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LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jul 21, 1999

'A grotesque gap'

The United Nations Development Program's annual Human Development Report is usually a pretty grim document. Sure, life is improving for most people, but the poorest seem to get poorer and the gap between haves and have-nots is continually widening. The richest 20 percent of the world's population has...
EDITORIALS
Jul 20, 1999

Cobwebs on the lunar way station

What is this latest fuss about a landing on the moon? Don't get excited, nobody has walked on it again. For all the fun those astronauts had bouncing about up there in their moon-suits years ago, there has been nothing sufficiently interesting to lure human beings back since 1972. Remember the scene...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 20, 1999

Tax cuts put Japan on track

The Japanese economy is now out of the worst phase of the recession. But the process of achieving recovery and even- tual prosperity has not been entirely smooth. First, we cannot yet claim that firms in various industrial sectors have earnestly initiated their restructuring with real zest. Second, fiscal...
JAPAN
Jul 20, 1999

Renegade monkey making Tokyo home

More than a month has passed since a monkey was spotted in the posh Nishi Azabu district of Tokyo's Minato Ward, and with residents leaving it scraps of food, the area has become the primate's second home.
JAPAN
Jul 20, 1999

Slovakia, Japan pursue U.N. Security Council reform

Staff writer
JAPAN
Jul 20, 1999

Tour agents target families to survive lean times

Staff writer
JAPAN
Jul 20, 1999

Experts ponder state's next great spending project

Staff writer
CULTURE / Books
Jul 20, 1999

A stunning rumination on the interconnectedness of things

GHOSTWRITTEN, by David Mitchell. London: Sceptre/Hodder & Stoughton, 1998, 436 pp. (paper). Staff writer Contemporary writers love to skate between different genres, styles and settings. And "Ghostwritten," the first novel by Englishman David Mitchell, is filled with such formal trickery. It...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 20, 1999

Screening for image and reality

THE DOUBLE SCREEN: Medium and Representation in Chinese Painting, by Wu Hung. London: Reaktion Books, 1996, 296 pp., with 170 illustrations, 20 in color, 14.95 British pounds. Just what is a traditional Chinese painting? This is the question asked and answered in this magisterial work of imaginative...
JAPAN
Jul 20, 1999

Junior high school student held in Rolex heist

A junior high school student from Tochigi Prefecture was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of robbing a Tokyo jewelry store of Rolex watches worth about 12.6 million yen, police said.
CULTURE / Film
Jul 20, 1999

'Neighbors' move from paper to screen

When I first heard that Studio Ghibli was going to base its next film on Hisaichi Ishii's "Hohokekyo Tonari no Yamada-kun (My Neighbors the Yamadas)" -- a must-read for millions in the Asahi Shimbun" -- I had my doubts.The best gag manga have a pinch of comic acid that often gets leached away in the...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 20, 1999

Battle for women's rights in Japan

THE RISE OF THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT IN JAPAN, by Akiko Tokuza. Tokyo: Keio University Press, 1999, 302 pp., 3,000 yen (cloth), ISBN 4-7664-0731-8. Buddhism instructed wives that " . . . even if (your husband) seems more lowly than you are, man is the personification of the Buddha . . . (and) you must...
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Jul 20, 1999

Mr. Famous Fuzzy Logic's bumpy roller Coastersride

Sometimes you get a 24-hour spell where everything feels like a mad surreal nightmare and you end up seriously contemplating spending the rest of your life as a monk sitting under icy waterfalls naked on a lonely mountain and eating nothing but nuts and honey.
CULTURE / Music
Jul 20, 1999

Lotus Sutra gets rhythm on Ono's 'Gyo'

As much as it is tempting to believe the adage "like father, like daughter," sometimes a person like Toshiro Ono comes along to turn the saying on its head.
EDITORIALS
Jul 19, 1999

Iran's shrewd president

There is calm again in Tehran, but the peace is likely to be only temporary. After a fearsome counterstrike by conservative forces, the students demanding more freedom in Iran have retreated to their dormitories. But if their voices have been stilled, the reform movement that they have been spearheading...
JAPAN
Jul 19, 1999

Upper House panel approves extra budget

A House of Councilors special committee Monday approved a 519.8 billion yen supplementary budget designed to generate 700,000 new jobs and cope with the falling birthrate.
JAPAN
Jul 19, 1999

Asahara unintelligible in court testimony

Aum Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara refused to testify Monday before the Tokyo District Court in a top cult figure's trial.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 19, 1999

Anthem and flag just need some tweaking

The battle over whether or not to pass legislation giving the de facto national anthem "Kimigayo" and the Hinomaru flag official status has been a black-and- white, yes-or-no affair. There have been some legalistic, even occasionally Clintonesque, arguments presented in the Diet on the definition of...
JAPAN
Jul 19, 1999

Adachi Ward joins Aum ban

Tokyo's Adachi Ward will neither accept resident registration applications from Aum Shinrikyo followers nor allow them to use ward-run facilities, Adachi Mayor Tsunetoshi Suzuki said Monday.
JAPAN
Jul 19, 1999

New Komeito leaders stamp revised platform

Senior New Komeito officials approved a new action plan and policy platform Monday so it can join the Liberal Party and the Liberal Democratic Party in a new coalition government.
JAPAN
Jul 19, 1999

Foreign policy group aims to head off conflicts

The Center for Preventive Diplomacy, a nongovernmental foreign policy organization, will work to prevent regional and ethnic conflicts from erupting in the wake of the Cold War, said former U.N. undersecretary general Yasushi Akashi, during the group's inaugural meeting Monday.
JAPAN
Jul 19, 1999

Man questioned for ditching car again

Police have questioned a 26-year-old man on suspicion he dumped a car off Nagoya port in a second such attempt to rid himself of the vehicle, it was learned Monday.
JAPAN
Jul 19, 1999

Yamaguchi-gumi don celebrates a decade at the top

Staff writer
JAPAN
Jul 19, 1999

Toyota's consolidation not telecom pullout, exec says

Staff writer
JAPAN
Jul 19, 1999

Experts work to coordinate environmental conventions

Staff writer
EDITORIALS
Jul 18, 1999

Food safety has to be assured

It comes as no surprise that consumer groups here are reacting cautiously to the government's draft plan requiring some food products containing genetically modified ingredients to be clearly labeled to indicate that fact. Controversy was only to be expected from the decision by the Ministry of Agriculture,...
COMMENTARY / World / GUEST FORUM
Jul 18, 1999

How Mahathir overcame the Asian crisis

Starting in September last year, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia was strongly criticized by the Western media and some Western governments over the introduction of capital controls and the sacking of his deputy prime minister and finance minister Anwar Ibrahim, who was later tried for alleged...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 18, 1999

Apparently, all roads lead to Vladivostok

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia -- No, Peter and Eileen Crichton were not to be mistaken for the U.S. couple making a millennial tour of five continents in a lemon yellow Mercedes-Benz "off-roadster." Nor did they have anything to do with the two Germans who had just crossed Russia in a 1963 Citroen 2 CV.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jul 18, 1999

Becoming a black belt in things Japanese

When foreigners arrive in Japan for the first time, they are full of wonder. Many of us aren't familiar with the Japanese language or kanji and have only read about Japanese culture in magazines or books. We all start out with a "white belt" in things Japanese.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Jul 18, 1999

Working with the system

A reader hopes to benefit from today's recession. She has heard that because so many companies have gone bankrupt, it is easy to buy good secondhand office furniture. But where? she asks.

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