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COMMUNITY
Mar 7, 2000

Town makes returns on back of boomerang boom

TOKAMACHI, Niigata Pref. -- Uninformed visitors to Tokamachi might be forgiven for thinking the small, central Niigata Prefecture city has a problem with UFOs.
JAPAN
Mar 7, 2000

Draft legislation would put a ban on human cloning

The Science and Technology Agency has compiled an outline of planned legislation that would ban human cloning and impose prison terms on violators, government sources said Monday.
JAPAN
Mar 7, 2000

Looser restrictions on foreigners eyed

Japan is planning a major shift in its stringent immigration policy that would accept foreign workers in substantially wider areas, including agriculture and nursing care services, it was learned Monday.
SOCCER / J. League
Mar 7, 2000

J. League boss Kawabuchi defends format of two-stage championship

The chairman of the J. League, Saburo Kawabuchi, believes last season's dramatic penalty shootout between Jubilo Iwata and Shimizu S-Pulse has increased the "worldwide appeal" of Japanese soccer.
BUSINESS
Mar 7, 2000

Family spending drops for fifth straight month

Japan's household spending dropped an inflation-adjusted 3.2 percent in January from a year earlier for the fifth monthly decline in a row, the Management and Coordination Agency said Monday.
BUSINESS
Mar 7, 2000

Five life insurers outsource asset management to cut costs

Five Japanese life insurance companies will have a common asset management administration system in place by the end of fiscal 2001, company sources said Monday.
COMMENTARY
Mar 7, 2000

E-nough of this e-mania

E-commerce fever has spread from the United States to Europe and Japan. New e-commerce companies are mushrooming everywhere and new issues are snapped up even if there is no prospect of profits for years. Young men and women with a bright e-commerce idea become millionaires overnight. The feverish demand...
JAPAN
Mar 7, 2000

Shady figure arrested in Kobe firebombing

A man has been arrested on suspicion of theft in connection with Thursday's firebombing of a telephone dating club in Kobe that killed four men and wounded three others, police said Monday. The unemployed man, Shinya Kameno, 24, confessed to participating in the firebombing of Rin Rin House Motomachi,...
JAPAN
Mar 7, 2000

Historical accuracy vs. public good

KANAZAWA, Ishikawa Pref. -- Celebrated Japanese novelist Yasushi Inoue once wrote: "Whatever the circumstances, the beauty of (Kanazawa's) castle walls should always be preserved."
JAPAN
Mar 7, 2000

Shoplifting stains welcome mat

FUSHIKI MINATO, Toyama Pref. -- While the Fushiki Chamber of Commerce has stepped up efforts in recent years to improve relations with Russian visitors, a number of thefts in the town have left some residents wondering if cars, and the ruble, would be better left as rubble.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 7, 2000

Puppets seen through the bars

THE FUNERAL OF A GIRAFFE and Other Stories, by Tomioka Taeko. Translated by Kyoko Selden and Mizuta Noriko. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 182 pp., $21.95. Originally a poet, Taeko Tomioka turned to fiction later in her career, after the breakup of a long-term relationship and a return to her native Osaka....
JAPAN
Mar 7, 2000

Tradescape.com enters Japan

In a move that could take the nation's online trading boom to another level, U.S. electronic trading broker Tradescape.com will join with Softbank Finance Corp. to launch Japan's first electronic communications network for securities trading as early as this summer.
JAPAN
Mar 7, 2000

Pyongyang abductees' kin hold sit-in

About 50 relatives and supporters of Japanese believed to have been abducted by Pyongyang agents and taken to North Korea staged a sit-in Monday in front of the Foreign Ministry to protest the government's plan to resume food aid to the Stalinist state.
BUSINESS
Mar 7, 2000

Market ready to take off

The key Nikkei average is hovering around 20,000, shrugging off worries about corporate sales to unwind cross-shareholding ties.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 7, 2000

Wanderlust and a pair of steel wheels

MOTORCYCLE VAGABONDING IN JAPAN, by Guy De La Rupelle, contributions by Owen Stinger. North Conway, New Hampshire, U.S.: Whitehorse Press, 1999; 255 pp., $19.95. With city centers in permanent gridlock and the availability of train and bus service decreasing in direct proportion to the distance from...
BUSINESS
Mar 7, 2000

