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COMMENTARY
Jan 1, 2001

It's time for bold diplomacy

In the 21st century, Japan should rise to the diplomatic challenge of developing strategies to create a new order in East Asia, where confusion still reigns after the end of the Cold War.
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Jan 1, 2001

America gets a bang out of Melt-Banana

It's rare that a Japanese band is more successful in America than in Japan, but Melt-Banana are an exception to many rules.
JAPAN
Jan 1, 2001

Pricey 'lucky bags' offered

Two department store operators said Sunday they will each offer a traditional "lucky bag" for 210 million yen at the beginning of the new year to commemorate the start of the 21st century.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jan 1, 2001

Life? Martian meteorite keeps its cool

"X-Files," eat your heart out. Supporters of the theory that life on Earth was "seeded" by organisms from deep space got a boost recently, as analysis of the famous Martian meteorite ALH84001 indicated that it was transferred from Mars to Earth without being heated above 40 degrees Celsius. This relatively...
JAPAN
Jan 1, 2001

Mori's pledges to enhance security role in new century

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori pledged in his New Year's address that the 21st century will see Japan doing away with its traditional insularity and enhancing its global security role to help maintain order in the international community.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 1, 2001

Odd echoes of the Meiji Restoration

JAPAN'S EMERGENCE AS A MODERN STATE: Political and Economic Problems of the Meiji Period, by E. Herbert Norman, 60th Anniversary Edition, edited by Lawrence T. Woods. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, Sept. 2000, 336 pp., $75 (cloth), $25.95 (paper). It's hard to fault E. Herbert Norman's analysis of Japan....
JAPAN
Jan 1, 2001

Merit seen in gradual opening of Japan to overseas workers

Foreign workers will help Japanese companies to not only make up for a future labor shortage but help create a more diverse and dynamic corporate environment in the current trend of globalization, according to Yotaro Kobayashi, one of the nation's top business leaders.
JAPAN
Jan 1, 2001

Millennial launch prompted more couples to get married

The number of marriages registered in Japan in 2000 rose by an estimated 26,000 from the year before to 788,000, with couples apparently wanting to tie the knot in a year billed as the start of the new millennium, the Health and Welfare Ministry said Sunday.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

U.S.-Japan ties face new challenges

Japan-U.S. relations now seem to be at a major turning point. This is not because we are entering a new millennium, but rather because various conditions that brought about past turning points in the history of bilateral relations now seem to be maturing and ripening once again.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

Japan needs open, clear agenda in an age of life science

The 21st century will be called the century of life science. In fact, an enormous amount of money has already been reinvested for research in this field on a global scale. A representative example is the human genome project, which is closing in on the complete deciphering of human DNA. In addition,...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 1, 2001

Eye-openers for the new year

GREETINGS FROM EROS!: Hokusai and the Erotic Calendar-Print. Richard Lane, bilingual (Japanese/English) text. Tokyo: Kawade Shobo, 2000. Unpaginated, profusely illustrated -- color plates, b/w photos, 3,800 yen. Sending calendar prints as New Year salutations was one of the amenities of traditional...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

Policy cooperation key to resolving Korean issues

The politics of South and North Korea have been greatly influenced by U.S. policy. What happens within South Korean politics is also important to policymakers in the United States. The start of the 21st century coincides with the inauguration of U.S. President George W. Bush. Among South and North Korean...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

A question of hegemony

An implicit alliance has emerged in Washington since the Cold War's end between avowedly "Wilsonian" liberals, anxious to extend American influence and federate the democracies, and unilateralist neoconservative believers in U.S. power projection, who call for American world leadership, aggressively...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

Can peace be globalized in the 21st century?

The 20th century is usually referred to as a century of "war and revolution" that brought unprecedented bloodshed and misery. While this is true, the description is not sufficiently accurate. During the religious wars of the 17th century, for example, Germany, as the main battlefield, lost an estimated...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

An Asia-Pacific checklist for Bush administration

George W. Bush's greatest foreign policy challenges over the next four years may well originate in the Asia-Pacific, where two-thirds of the world's population reside, and where probably two-thirds of the world's major geopolitical crises fester.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

Progress alone won't be enough

IT, shorthand for information technology, was a buzzword in Japan in 2000. Never before had computers and the Internet caused such a furor in the media. To be sure, IT had created a boom several times in the past, but its impact had been confined to the corporate sector. In contrast, the latest boom...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

Toward mutually assured peace

As we enter the 21st century, recent trends in technological development make the problems of nuclear weapons a pressing issue requiring greater attention and a more serious response.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

Wanted: a leadership strategy

Japan has stepped into the 21st century under not-so-comfortable political circumstances. Public approval ratings for the Cabinet of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori remain extremely low, and half of the nation's voters say they have no political party to support. While the government has launched one stimulus...
CULTURE / Film
Jan 1, 2001

Yang offers up portrait of 'real' family life

Family dramas are a movie staple, but few have the texture of real family life, in which individual destinies unfold and interact in ways too messy and complex for the usual movie ad copy. What we usually get instead is either melodrama or caricature -- i.e., something that can be easily packaged and...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

The true meaning of civilization

History shows that on the eve of the collapse of the Roman Empire, its denizens reveled as if they were crazy. Just before Paris fell to German forces during World War II, dressed-up people danced all night at nightclubs in the city. And when the Cuban government of President Fulgencio Batista fell,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

A possible Third Way for Japan

During the last decade of the 20th century, Japan's economy stagnated. The recession that followed the collapse of the asset-price bubble (1987-90) hit bottom in October 1993, but the economy remained flat through the end of 2000, with no visible signs of a lasting recovery.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

Open network at core of Japan's IT strategy

How should Japan promote its information technology revolution?
JAPAN
Dec 31, 2000

Cities set to merge divided over new leader

It looked like a match made in heaven when, on Aug. 10, the two beaming mayors of Hoya and Tanashi shook hands on a deal to merge the two western Tokyo cities.
JAPAN
Dec 31, 2000

Guesthouse making enemies of tenants and neighbors

Advertisements for Apple House Co., a chain of low-budget guesthouses, tout it as the "biggest guesthouse in Japan" and play up its "no curfew, no key money and no guarantor required" policy.
JAPAN
Dec 31, 2000

Less cash kept over yearend period

Households, firms and financial institutions will keep estimated funds of 63.39 trillion yen on hand during the yearend holiday period, down 3.1 percent from a year earlier for the first fall in eight years.
JAPAN
Dec 31, 2000

Pioneering diesel engine developed by Fuji Heavy

Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., maker of Subaru cars, has developed what it claims is the world's first horizontally opposed diesel engine and eventually plans to install it in a model to be launched in Europe, a Fuji senior managing director said Saturday.
JAPAN
Dec 31, 2000

EPA boss received 15 million yen from KSD

Economic Planning Agency chief Fukushiro Nukaga received a total of 15 million yen in donations in November 1999 and last April from the then chairman of KSD, a scandal-tainted mutual aid organization for small firms, informed sources said Saturday.
JAPAN
Dec 31, 2000

Elderly choke on yearend delicacy

Four elderly people have had traditional "mochi" rice cakes stick in their throats since Tuesday, causing the choking deaths of two of them, the Tokyo Fire Department said Saturday.
JAPAN
Dec 31, 2000

BSC to take on 'Voice of the Andes'

The newly established digital radio broadcasting station BSC will take over the broadcasting of "Voice of the Andes" after the Ecuador-based Japanese-language radio service goes off air today.

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