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JAPAN
Feb 4, 2001

Air traffic control to be improved

Air traffic control systems will be upgraded after investigators determined incorrect instructions from controllers caused Wednesday's near collision between two Japan Airlines jetliners, the Transport Ministry announced Saturday.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 2, 2001

Tokyo, New Delhi eager to put synergy back in relations

Last week's massive earthquake in western India has thrown in doubt Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's planned official visit to Japan this month -- the first by a premier of the world's most populous democracy in nearly 13 years.
COMMUNITY
Jan 31, 2001

Kinder makes learning kanji fun

Slippery snow is turning to slush. It is midwinter in Kanto, time for bundling up in fleecy sweaters and heavy coats. But at the two Hikari Yochien schools in Kawasaki, boys and girls are playing outdoors wearing nothing more than gym shorts.
BUSINESS
Jan 27, 2001

RCC adviser quits in debt scandal

Kohei Nakabo, adviser to Resolution and Collection Corp., has resigned and a senior managing director and four others of the debt-collection vehicle have been punished over an improper collection deal in 1998, RCC chief Akio Kioi said Friday.
EDITORIALS
Jan 24, 2001

Putting bureaucrats in the back seat

The Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, an advisory panel to the Cabinet Office, is the highlight of the Jan. 6 government reorganization. The high-powered council, which includes private advisers, cuts across ministerial lines. It represents part of a comprehensive attempt to shift the policymaking...
CULTURE / Film
Jan 20, 2001

Do you really wanna know?

So it's said that Freud's dying words were: "What do women want?" Whether any female on the premises answered: "I'll tell you, only if you'll give it to me," is unknown, but the point is, women are a mystery. Even to the greatest of minds, not to mention our own.
BUSINESS
Jan 20, 2001

Yanagisawa rejects task force plan

The state minister for financial affairs on Friday balked at a proposal by a Liberal Democratic Party task force to allow banks to repay with their shareholdings trillions of yen in public funds they received in 1998 and 1999 in order to replenish their depleted capital bases.
COMMENTARY
Jan 19, 2001

EU overlooking a vital ally in Turkey

LONDON -- The Turkish "problem" is looming ever larger in European affairs.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 16, 2001

New looks at an enduring alliance

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON U.S.-JAPAN RELATIONS, edited by Gerald Curtis. Tokyo: Japan Center for International Exchange, 2000, 302 pp., paper. JAPAN-U.S. ALLIANCE: New Challenges for the 21st Century, edited by Nishihara Masashi. Tokyo: Japan Center for International Exchange, 2000, 191 pp., paper. It's...
JAPAN
Jan 11, 2001

Recycling law said hazy on responsibility

Waste policy is being reborn. But pundits and government harbor opposing views on what this rebirth will herald.
BUSINESS
Jan 8, 2001

Reply to No-Action Letter clarifies insurance rescues

The first article on the debut of the No-Action Letter system focused on why it is necessary to create a standardized, public interface through which the Financial Services Agency can promptly respond to financial institutions' questions and concerns about compliance with regulatory issues.
JAPAN
Jan 3, 2001

Reform fledgling offspring of 'lost decade'

During the bubble economy of the late 1980s, few could have predicted the acute banking crisis and long economic malaise that have typified the past decade.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

Can peace be globalized in the 21st century?

The 20th century is usually referred to as a century of "war and revolution" that brought unprecedented bloodshed and misery. While this is true, the description is not sufficiently accurate. During the religious wars of the 17th century, for example, Germany, as the main battlefield, lost an estimated...
CULTURE / Books
Dec 26, 2000

A moral beacon in Japan's darkest days

YANAIHARA TADAO AND JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE: Redeeming Empire, by Susan C. Townsend. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000, 296 pp., 50 British pounds (cloth). Scholarship can be a dangerous vocation. The ideological witch-hunt against Tadao Yanaihara, holder of the prewar chair of colonial policy at Tokyo...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 25, 2000

Sanctions target the innocent

The use of sanctions as a tool of foreign and international policy increased dramatically in the 20th century. Yet as the crumbling sanctions on Iraq show, their track record in ensuring compliance is pitiful. They inflict pain on ordinary citizens while imposing questionable costs on leaders who are...
COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE
Dec 20, 2000

A divided Capitol awaits new president

WASHINGTON -- Wow! What a list of things to do for U.S. President-elect George W. Bush. It is long, and the degree of difficulty of almost every item on the list is of Olympian proportion.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 17, 2000

The stage is set for genuine change

This is the final article of a 10-part series on contemporary Japan.
BUSINESS
Dec 15, 2000

Euro heats up as U.S., dollar cool down

The euro's long bear run against the dollar has run its course amid concern over slower U.S. economic growth.
JAPAN
Dec 12, 2000

Universities buy exams despite ministry warning

Nearly 20 private universities have signed contracts with the Nagoya-based Kawaijuku Educational Institution to supply them with questions for next year's entrance exams, the cram school has announced.
COMMENTARY
Dec 4, 2000

Kosovo's meaning for Japan

NATO's campaign against Yugoslavia last year was illegal but legitimate. This was a conclusion at a recent conference on the "Implications of the Kosovo Conflict on International Law," sponsored by the Institute for International Policy Studies in Tokyo. It was illegal because it did not have United...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Dec 4, 2000

Judging history's 'single most violent act'

At a midtown bar, Wolcott Wheeler, whom I call a historian without portfolio, tells me a story about Robert Oppenheimer: how the physicist, meeting President Harry Truman in the Oval Office, said, "Mr. President, I have blood on my hands."
JAPAN
Dec 2, 2000

Sides reach settlement over air pollution suit

OSAKA -- An out-of-court settlement was reached Friday in a 12-year air pollution suit filed against the state and an expressway operator by residents of Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, who claim they or deceased family members developed asthma and other illnesses due to harmful substances released by motor...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 2, 2000

Lack of leadership doomed climate talks

"We almost had it, we were close but there is no deal," said British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott as he left a last-ditch effort among European Union countries to agree on a deal with the United States that would salvage the Kyoto Protocol climate-change negotiations. The U.S. proposal had major...
EDITORIALS
Nov 29, 2000

Sinking the climate talks

The sixth Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP6, collapsed in failure last weekend. In retrospect, the failure of negotiations that focused on cutting fossil-fuel emissions -- which would have a powerful impact on economic development -- and involved...
JAPAN
Nov 29, 2000

Fujimori to be allowed to stay in Japan: Kono

Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori will be allowed to remain in Japan, Foreign Minister Yohei Kono said Tuesday, without confirming whether the ousted leader has Japanese citizenship.
JAPAN
Nov 22, 2000

Pair arrested for harboring Red Army founder Shigenobu

OSAKA -- Police on Tuesday arrested two supporters of Japanese Red Army founder Fusako Shigenobu for allegedly harboring the fugitive while in Japan.
COMMENTARY
Nov 18, 2000

Wired world has its limits

LONDON -- Is everything breaking down?

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