search

 
 
JAPAN
Feb 7, 2000

Reversal by top court casts doubt on boys' convictions in '85 murder

The Supreme Court on Monday reversed a lower court ruling in a civil suit filed over the 1985 murder of a 15-year-old girl in Soka, Saitama Prefecture, saying it doubted the credibility of the confessions made by the boys accused of killing her. Six men were found guilty of committing the murder by a...
BUSINESS
Feb 7, 2000

Fiscal surplus, external deficit: Can the U.S. thrive on technology alone?

This year's State of the Union address by U.S. President Bill Clinton lasted 89 minutes.
ENVIRONMENT
Feb 7, 2000

Craning for a look at a natural monument

TSURUI VILLAGE, Hokkaido -- The meandering local bus takes over an hour to reach this quiet hamlet of dairy farms in southeastern Hokkaido. For out-of-town passengers, the approach to Tsurui comes as something of a shock. Those black-and-white creatures stepping delicately across the pasture most definitely...
JAPAN
Feb 7, 2000

Coalition, opposition chiefs fail to bridge differences

In a bid to break the Diet impasse, the ruling and opposition camps began high-level talks Monday as the opposition boycott entered its 10th day. But the six parties' Diet affairs chiefs met for only 15 minutes and made no headway as the opposition bloc insisted that all ongoing committee sessions be...
MORE SPORTS
Feb 7, 2000

Hingis claims third Toray tennis title

Martina Hingis caught no one by surprise on Sunday. She was supposed to win the Toray Pan Pacific Open tennis tournament and that's exactly what she did. Victory, however, didn't come easily.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 7, 2000

Choose: equality or freedom

The third ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization, held in Seattle Nov. 30 through Dec. 3, ended in unexpected failure. The push for new global trade talks collapsed due to opposition by developing countries, which account for more than 100 of the WTO's 134 member nations. The developing...
JAPAN
Feb 7, 2000

Bill would allow academics to hold business posts

The government will submit to the Diet a bill today to allow national and public university professors and researchers to concurrently serve as corporate board members to facilitate technology transfer from the academic to industrial sectors, government officials said. The move is part of efforts to...
JAPAN
Feb 7, 2000

U.K. official vouches for safety of MOX

A senior official of the British Department of Trade and Industry met with Japanese counterparts Monday in an effort to restore confidence in British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. after revelations that the firm falsified data on mixed-oxide fuel for Japanese reactors. Anna Walker, head of the department's energy...
JAPAN
Feb 7, 2000

Analysis: Ota's first priority is to refill city coffers

Staff writer OSAKA -- Fusae Ota's election win here Sunday night is good news for local residents and the nation as a whole, in the sense that Osaka has elected the nation's first female governor. It is also good news for Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, because since a win for Ota, a former bureaucrat his...
JAPAN
Feb 7, 2000

Poland seeks full EU status by '03

Staff writer Poland hopes to become a full member of the European Union as early as 2003 by adjusting its economy to EU standards, according to visiting Polish Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek. "We hope to achieve good results in the process of adjusting Poland's economic structure," Geremek said in...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 7, 2000

The Nanjing number game

So the book titled "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II," by -year-old Chinese-American writer Iris Chang has the Japanese critics stirred up. Everyone from the former Japanese ambassador in Washington and Japan's powerful conservative commentators down to the rightwing academics...
JAPAN
Feb 7, 2000

Collaborative stock index in the cards for spring

The Tokyo Stock Exchange, New York Stock Exchange, Deutsche Boerse AG and Standard & Poor's are planning to introduce an international index in an attempt to squelch increasing competition from smaller bourses. A global index jointly operated by the world's major stock exchanges is unprecedented....
JAPAN
Feb 7, 2000

NTT to establish cybermarket

NTT Communications Corp. plans to start providing a marketplace on the Internet for companies to sell a broad range of products, from financial services to music and game software, company sources said Monday. NTT Communications, a domestic and international long-distance carrier, plans to start what...
JAPAN
Feb 7, 2000

Ota ready to slash Osaka government jobs

Staff writer OSAKA -- Newly elected Osaka Gov. Fusae Ota said Monday that her priority is to restore financial health to the prefecture, noting she is confident she can push through plans for major cuts in local government jobs as part of the effort. "If prefectural officials really want to save Osaka...
JAPAN
Feb 7, 2000

