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JAPAN
Feb 26, 1999

Education panel urges lessons in medical ethics

Medical students should be taught more about the dignity of human life and death, an advisory council to the Education Ministry proposed Friday.
JAPAN
Feb 25, 1999

Lawmakers play musical chairs

In a bizarre development, a Lower House member has decided to give up his seat and run for the same chamber again.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 23, 1999

A new bridge over the Pacific revealed

Is friendship between nations possible? Can Japan and the United States be friends as the U.S. is with Canada and Britain, or are they forever destined to have a relationship that turns on a calculation of mutual advantage?
EDITORIALS
Feb 22, 1999

The Tokyo race is on

After weeks of scheming and squabbling, the cast now appears all set. If the Tokyo gubernatorial election were a soap opera, few people would worry too much about the script, as long as the lineup of stars passed muster. But the choice of a governor for a metropolis with a population of 11 million is...
EDITORIALS
Feb 21, 1999

Architecture for a new millennium

A new building was opened in Berlin last month that has set the architectural world buzzing. If architecture is "frozen music," wrote one observer, citing Friedrich von Schelling's famous dictum, then Berlin's new Jewish Museum is "a truly dissonant piece."
COMMENTARY
Feb 21, 1999

Medicare plan cuts care more than costs

WASHINGTON -- Pension programs in the United States as well as many other countries are heading over the fiscal cliff. Even President Bill Clinton has noticed the problems with Social Security.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Feb 21, 1999

Sunday afternoon

A reader writes about the Saturday edition of The Japan Times and how much she appreciates the listing of what's going on in our city. She especially enjoyed Robert Yellin's Feb. 13 article about Nezu Museum and its current exhibition revealing the elegance of traditional sake drinking, the sake cups...
EDITORIALS
Feb 20, 1999

Haunting the high street

As the Internet insinuates itself deeper into daily life, one key facet of its future role -- electronic commerce -- continues its explosive growth. Estimates of the amount of business conducted in cyberspace vary from $30 billion annually to nearly twice that. But one thing is certain: It is increasing...
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 20, 1999

Tamasaburo romances rough guys

The Kabukiza Theater in Ginza this month is featuring Tamasaburo Bando, one of Japan's foremost onnagata (women's role) actors, in three numbers: first with hislongtime partner Nizaemon Kataoka, then with Kankuro Nakamura. Other great names on the playbill are Danjuro Ichikawa, Kichiemon Nakamura, Tomijuro...
EDITORIALS
Feb 11, 1999

Hope for East Timor

East Timor has never fit comfortably within the sprawling archipelago that is Indonesia. The province was a Portuguese territory from the 17th century until 1975, when a socialist government in Lisbon abandoned the country's colonial pretensions. That triggered a struggle for control of the region. The...
EDITORIALS
Feb 9, 1999

Passing on the king's torch of peace

The active rule of a king does not greatly differ from that of a dictator in the sense that his demise has such a profound impact, not only on the fortunes of his own people, but also on the relationships between his nation and other countries. Whether his rule was that of an enlightened political leader...
JAPAN
Feb 9, 1999

Hatoyama enters governor's race; LDP eyes Akashi

Kunio Hatoyama, deputy leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, ended days of speculation Tuesday by announcing his candidacy for April's Tokyo gubernatorial election.
JAPAN
Feb 8, 1999

LDP drops plan to back Hatoyama for governor

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party on Monday officially gave up its plan to join with other parties in supporting Kunio Hatoyama, vice president of the Democratic Party of Japan, even if he decides to run in the April 11 Tokyo gubernatorial election.
JAPAN
Feb 8, 1999

Cabby from China learning way around Japan

Ghost, half-human and spy — Shigeru Oyama has been called all these things growing up half-Japanese in postwar Beijing.
JAPAN
Feb 8, 1999

China's crested ibises find Sado life just fine

You You and Yang Yang, the pair of endangered crested ibises that arrived from China at the end of January, are feeding and adapting well to their new home, the Environment Agency announced Monday.
JAPAN
Feb 1, 1999

Man sends dead cat to professor

Police arrested a former graduate student of the University of Tokyo on Monday on suspicion of sending threatening letters and a cat carcass to an assistant professor of the university in charge who judged his master's thesis.
JAPAN
Jan 21, 1999

Justice panel urges prosecutors for juvenile hearings

The Justice Ministry's Legislative Council on Thursday proposed that prosecutors be conditionally allowed to attend family court hearings in serious juvenile crimes.
EDITORIALS
Jan 15, 1999

Embarrassed in Malaysia

In a surprising move, Malaysian prosecutors have amended four of the charges that have been brought against former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. The prosecutors claim the changes are superficial. The amendments now say that Mr. Anwar used the police to get witnesses to retract allegations that...
EDITORIALS
Jan 9, 1999

Marriage, divorce and the future

In the early days of a new year, when most of the public is on holiday and many people are traveling away from home, it is all too easy for important news to be overlooked or even dismissed as nothing new. That seems to have been the case with the scant attention paid to the announcement published on...
JAPAN
Jan 6, 1999

Century of Change: Foreign press find Japan tough to figure

In 1890, an Irish-born writer of limited success found his spiritual home after arriving upon the shores of what was then considered by the West to be the world's most exotic country.
JAPAN
Jan 5, 1999

Lawyers see pain as consumers navigate investment risks

As the government's "Big Bang" financial deregulation moves into full gear, there is growing concern among lawyers that there has been one-sided emphasis on consumer responsibility for making investments at their own risk.
JAPAN
Dec 28, 1998

Lung recipient released from hospital

OKAYAMA -- A 24-year-old woman who underwent the nation's first lung transplant operation using live donors was discharged from Okayama University Hospital Monday after two months of postoperative treatment there.
JAPAN
Dec 25, 1998

High school dropouts reach record high

There were 111,491 high school dropouts in fiscal 1997, constituting a record 2.6 percent of total beginning-of-year enrollment, according to an Education Ministry survey released Friday.
JAPAN
Dec 18, 1998

North Korea video shows black markets, starving kids

Adults can be seen selling noodles, potatoes and kimchi on the streets, seemingly oblivious to the starving children wandering around them, combing the ground for anything edible.
JAPAN
Dec 16, 1998

Three U.S. scientists win Japan Prize

Three scientists from the United States who have contributed to the fields of information technology and life sciences have won the 1999 Japan Prize, its selection committee announced Wednesday.
JAPAN
Dec 10, 1998

Wife gets 15 years in spouse's slaying

A 41-year-old woman was sentenced to 15 years in prison Thursday for conspiring with her lover to kill her husband for insurance money.
JAPAN
Dec 10, 1998

Ex-employee's organ links Hayashi to another death

WAKAYAMA -- A deceased 27-year-old ex-employee of Kenji Hayashi, whose wife, Masumi, was served an arrest warrant Wednesday for allegedly murdering four people and trying to kill 63 others by lacing their curry with arsenic, has pointed a finger from the grave to implicate her in yet another arsenic-related...
JAPAN
Dec 9, 1998

Masumi Hayashi held in Wakayama curry killings

WAKAYAMA -- Police served Masumi Hayashi with a warrant Wednesday, charging her with murdering four people and attempting to kill 63 others by poisoning a vat of curry served up during Wakayama's Sonobe district summer festival.
JAPAN
Dec 3, 1998

Kids today tuckered out by TV, not sports

It doesn't take much to exhaust today's Japanese kids, who are too busy watching TV, playing video games or reading comic books to play outdoors, according to an Education Ministry survey released Thursday.
JAPAN
Dec 2, 1998

The Asahara Trial: 100th hearing just tip of iceberg

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