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JAPAN
Oct 7, 1999

IBM to handle Mazda info systems

Mazda Motor Corp. has reached a basic agreement with IBM Japan Ltd. on a 50 billion yen contract to outsource its information system operations to the computer giant, the automaker announced Thursday.
EDITORIALS
Oct 6, 1999

Familiar features of a new Cabinet

The reshuffled Cabinet of Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi will literally have to lead Japan into a new millennium fraught with uncertainties. Its immediate task is to solidify the nascent recovery of the long-foundering Japanese economy and put it on the path of sustained growth. To meet this demand, Mr....
JAPAN
Oct 6, 1999

Police raid Tokai plant; agency revokes license

MITO, Ibaraki Pref. -- Police on Wednesday raided the headquarters of JCO Co. in Tokyo and its nuclear fuel processing plant in Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, as the repercussions of last week's nuclear accident continued to reverberate throughout the country.
JAPAN
Oct 6, 1999

Japan dangles new carrot in Pyongyang's face

Staff writer
JAPAN
Oct 6, 1999

Cleanup project sign of closer Japan- Cuba relations

Staff writer
JAPAN
Oct 6, 1999

2,000 yen bill to commemorate 2000

While political pundits said his Cabinet appointments Tuesday made good use of veteran lawmakers versed in policy matters, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi sought novelty from a new angle — the issuance of a 2,000 yen bill.
JAPAN
Oct 6, 1999

Jobless ex-salaried workers form union

A group of managerial-level workers who have lost their jobs and salaried people in high-level positions who fear for their jobs has launched a "union for unemployed people" under the slogan of "Create a job by yourself if you don't have one."
JAPAN
Oct 6, 1999

Sickened JCO worker undergoes cell transfusion

A worker exposed to last week's massive radiation leak in Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, underwent a transfusion of peripheral stem cells Wednesday afternoon to shore up his blood-forming functions, doctors said.
JAPAN
Oct 6, 1999

Minicars streak to 32.1% sales rise at half

Sales of minivehicles jumped 32.1 percent to 907,049 units in the first half of the 1999 business year from the same period last year, the first increase in four years, the Japan Mini Vehicles Association reported Wednesday.
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Oct 6, 1999

Nature nurtured by the Dead Sea

"There is nothing, absolutely nothing alive in this sea; neither fish nor algae nor molluscs, only rocks and salt, candid saline formations that rise from the water like ghostly coral."
COMMUNITY
Oct 6, 1999

Widow recalls 'Japan's Schindler'

YOKOHAMA -- Yukiko Sugihara, 85, still recalls the huge crowd outside the Japanese Consulate in Nazi-occupied Lithuania one cold summer morning in 1940 -- hundreds of European Jews desperate to escape persecution.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 6, 1999

Back to the brink in Indonesia

"What we have now in Indonesia is the same old New Order without Suharto. Nothing is really changing."
JAPAN
Oct 6, 1999

Widow recalls consul's effort to aid Jews

Staff writer
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 6, 1999

Grim lessons from East Timor

"Promising too much can be as cruel as caring too little" was the truly mind-boggling statemen of U.S. President Bill Clinton before the United Nations Sept. 21. Now he tells us. So much for the "Clinton Doctrine" of humanitarian intervention. Yet as international peacekeepers pour into a devastated...
LIFE / Travel
Oct 6, 1999

Fall in Kyushu unique after all

AKIZUKI, Fukuoka Pref. -- "Japan," I am frequently informed, with looks of grave importance, "has four seasons." I always wonder if I should feign amazement at this fact, or be silly and ask whether this is because Japan is an island country and all foreigners hate natto. But I can never be told enough...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Oct 6, 1999

The years of our lives spent in meetings

It's true that things have changed. In America, for example, we used to say any child could one day grow up to be president. Yet, Bill Clinton has now proved growing up isn't really necessary.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Oct 6, 1999

International outlook

There are a lot of people who would like to get out and see Japan, but often it seems the cost outweigh the experience. Now U.S. citizens can avoid this dilemma, thanks to a wide-ranging exchange program based on one of the first Japan-American cultural exchange projects. It dates back to 1841 when Nakahama...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Oct 6, 1999

