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EDITORIALS
Oct 13, 2000

Mr. Mori's misplaced priorities

Six months after an uncertain start, the administration of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori is enjoying a period of stability, or so it seems. In contrast, immediately after the Liberal Democratic Party's defeat in June's Lower House election, the governing party was gripped by a feeling that it would not...
JAPAN
Oct 13, 2000

Commercial Code to undergo sweeping decontrols

The government on Thursday unveiled a package of structural reforms, including frontloading some proposed revisions to the Commercial Code.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Oct 13, 2000

Wire's sonic zeitgeist knows no boundaries

Certain music magazines do more than just chronicle the ins and outs of bands and fans. In their pages they capture the mood of a particular era. Thus Rolling Stone was more than just a San Francisco rock magazine, and so London's The Wire is more than just a magazine about modern music.
JAPAN
Oct 12, 2000

Zhu to boost ties on Japan trip

Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji arrives today for a six-day official visit, hoping to improve China's standing in the eyes of the Japanese people and nurture a new bilateral relationship through enhanced economic cooperation.
MORE SPORTS
Oct 9, 2000

Penguins find form, rally past Predators

OMIYA, Saitama Pref. -- Maybe it was the jet lag. Maybe it was the adjustment to new head coach Ivan Hlinka's system. Whatever the reason, it took the Pittsburgh Penguins a game and two-thirds to break out of their Japan doldrums and rally for a 3-1 win over the Nashville Predators on Sunday at Saitama...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 9, 2000

Palestinians fight decades of injustice

AL-BIREH, West Bank -- Areen, my 6-year-old daughter, has been unusually quiet. This normally energetic, very talkative child could not fully understand why school was canceled on Saturday after she was dressed and ready to go. On Sunday, during the news broadcast of the death of 12-year-old Mohammed...
CULTURE / Books
Oct 9, 2000

From nothingness, a celebration of life

A DREAM LIKE THIS WORLD: One Hundred Haiku, by Nagata Koi, translated by Naruto Nana and Margaret Mitsutani. Tokyo: Todosha Publishers, 2000, 147 pp., 2,381 yen (cloth). Dream and waking life. Reality and illusion. Where does one begin and the other end? This question radiates at the heart of Nagata...
COMMUNITY
Oct 8, 2000

Occupational therapy via 'Women and Socks'

It is a rare thing to find any actress of middle years who has never been out of work for more than six months. Especially one willing to explore both biculturally and bilingually her country's history and the sensitive subject of postwar relations.
JAPAN
Oct 8, 2000

Tokyo poised to lift ban on exterior train ads

How can Tokyo buses and streetcars make more money without attracting more passengers? One answer: advertising.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 8, 2000

Can Arafat turn Mideast violence to good?

BEIRUT -- With a few exceptions, the Israelis contend that the bloody tumult in Israel and the occupied territory has been instigated and stage-managed by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a means of strengthening his hand in the faltering peace process.
COMMENTARY
Oct 8, 2000

The Japanese people really are different

This year there were two Olympics. One was for the world generally. The other was for Japan, with audiences glued to events where hysterical announcers could declare a Japanese victory.
EDITORIALS
Oct 6, 2000

China's war on faith

Faith may be a private matter, but the Chinese government takes no chances. The Chinese Constitution guarantees every citizen the freedom to practice whatever religion he or she chooses. In practice, however, every religion has to subordinate itself to the Chinese Communist Party. The power holders in...
MORE SPORTS
Oct 6, 2000

Penguins, Predators ready to drop puck

The National Hockey League makes its third regular-season appearance in Japan this weekend as the Pittsburgh Penguins and Nashville Predators square off for a two-game series Saturday and Sunday at the new Saitama Super Arena in Omiya.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Oct 5, 2000

The power of St. John's wort: A herb to make you happy

In these days of miracle medication for nearly any psychological complaint, the botanical alternatives are getting a lot of attention. There have been happiness remedies around for millennia, of course; as with most botanical treatments, the knowledge is ancient.
LIFE / ALTERNATIVE LUXURIES
Oct 5, 2000

