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COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Apr 16, 2000

Cindy Fueki

More than 70 years ago, a group of women living in Yokohama founded the International Women's Club. They devised lively social programs and gave their attention to welfare work. The outbreak of World War II meant that the club ceased its activities.
EDITORIALS
Apr 14, 2000

Mr. Mori fails to articulate a vision

With a new Cabinet at the helm, the Diet has completed a round of plenary debates following a policy speech by Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori. The first order of business for the Mori Cabinet, despite the extraordinary events preceding its inception, is to present its political vision to the nation. But...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 14, 2000

Sharif's fate sets stage for odd political realignments

NEW DELHI -- Pakistan's ousted prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, is now perhaps both happy and unhappy. Happy that his country's military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has spared his life. Yet unhappy, because the 25-year imprisonment handed him -- for trying to prevent Musharraf's plane from landing...
EDITORIALS
Apr 13, 2000

Where will Microsoft go now?

Where will Microsoft go now?
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 13, 2000

Tiny Qatar brings freedom of the press to the Arab world

QATAR -- On a recent visit to Qatar, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak wanted to satisfy his curiosity about something bothering him and most other Arab rulers. It was past midnight when he descended unannounced on the Jazeera TV station. His surprise was hardly less than that of staff still around at...
LIFE / Food & Drink / NIHONSHU
Apr 13, 2000

Fish, sake and crowds come together at Uoshin

Like the indigenous beverages of most countries, sake developed along with its national cuisine. Indeed, there are great differences in Japanese cuisine from region to region, small country though Japan may be, and these differences are reflected in the subtle differences in the sake.
EDITORIALS
Apr 12, 2000

A Korean dialogue at last

In a long-awaited development, the governments of North Korea and South Korea announced Monday that they would hold their first-ever presidential summit June 12 to 14 in Pyongyang. This meeting is a victory for the "sunshine" policy of South Korean President Kim Dae Jung and could fundamentally change...
LIFE / Travel
Apr 12, 2000

Taking it to the skies of Bangkok

On the anniversary of the King's 72nd birthday in December 1999, the revolutionary concept of electricallypowered mass transit finally hit Bangkok, a city long dependent on the noisy, noxious, internal combustion engine. Two short elevated lines, totaling 23.7 km of track, were built at a cost of 54.9...
CULTURE / Music / MUSIC NOMAD
Apr 11, 2000

Femi, from Fuji to Tokyo

In Nigeria there is a music called Fuji. In the early 1990s, Fuji was the most popular music in Nigeria. The music's originator, Sikiru Barrister, named it after seeing a postcard of Mount Fuji. He said it was the most beautiful mountain he had ever seen, and dreamed of playing or recording in view of...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 9, 2000

Flawed Korean peace talks stumble on

SEOUL -- Four years ago this month, then South Korean President Kim Young Sam and U.S. President Bill Clinton invited North Korea and China to join the United States and South Korea in talks designed to establish a new peace mechanism based on a peace treaty on the Korean Peninsula as well as to seek...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 9, 2000

EU knocking down the Tower of Babel

BRUSSELS — The European Union brings together 15 states with a total population of 380 million people. Thirteen other countries have applied to join. Europeans speak some 45 different languages, of which 11 are recognized as official languages for the purposes of EU business. But millions of European...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Apr 9, 2000

At the top

There is little need to write what a wonderful city San Francisco is, how much there is to do. On the day I arrived, I could have joined a ghost hunt, had a tour of a teddy bear factory, heard a lecture explaining how California once was an island, seen an exhibition of Japanese "shibori" fabrics at...
CULTURE / Music
Apr 9, 2000

Conductors introduce some new stars

It is fair to assume that anyone reading this column is a music lover of some degree. Take a moment to reflect, though, that there was a time in your life when you had never heard a note of music. What was it that inveigled your innocent ear? When was it? Where were you? Who introduced you?
LIFE / Food & Drink
Apr 8, 2000

