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LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
May 10, 2000

Sea of love

Ponder, if you will, these two recent headlines:
CULTURE / Books
May 9, 2000

Testing times for Japan-U.S. alliance

ALLIANCE ADRIFT, by Yoichi Funabashi. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1999, 501 pp., $49.95 (cloth). The jacket of this hefty chronicle of the recent history of Japan-U.S. security relations proclaims that Japan has found its Bob Woodward. Consider yourself warned.
COMMENTARY
May 5, 2000

Boost Chinese human rights through trade

Business profits vs. human rights. So do critics of trade between America and China frame the debate. But freer trade is likely to advance human rights as well as boost business profits.
JAPAN
May 4, 2000

Location of leader's summit hinges on the whim of nature

OSAKA — It's billed as the Kyushu-Okinawa Summit, but if Mother Nature turns capricious, then this year's Group of Eight gathering may be forced to a different venue.
COMMENTARY
May 4, 2000

Will Clinton crumble again?

If Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's overseas foreign-policy tour this week has a theme, it is "coverup" and "damage control." Mori, known as a colorless political fixer, has been tasked with assuring foreign leaders that the July G8 summit will go forward successfully no matter what happens on the Japanese...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
May 3, 2000

Eyes front

It's that time again. Time to talk about time. I'll try to be brief, since there is so little time for a chat. Or for much anything else.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
May 3, 2000

Ya'gotta accentuate the positive

Men are from Mars and women are from Venus -- but my wife is from Kagoshima.
COMMENTARY / World
May 1, 2000

Toward a new world order or disorder?

The spring meeting of the Bretton Woods institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington, once again brought to question the state of health of the global economy. The event highlighted the phenomenon of what is perceived as a "guerrilla war" against global corporate structures...
EDITORIALS
Apr 25, 2000

Combating cross-border crime

With international exchanges of people and goods expanding at an accelerated pace, cross-border organized crime is also rising rapidly. In a concerted effort to combat the globalization of crime, the United Nations in 1999 set up a special panel to work out a global anticrime treaty. Now that drafting...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 22, 2000

Breakthrough or breakdown?

Last week's dramatic announcement of an inter-Korean summit provides an opportunity to test the momentum created by North Korea's pragmatic attempt to develop new relationships with the outside world. South Korean President Kim Dae Jung's "sunshine" policy has supported Pyongyang's own apparent efforts...
COMMENTARY
Apr 19, 2000

New language for a new world

The prestigious Trilateral Commission met here in Tokyo earlier this month, bringing together some 130 influential people from three continents to focus on key world issues and offer some advice to participants in the forthcoming Okinawa Summit of world leaders. The commissioners heard speeches from...
EDITORIALS
Apr 17, 2000

URL burial is grave news

Is there anyone who still really thinks the Internet is not transforming the world -- or at least those spreading patches of the planet that are connected to it? Every day, some new swath of mental territory falls prey to the Web, as if a gigantic, benevolent spider had suddenly taken control of humanity...
COMMENTARY
Apr 17, 2000

Time for a grand strategy

The new Cabinet of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori should start mapping out a grand design for Japan's national-security policies for the first half of the 21st century.
COMMENTARY
Apr 16, 2000

A challenge to democracies

Democracies pride themselves on their efficient transfer of power from one elected leader to the next. But death or disability can strike a leader and cause immediate crisis.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 3, 2000

United Nations takes Australia to task

SYDNEY -- Oh, the disgrace of it. Just as we were on our best behavior to receive the queen, the United Nations had to go and tell the whole world that Australia's treatment of its Aborigines is discriminatory and unsatisfactory.
COMMUNITY / How-tos
Mar 26, 2000

Once around again

Except for a few well-seasoned apartment buildings, the street I moved to 10 years ago was lined with old-style houses. Now only one remains. It is still a quiet street in an upscale neighborhood, but nearby are several small industry suppliers engaged in cutting, shaping and shipping metal forms. They...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 22, 2000

China faces democracy bug

LONDON -- Taiwan's transition to democracy is complete. On Saturday, after half a century of rule by the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), the offshore island's 15 million voters elected a president from the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, Chen Shui-bian. "I feel very, very badly about this,"...
JAPAN
Mar 19, 2000

'Suits' fire laws from hip at assembly upstart

KADOMA, Osaka Pref. -- A liberator of a closed local legislature or a troublemaker? That is the question being asked of Hisayoshi Toda, a newcomer to the Kadoma Municipal Assembly.
JAPAN
Mar 16, 2000

Parties claim Obuchi AWOL

Discretion is the better part of valor, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi might say.
JAPAN
Mar 9, 2000

Passengers describe the sudden impact

Police, firefighters and subway workers shouted instructions to each other Wednesday as they attempted to rescue injured commuters and get them to hospitals in the immediate aftermath of a subway collision that ruptured Tokyo's morning rush hour.
JAPAN
Mar 9, 2000

Obuchi comes to defense of embattled NPSC chief

Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi dismissed Wednesday growing calls from the opposition camp for Kosuke Hori, chairman of the National Public Safety Commission, to be sacked for his responsibility for the Niigata police sandal.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 6, 2000

Diplomacy without guideposts

Ten years after the Cold War ended, we are moving toward the 21st century. In the past decade, the international community has been trying to catch up with fast changes and to establish a viable theory for creating a new order. However, drastic changes in the world have made it impossible for human wisdom...
EDITORIALS
Feb 29, 2000

First principles in Kosovo

One simple question has always hung over the peacekeeping operation in Kosovo: What is the goal? Is it peace at all costs or is it the restoration of the multiethnic communities that existed in Yugoslavia before the country shattered in violence? If the former, then partition may be the solution to Yugoslavia's...
EDITORIALS
Feb 27, 2000

The imitable Jeeves

Correct us if we are wrong, but we seem to have detected a certain half-veiled annoyance recently on the part of a British literary agency named A.P. Watt. The trouble is, these Watt chaps' duties include looking after the estate of the late, great comic novelist P.G. Wodehouse, creator of the supposedly...
JAPAN
Feb 24, 2000

85 trillion yen budget for 2000 hit as pre-election pork barrel

Staff writer An election looms this year and criticism is mounting that the 85 trillion yen fiscal 2000 budget is nothing more than a gigantic pork barrel. As the government debt mounts and more public works outlays are earmarked, the ruling bloc, which defends this policy, is squaring off in the political...
EDITORIALS
Feb 23, 2000

Taxing times for Tokyo banks

Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara's plan to levy a new tax on large banks in the metropolis has created a stir. The banks are dead set against it, but Tokyo citizens -- and the public at large -- are applauding the idea. No Japanese politician, national or local, has made such a widely acclaimed decision...
JAPAN
Feb 23, 2000

DPJ chief ready to testify over donations

The president of the Democratic Party of Japan said he is willing to give testimony if he is summoned over allegations in a magazine that he accepted illegal donations of 50 million yen. Yukio Hatoyama, president of the largest opposition party, made his announcement in response to a question during...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 22, 2000

When paranoia is in power, prepare to be surprised

WHY VIETNAM INVADED CAMBODIA: Political Culture and the Causes of War, by Stephen J. Morris. Stanford University Press, 1999, 315 pp., $49.50/30 British pounds (cloth), $18.95/11.95 British pounds (paper). In July 1973, the Khmer Rouge launched an offensive against Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh....
JAPAN / Media
Feb 17, 2000

Tarnished shields reflect on justice

Because the public has been conditioned not to believe anything it doesn't see on TV or read in the paper, a problem is not considered a problem until the media says it is. This realization brings up the question: What was it before?

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