Arabian Oil set to reduce Japan workforce by 45%

Arabian Oil Co., Japan's largest oil producer, announced Monday that it will cut its Japanese workforce by 45 percent as part of its operational restructuring efforts following the loss of oil drilling concessions in Saudi Arabia.
CULTURE / Music
Mar 7, 2000

Beers, cheers and sneers -- Guitar Wolf will eat you alive

Beer. Beer. Beer. And some more beer. The world of Guitar Wolf is an ocean of beer, and if there are any islands of sobriety they are small and infrequent and the chances of coming across one are slim indeed.
JAPAN
Mar 7, 2000

Detained Chinese asks to be temporarily released

A man awaiting deportation to China at a Nagasaki Prefecture immigration center on Monday requested temporary release in consideration of the time he has already spent in custody. Kim Yong Hwa, 46, has been detained at Omura Immigration Center since July 1998 on suspicion of illegally entering Japan....
JAPAN
Mar 7, 2000

Child law review must consider victims

Another ingredient has been added to the ongoing debate over revising the Juvenile Law, with crime victims' families clamoring for their right to information and for an end to unfair investigations.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 7, 2000

Colorful slivers of daily life in Thailand

GULFS OF THAILAND: A Collection of Short Stories, by Michael Smithies. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books, 1999, 136 pp. (paper). This is the second collection of Thai stories by Michael Smithies. The first, "Bright of Bangkok," was published, also by Silkworm Books, in 1993. Smithies has spent many...
JAPAN
Mar 7, 2000

Ruble's demise dents used-car trade

TAKAOKA, Toyama Pref. -- The significance of this month's presidential elections in Russia and their effect on the ruble's value are not lost on Kaneo Sato.
CULTURE / Music
Mar 7, 2000

A great song by any other name . . .

LOS ANGELES (Kyodo) If one had to come up with an internationally popular Japanese song, "Sukiyaki (Ue-o Muite Aruko)" would certainly come to mind. It was the first Japanese song to get a Gold Record in the U.S., in 1963, with 1.3 million records sold in about 70 countries.
EDITORIALS
Mar 6, 2000

Aiming at a million

It had to happen. The slick but savvy TV quiz show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?," which first took Britain by storm and then went on to conquer America, is poised to invade Japan. Fuji Television announced last month that it will begin airing a tailored-for-Japan version of the show -- to be called...
JAPAN
Mar 6, 2000

Burn patient in hospital emerges as arson suspect

A man being treated for burns in a Hiroshima hospital is being viewed as a key suspect in last week's arson attack on a dating club in Kobe's Chuo Ward, according to investigative sources. The sources said Sunday that the man in question, who is a gangster in a group affiliated with the Yamaguchi-gumi...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 6, 2000

U.S. left its mark on Japanese education

HONOLULU -- Japanese-U.S. cultural relations are filled with ironies. Perhaps the greatest is that many of the thousands of foreigners hired by the Japanese government during the Meiji Era (1868-1912) are far better known in Japan than they are in their own countries. A second fascinating irony is that...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 6, 2000

High time Japan said 'No'

More than a decade ago, the current governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, and the late Sony Chairman Akio Morita wrote a best-seller urging their fellow Japanese to just say "No" to the Americans. This was in the context of a wide-ranging trade dispute in which the U.S. was pressuring Japan to curb its...
JAPAN
Mar 6, 2000

'Amakudari' practice thriving

Two-thirds of the 375 former high-ranking officials who left the government in 1998 have obtained posts in public corporations tied to their former government ministry or agency, according to official documents.
JAPAN
Mar 6, 2000

State loses urge to revise tax law against Tokyo

Moves within the central government to revise the Local Tax Law in response to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's proposal to tax banks have subsided due to concerns that it would affect efforts toward decentralization, government sources said Sunday.
JAPAN
Mar 6, 2000

Hori dogged on cop scandal

Top opposition party members of the House of Councilors on Sunday said they would pursue the accountability of Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi and National Public Safety Commission head Kosuke Hori over recent police misconduct.
JAPAN
Mar 6, 2000

Japan needs juggling act to secure future in Asia

With China expected to assume a greater presence as a regional power both economically and militarily early next century, Japan appears groping for a way to get along with its giant neighbor without disrupting its decades-old security partnership with the United States.

Longform

The students at Mitaka Municipal No. 7 Junior High School have access to various cooling devices for when they play sports.
Japan's extreme heat is causing a rethink of school sports