Bicultural relations of the palate

FUKUOKA -- Think about how you enjoy red wine. With a tasty pasta dish or rich gamey stew, perhaps? Well, how about sushi? Few would answer yes to this one -- unless they were culinary ninja, as creative director Daisuke Utagawa of Washington, D.C.'s first sushi restaurant Sushi-Ko, describes himself....
MORE SPORTS
Apr 7, 2000

You've come a long way, baby

Their faces may be swollen and their noses might get bloodied, but Japanese female boxers have no intention of stepping out of the ring.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 7, 2000

India still hurts from Nehru's blunders

NEW DELHI -- It seems absurd that almost 53 years after India became a free country that it should remain without recognized borders with its most powerful neighbor, China.
COMMENTARY
Apr 6, 2000

Still searching for balance

Every spring, the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan sends a delegation to Washington, D.C. to meet with senior U.S. administration officials and key members of Congress to discuss issues of concern to the U.S. business community in Japan. Participating in the ACCJ visit last month for the seventh...
LIFE / ALTERNATIVE LUXURIES
Apr 6, 2000

The alchemical way of self and bamboo

"The etymology of the word 'God' in English is totally different from the Japanese word kami, and has a completely different sense," says master charcoal burner Hironori Takebayashi, in his deep, laconic voice.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 6, 2000

Commercial success -- and cultural

In advertising, success doesn't always mean the same thing to everyone involved. For the client, it means increased sales of his product, while for the copywriter it means cultural impact, and though there's nothing that says these two successes can't coincide, there's also nothing that says they have...
COMMUNITY
Apr 6, 2000

Sisters doing it for themselves at any age

Seiko Kuboi stops at the end of the catwalk and poses with hand on hip, showing off her gold lame-edged jacket, long black skirt and black bolero hat. The crowd goes wild. "Whoo-hoo! Looking good! Great hat!" they scream in raucous appreciation.
EDITORIALS
Apr 4, 2000

The real meaning of recycling

The throwaway mentality remains strongly entrenched here -- witness the mountains of refuse in the nation's parks and other favored sites for cherry-blossom viewing as the season reaches its peak. To anyone viewing the discarded cans, bottles and paper and plastic packaging, active recycling may seem...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 4, 2000

A costly dearth of leaders

There is growing opinion at home and abroad that Japan lacks national leadership. When the former ruler of a neighboring country suggested recently that Japan had no true leader, there was no public outrage in Japan.
COMMENTARY
Apr 3, 2000

No tolls on the e-commerce highway

The electronic superhighway is becoming an ever more important forum for commerce, and states want a piece of the action. But just as American colonists resisted British attempts to tax paper and tea, American citizens should bar states from taxing online transactions.
CULTURE / Music
Apr 1, 2000

Speed quits after 44 months on top

The teenage Okinawan pop group Speed dissolved Friday after three years and eight months in show business.
EDITORIALS
Mar 31, 2000

Familiar faces in a new Cabinet

In France, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin resorted to a compromise strategy in a Cabinet reshuffle announced earlier this week. Rattled by a series of missteps, Mr. Jospin needs to rebuild public confidence. To do so, he appointed two prominent rivals from his Socialist Party to key positions. It is a...
BUSINESS
Mar 31, 2000

2,582 guaranteed-loan recipients fail

The number of companies that went bankrupt despite taking advantage of a special public loan guarantee system for small and midsize firms introduced in October 1998 reached 2,582 at the end of February, according to data made available Thursday by Teikoku Databank.
BUSINESS
Mar 31, 2000

Daiei negotiating sale of hotels to Goldman Sachs

The struggling supermarket chain Daiei Inc. is in the final stage of talks aimed at reaching an agreement on the sale of almost all of its group's Japanese hotels to the Goldman Sachs Group of the United States, industry sources said Thursday.
BUSINESS
Mar 31, 2000

Sony ties up with Sakura on Net bank

Sony Corp. announced Thursday that it has formally decided to set up an Internet-only bank in cooperation with Sakura Bank and J.P. Morgan of the U.S.
JAPAN
Mar 31, 2000

Tokai disaster no closer to resolution

Many things have been said about last September's fatal nuclear accident at the JCO Co. uranium processing plant in Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture.

Longform

Totopa in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward was picked by consultants TTNE as the best sauna of the year.
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