Experts deplore flaws in Japanese court system

Staff writer Legal experts watching the confused and drawn-out legal proceedings surrounding the 1985 rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl in Soka, Saitama Prefecture, say the case reflects common defects that plague Japanese criminal trials. The case, in which six juveniles were found guilty in a family...
EDITORIALS
Feb 6, 2000

Flying fingers, sluggish brains

"Yo what's up? how bout those rams. *grin*. erm, gotta run, ttyl :]"
CULTURE / Music
Feb 6, 2000

Tokyo's musical riches are many, mighty and marvelous

The year end is filled with performances of the beloved Beethoven Ninth, known familiarly as the "Choral" symphony, prized for its message of hope in the lofty poetry of Schiller's "Ode to Joy."
MORE SPORTS
Feb 6, 2000

Hingis vs. Testud in Toray final

After cruising past world No. 11 Anna Kournikova in Friday's quarterfinals, top-seeded Martina Hingis was forced to play competitive tennis on Saturday against Chanda Rubin of the U.S. The Swiss star responded with a 7-6 (7-2), 6-4 victory over Rubin to reach the final of the Toray Pan Pacific Open tennis...
COMMUNITY / How-tos
Feb 6, 2000

When you need it most

A reader read about the benefit of influenza shots and called her doctor, who told her there was no vaccine in Japan. That seemed unlikely in a country prone to flu epidemics, so she asks why.
CULTURE / Art
Feb 6, 2000

Mysteries at the top of the staircase

Be it the elegant neoclassical past or that of the Hollywood musical of the 1930s and '40s, staircases that are immortalized on canvas, paper or celluloid tend to be those designed expressly for a spectacular entrance. Hitchcock and other directors shifted the focus from the ornateness of the staircase's...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Feb 6, 2000

Philip Harper

To be billed as Japan's only foreign sake brewer conveys a claim unusually intriguing. Even the man in question, Philip Harper, expresses some surprise at the way things have gone for him as he gets close to achieving the status of master brewer in Japan.
COMMUNITY
Feb 6, 2000

The best parents are both parents

David Brian Thomas (who with a name like that can only owe his heritage to Welsh Wales) carries two photos in his wallet. One shows a baby; the other a gravely sweet 3-year-old -- the age Thomas last saw his son seven years ago.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 6, 2000

Exotic wildlife on a short leash in Asia

PUSAN, South Korea — Every night at 8 p.m., Roma Khachaturyan, a Russian-Armenian from Moscow who now lives in Korea, feeds a Siberian tiger named Cesar.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 6, 2000

ASEAN debates growth or consolidation

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- The current tour of some ASEAN capitals by East Timorese hero Xanana Gusmao has triggered soul-searching in various places around the region.
EDITORIALS
Feb 5, 2000

Men, machines and messages

Sen. John McCain has jolted the race for the Republican presidential nomination. His landslide win in the New Hampshire primary this week stunned the front-runner, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, and reinvigorated the campaign. New Hampshire is not representative of U.S. politics, but the results there foreshadow...
CULTURE / Art
Feb 5, 2000

Calligraphy breaking the silence

For any child, gaining literacy is the skill that follows speech on their road to self-expression. The act of writing one's name is the first step to the establishment of a public identity.
CULTURE / Music
Feb 5, 2000

At last, a live house for hogaku

Tokyo, being a vibrant, world-class metropolis, is home to hundreds of small musical venues ("live houses") which offer everything: the top names in the jazz world, rock and punk, piano parlor music, ethnic music from Asia, China, Korea, Africa, India, among others, as well as American and European folk...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 5, 2000

'Tea and sympathy' mark U.S.-Japan ties

There are new frictions looming just over the horizon in U.S.-Japan relations, based mainly on the perceived growth of nationalist sentiment.
CULTURE / Art
Feb 5, 2000

It's not hard to get hooked on fly-fishing

Fly-fishing has a certain mystique. It's not uncommon for an angler equipped with a deep knowledge of aquatic insects and a perfect midair loop to stand in the cold for hours without netting a single trout.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 5, 2000

The odd debacle in the Diet

In an unprecedented development in Japanese political history, the opposition forces are boycotting all Diet proceedings to protest the ruling coalition's handling of the controversial legislation for reducing the number of Lower House seats. The Democratic Party of Japan, the Japan Communist Party and...

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