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COMMENTARY / World
Aug 18, 2000

State-owned enterprises continue to hinder Chinese growth

WASHINGTON -- In January, Chinese Deputy Prime Minister Wu Bangguo said that whether or not China gets into the World Trade Organization, China's policy would be "to reform and build a market economy." Now that China is assured of entering the WTO, the hard work of transforming China's socialist market...
COMMUNITY
Aug 17, 2000

Preparing to teach for the next 500 years

It is remarkable that in 150 years of mainstream education, there has been little serious investigation into how the human brain learns. An exception is the work of Bulgarian scientist Dr. Georgi Lozanov, who began studies and experiments in the 1950s.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Aug 17, 2000

The tawdry charm of the tattoo

Tattoos are everywhere these days. What are we expressing with this new vision of beauty, that calls for the tattoo to complete it? Until a few decades ago in the West, tattoos were associated mostly with sailors, prisoners, gang members, soldiers and carnival performers.
BUSINESS
Aug 16, 2000

Motorcycle makers gear up to tackle domestic slump

Despite brisk business in the global market, Japanese motorcycle makers have for years watched their domestic sales slide.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 16, 2000

The 'third way' goes via Japan

CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY IN MODERN JAPAN, edited by Ian Inkster and Fumihiko Satofuka. 2000, I.B. Tauris, 39.50 British pounds / St. Martin's Press, $59.50. THE JAPANESE AND EUROPE: Images and Perceptions, by Bert Edstrom. Japan Library, 35 British pounds / $55. In less than 150 years, Japan has changed...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 16, 2000

Australia splits on single mothers' rights

SYDNEY -- Sex and the single woman: This unlikely topic has suddenly become a political cause celebre in Australia. Even the Olympics are taking a temporary back seat to the debate on unmarried women's right to motherhood.
JAPAN
Aug 15, 2000

Astronaut Mukai appointed NASA mission scientist

The National Space Development Agency of Japan on Monday announced that astronaut Chiaki Mukai will serve as mission scientist during a 2001 NASA mission involving the space shuttle Columbia.
JAPAN
Aug 13, 2000

Sleaze market festers with rip-off artists

The promise is too good to be true -- all you can drink and "excellent service" provided by "companions" for 6,000 yen in Tokyo's adult entertainment central.
JAPAN
Aug 13, 2000

Ping-pong parlors are bouncing back

Frustrated groans and whoops of excitement echo around the ninth floor of a Shibuya game center. Surprisingly, there's not a video or arcade game in sight.
JAPAN
Aug 13, 2000

Subway platform gates sought by the visually impaired

A group of visually impaired people will launch a petition drive calling on the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to install protective gates on platforms of the newly opened Oedo subway line to help prevent accidents.
CULTURE / Music
Aug 13, 2000

Asahina still tall on the podium at 92

Osaka Philharmonie Kokyo Gakudan
JAPAN
Aug 12, 2000

Ex-Zero pilot tells Japan to avoid all war

A former Zero fighter pilot who shot down more than 60 Allied planes during World War II has called on Japan not to forget the horror of war and to make sure that it never becomes involved in a military conflict again.
JAPAN
Aug 12, 2000

Cases of student violence toward teachers up 11%

Incidents of students being violent toward teachers at public schools increased more than 11 percent to about 5,000 cases nationwide in the 1999 school year, according to an Education Ministry report released Friday.
BUSINESS
Aug 12, 2000

Daiwa Bank to form team to develop IT-based strategies

OSAKA -- Daiwa Bank will set up a project team to work out business strategies utilizing information technology, bank officials said Friday.
COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE
Aug 12, 2000

Lieberman gives Gore a boost

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut is Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore's choice for vice president. The choice is a masterful one. Lieberman brings several big pluses to Gore's candidacy:
EDITORIALS
Aug 11, 2000

Nowhere for tyrants to hide

Old age for Chile's former strongman Augusto Pinochet and Indonesia's former President Suharto looks much different from anything they had probably envisaged. These two distinguished men, each of whom fashioned himself as the savior of his country, are now rethinking their retirement plans. Instead of...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 11, 2000

Time for Delhi to show trust in Kashmiris

NEW DELHI -- The Kashmir problem defies solution. Three recent developments have even compounded the impasse.
COMMUNITY
Aug 10, 2000

Have lifestyle, don't need kids

Kazumi Kato has been married for 15 years. When she got married at the age of 22, she planned to have a baby once she turned 26 or 27. But when she reached that age, she still did not feel like becoming a mother, and decided to wait until she was 30. When she turned 30, however, she still did not feel...
JAPAN
Aug 9, 2000

Survivors' memories published in English

Michiko Nakano set out with the ambition of publishing a collection of stories of her peers' experiences of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in English, hoping to educate more of the world's people about the historic facts of the attack, which occurred exactly 55 years ago today.
LIFE / Travel
Aug 9, 2000

Kyoto welcomes back the dear departed

Bon, the Buddhist Festival of the Dead, is celebrated throughout Japan, but exact dates vary from region to region. Kyoto traditionally observes Bon Aug. 7-16, and, not surprisingly, given its more than 1,200 years of history and strong Buddhist traditions, the town has some unique ways of paying tribute...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 8, 2000

Japan: everything and more

THE MIKADO'S EMPIRE: A History of Japan from the Mythological Age to the Meiji Era, by William Elliot Griffis. A facsimile printing of the 1895 edition. New York, Tokyo, Osaka & London: ICG Muse, Inc. 2000, 462 pp., 1,300 yen. William Elliot Griffis, educator and clergyman, first came to Japan in 1870....
CULTURE / Books
Aug 8, 2000

White guys to the rescue

OUTPOSTS OF CIVILIZATION: Race, Religion and the Formative Years of American-Japanese Relations, by Joseph M. Henning. New York and London: New York University Press, 2000, 243 pp., $35 (cloth). U.S. foreign policy has a mission. Many American politicians or diplomats would be proud rather than hesitant...
JAPAN
Aug 7, 2000

'New breed' of woman emerges in Japan

Two weeks after Sakae Sasaki decided to open a cake shop in Tokyo's Meguro Ward in 1996, she realized she was pregnant.
COMMENTARY
Aug 7, 2000

Laissez faire destroys itself

The market economy is akin to nature. Government intervention in the market is comparable to the destruction of the natural environment and should be avoided. Nature untouched by the human hand is great. The fury of the elements dwarfs human power. Essentially, that is the opinion of free-market advocates,...
COMMENTARY
Aug 7, 2000

Updating the nuclear debate

LONDON -- Appearing before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary William Cohen has confirmed that he and his colleagues see the threat to the United States of long-range missile attack as growing. The intention to develop a national missile defense system against is therefore still...
JAPAN
Aug 6, 2000

Marist headmaster inspired by nation's morals, quake ordeal

KOBE -- What is behind Japanese people's moral behavior remains a mystery to Brother George Fontana, although he has spent 11 years here as headmaster of Marist Brothers International School in Suma Ward.

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?