, the lowest closing in over 23 months.
BUSINESS
Dec 22, 2000

Dentsu announces first-half profit

Dentsu Inc., Japan's largest advertising agency, on Thursday announced consolidated net profit of 14.15 billion yen in the first half of fiscal 2000.
JAPAN
Dec 22, 2000

Japan to give tsunami info to neighbors

Japan will start in January providing South Korea, North Korea and Russia with information on tsunamis originating in the Sea of Japan, the Meteorological Agency said.
BUSINESS
Dec 22, 2000

Mori taps tech sector for IT advice

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori has informally selected 10 people, including Sony Corp. Chairman Nobuyuki Idei, as members of his new team of Cabinet advisers for the government's information technology drive, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said Thursday.
BUSINESS
Dec 22, 2000

Car sales to increase 2.2% in 2001: JAMA

Domestic car sales in 2001 will reach 6.1 million units, up 2.2 percent from this year, as demand is expected to continue to slowly recover, the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association said Thursday.
BUSINESS
Dec 22, 2000

Toshiba, Infineon to work on nonvolatile FeRAM

Toshiba Corp. of Japan and Infineon Technologies AG of Germany on Thursday announced an agreement to jointly develop nonvolatile ferroelectric random access memory (FeRAM) technology and products.

Longform

Capsule hotels were created as a way to deal with the amount of overwork employees tend to do in Japan. Can't commute home? Then spend the night in an tiny, affordable sleeping space.
Japan wakes up to the market for a proper sleep