The future is in the air

I have written and read e-mail during my commute, beamed my virtual meishi to new acquaintances, played cards in taxis, and once in a shameless display of computing on my feet I consulted a database of Tokyo restaurants, which I had downloaded from www.bento.com, and located a great Indonesian joint...
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Oct 6, 1999

When trappers outfoxed the Bering islands

The red fox is a familiar creature here in Japan, but travel northward and it is soon replaced by another species. At higher latitudes, the arctic or polar fox is the ubiquitous hardy scavenger and predator. It is better adapted to the colder conditions, with a shorter muzzle, smaller ears and a thicker,...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 6, 1999

The world as policeman

LONDON -- U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has rightly drawn attention to the "need for timely intervention by the international community when death and suffering are being inflicted on large numbers of people, and when the state nominally in charge is unable or unwilling to stop it." He has pointed...
EDITORIALS
Oct 2, 1999

Celebrations and sublimations

China this week celebrates the 50 years of the People's Republic. Of course, it is not celebrating all of those years: The Great Leap Forward, which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese, and the Great Cultural Revolution, the decade of terror that turned the country upside down, will...
EDITORIALS
Oct 2, 1999

A last chance for Indonesia

Nearly four months after the first free and fair elections in four decades, Indonesia's new Parliament, the People's Consultative Assembly, convened Friday. The opening session marked a new era in the nation's politics. The MPR, as the Parliament is known, is being seated at a difficult time. Indonesia...
COMMENTARY
Oct 2, 1999

Blair touts 'the vision thing'

LONDON -- Watching British Prime Minister Tony Blair is like watching a religious phenomenon. He has stepped off his platform on the backs of members of the Labor Party and has ascended into the clouds, where he hopes to be borne along by the rushing winds of the future. As he lifts off, he kicks away...
CULTURE / Art
Oct 2, 1999

The duality of light and shadow at the crossing of diverging roads

At first glance, the photographs of Ralph Gibson and those of Robert Mapplethorpe appear to have little in common. Gibson (b. 1939) is a graduate of the school of "straight photography" (the term applies to a classic approach, not one's sexual orientation, although further differences between the two...
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 2, 1999

Dancing in the footsteps of Ailey

Alvin Ailey was an American choreographer with a seismic impact on modern dance in this century. He revolutionized the way African-American rituals, experiences, music and literature were presented through dance and carved a niche for the voice of that community that continues through his company 10...
CULTURE / Art
Oct 2, 1999

Winged labors of love

Bird carvings have typically been thought of as a Western art form, but Haruo Uchiyama is challenging this assumption. Even the birds that have come into contact with his carvings have been made believers.
COMMUNITY
Oct 2, 1999

Grains of water and drops of sand

Every day, when the beach is quiet, a small figure can be seen walking on the sands of Hayama, gazing at the waves. She is Reika Iwami, an artist whose work is in museums in Britain and America, and who is only now, at the age of 72, becoming better known at home.
CULTURE / Music / HOGAKU TODAY
Oct 2, 1999

New audiences for Japanese music

It takes a lot of planning and creative effort to successfully present a public concert, and hogaku is no exception.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 2, 1999

Taiwan quake shakes China's mandate

BEIJING -- Chinese news coverage of the killer earthquake in Taiwan has been both muted and sporadic, ranging from solicitous concern for the rogue province to no news at all. When the earthquake did get print or air time in the week following the temblor, coverage tended to focus on what mainland authorities,...
JAPAN
Oct 1, 1999

Half-year trade surplus falls 13.6%

The nation's surplus in merchandise trade in the April-September period fell 13.6 percent from a year earlier to 6.39 trillion yen, the first decrease in five fiscal half-year periods, the Finance Ministry said Monday.

Longform

Traditional folk rituals like Mizudome-no-mai (dance to stop the rain) provide a sense of agency to a population that feels largely powerless in the face of the climate crisis.
As climate extremes intensify, Japan embraces ancient weather rituals