A dance of color, space and line

"Sometimes just to touch the ground is enough for me," says Wakako Oe with all the warmth of her plenteous years, "even if not a single plant grows in the garden."
LIFE / Travel
Oct 4, 2000

On the track of buried treasure

George Braseros is certain there is gold buried in the jungles of Mindanao. He is so sure it is there, just waiting to be dug up, that he has sunk a small fortune of his own into searching for it. And he knows other men have died for it.
LIFE / Travel
Oct 4, 2000

Close-up and personal with Peak District scenery

On Friday morning I was a point, press and hope-to-get-a-good-one sort of photographer; by Sunday evening I knew the raison d'e^tre of an f-stop and could talk solarization, ambient lighting and reversals.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 3, 2000

A real German lesson for the two Koreas

SEOUL -- In one of numerous books dealing with unification matters, South Korean President Kim Dae Jung refers to his meetings with leading German politicians in the early part of the 1990s. According to Kim's account, the German politicians told him, "You are fortunate because you can analyze all the...
COMMENTARY
Oct 2, 2000

Is drug-price cure worse than the disease?

WASHINGTON -- Election years in the United States are good for political consultants but bad for everyone else. Especially the average citizen who bears the brunt of Washington-style "reform."
EDITORIALS
Oct 1, 2000

Life after the Olympics

What do we do now with our evenings and weekends? For two happy, mindless weeks, we have flopped down in front of the TV any spare minute we had, just to get our daily fix of the big show going on in Sydney. Cynicism, the pre-Games attitude du jour, went out the window the second the teams entered the...
OLYMPICS
Oct 1, 2000

Takahashi still gracious after win

SYDNEY -- The strong performance of Japanese women to claim 13 of the 18 medals that the nation has won at the Sydney Olympics reflects women's growing independence in society, women's marathon gold medalist Naoko Takahashi said Saturday.
CULTURE / Art
Oct 1, 2000

Stringing a line through fashion and art

The 21st century in Tokyo is seeing a great migration of disciplines from one sphere into another. Fashion designers are collaborating with artists and exhibiting in galleries. Artists are collaborating with designers and exhibiting in shops.
CULTURE / Art
Oct 1, 2000

Van Gogh, up close and personal

There is a rapid sketch by Vincent van Gogh of a sunny square in the south of France where a man is waiting expectantly by an open door. In the distance, a steam train is arriving, puffing smoke into the sky. It is just a simple drawing of a corner of Arles in 1888. But when we realize that the man is...
CULTURE / Books
Sep 30, 2000

Thomas Wolfe: 20th-century America's warped looking glass

"No one has ever written any books about America -- I mean the real America," he wrote to a friend in 1931.
CULTURE / Art
Sep 30, 2000

Korean folk traditions come alive on porcelain

Folk art motifs on the painted plates of Kim So Sun In our contemporary world, where art is commissioned for anything from airplanes to automobiles, the transposition of 17th-century Korean folk art to modern porcelain dishes should not prove too surprising. In a wonderful burst of innovation, artistKim...
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 30, 2000

Puppetry for the people

In Western countries puppetry is a form of entertainment aimed at children. From Punch and Judy to the Muppets, Western puppet theater has been small scale, emphasizing broad, slapstick humor and simple, if any, plots.
JAPAN
Sep 29, 2000

UNSC must change before Japan, Germany join

OSAKA -- The U.N. Security Council is not adequately dealing with global problems, according to former German President Richard von Weizsaecker, and the entry of Japan and Germany into the body as permanent members should only take place after major U.N. reforms.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Sep 29, 2000

'Those Parisian guys' way out west

Japanese music aficionados have a knack of tuning into the musical zeitgeist. Post-rock, Brit-pop and grunge all had substantial audiences in Japan before the rest of the world caught up.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 28, 2000

Japan's nonprofits carve out a space of their own

When the Nature Conservancy's Lori Forman addressed the College Women's Association of Japan at a luncheon earlier this year, the topic was supposed to be nongovernmental organizations in Japan. But instead of providing a nuanced description of Japan's not-for-profit movement, Forman seemed more interested...

Longform

Totopa in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward was picked by consultants TTNE as the best sauna of the year.
Japan’s sauna movement: Relax, refresh, repeat