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JAPAN / OBITUARY
Nov 27, 2000

Ex-Foreign Minister Zentaro Kosaka dies

Zentaro Kosaka, a conservative politician who worked for normalization of diplomatic relations with China and promoted rapprochement with the Soviet Union during the Cold War era, died of renal failure at his home in Tokyo's Ota Ward on Sunday afternoon, his family said. He was 88.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 27, 2000

Shaky finances threaten to sink KEDO

Sinp'o is a quiet coastal town on the edge of the Japan Sea in North Korea, almost two hours by helicopter from the capital Pyongyang. There is a beautiful swath of unspoiled beach, edged with bushes and shrubs typical of marine margins, and clusters of shabby houses and farms littered across the landscape....
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 27, 2000

Asia debates the merit of political debates

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- I don't want to add to the endless debate over the chances of the two U.S. presidential contenders. Rather, I want to focus on the debates and some possible corollaries for Asia.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 26, 2000

With affluence comes intellectual decay

Among the intellectuals it is not hard to detect the New Pessimism; among the citizenry, the Same Old Apathy. Today I wish to focus on the former.
CULTURE / Art
Nov 26, 2000

Evoking a sense of time and place in many-layered canvases

Graeme Todd makes landscapes, hidden and subverted under multiple layers of varnish. The paintings resemble a magical transparent pool, offering up subtle images that float toward the eye, carried forward by the separate varnished surfaces.
COMMENTARY
Nov 25, 2000

Can the system be salvaged?

LONDON -- Reading the accounts in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun and the Financial Times of the shenanigans inside and outside the Japanese House of Representatives over the no-confidence motion against the Mori government, I could not help laughing, but I also felt despair about the future of parliamentary...
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Nov 25, 2000

Jury is back on Mashiko exhibition

Mashiko is a name that many of you are familiar with, I'm sure. It is the name of a town in Tochigi Prefecture, as well as an internationally recognized pottery style made famous by the late Shoji Hamada. Today hundreds of potters reside there, and many come from around the world to study or pay their...
EDITORIALS
Nov 24, 2000

The EU gets an army, sort of

There have always been two benchmarks of genuine "European" identity: a single currency that would make the claim to economic union a reality, and a military force that could backstop the group's foreign-policy pretensions. The currency debuted on Jan. 1, 1999, and has had a difficult time ever since....
JAPAN
Nov 24, 2000

Public facilities to be free of PCB-filled lights by 2001

The government will remove fluorescent lights and mercury lamps containing polychlorinated biphenyls from all public facilities in fiscal 2001, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said Thursday.
JAPAN
Nov 24, 2000

Tougher Juvenile Law best remedy?

Despite the swirling pros and cons, legislation to revise the Juvenile Law for the first time in more than 50 years is expected to be enacted next week.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 24, 2000

To flourish, Sonia needs Indira's cunning

NEW DELHI -- Sonia Gandhi once hated politics, certainly the intrigues of Indian affairs.
SOCCER / J. League
Nov 24, 2000

J.League second-stage race goes down to the wire

OSAKA -- The J. League second-stage title race has come down to the wire after the Kashima Antlers and Kashiwa Reysol both won Thursday. The stage champion will now be decided Sunday, the final day of the stage, in a showcase between these two teams at Tokyo's National Stadium.
COMMUNITY
Nov 23, 2000

What's so great about the mod cons?

About two years ago, Hiroko Nakamura, a 40-year-old Tokyo housewife, decided she wanted only truly essential items in her home.
LIFE / Food & Drink / WINE WAYS
Nov 23, 2000

End your festive feast with a liquid dessert

With yet another Thanksgiving, Hanuka, Christmas and so forth soon to come, the question is, should you gorge away at the big dinner or discreetly desist a bit to "make sure," as some say, "that there's still some room left for dessert"?
JAPAN
Nov 21, 2000

Mideast peace said 'unavoidable'

Peace is "unavoidable" in the Middle East, and Israel wants to work together with the Palestinians to put an end to the violence, the new Israeli ambassador-designate said of his country's position Monday.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 20, 2000

Transparency crucial to corporate survival

Most companies will face a crisis at one point, but it's not necessarily the crisis itself that will dictate that company's future, but rather how it is handled.
JAPAN
Nov 19, 2000

Students put at risk due to PCB-laden lights

Despite years of warnings and growing criticism, potentially hazardous fluorescent lighting units in the classroom are likely to hang above students' heads for a while to come.
JAPAN
Nov 19, 2000

JCP won't back Kato as prime minister

The Japanese Communist Party would not support Koichi Kato as the nation's leader even if the heavyweight LDP member, who is trying to topple the Cabinet of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, revolts from the Liberal Democratic Party, according to JCP leader Tetsuzo Fuwa.
CULTURE / Books / POETRY MIGNETTE
Nov 19, 2000

Poetry readings in Okinawa

In Itoman, Okinawa Prefecture Oct. 15, Shuntaro Tanikawa read such scatological, contemporary poems as "Onara (Fart)" and "Unko (Crap)" from his collection "Hadaka" (the English edition, "Naked," is jointly published by Stone Bridge Press and Saru Press).
COMMENTARY
Nov 19, 2000

U.S. credibility put to test

NEW DELHI -- Political scientist Samuel Huntington has aptly described the United States as the "sole state with pre-eminence in every domain of power -- economic, military, diplomatic, ideological, technological and cultural -- with the reach capabilities to promote its interests in virtually every...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 19, 2000

Education yesterday, today and tomorrow

My four children have attended Japanese schools from kindergarten up. Over the years there have been innumerable positive experiences connected with this. Yet one thing has always struck me as, at best, blatantly incongruous. Virtually every principal addressing pupils and parents at the commencement...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 19, 2000

Scourge of child prostitution spreading

NEW YORK -- Their names are Chandrika, Hamida, Amod, Madhuri, Maria and Jenny. And as varied as these children's names are their nationalities: Indian, Bangladeshe, Nepalese, Nicaraguan and North American. What unites them is that they have been made to work as prostitutes and, in the process, have endangered...
JAPAN
Nov 18, 2000

Nursery chief admits killing baby

The 29-year-old operator of an unauthorized nursery in Yamato, Kanagawa Prefecture, pleaded guilty Friday to fatally injuring a toddler at the facility but pleaded not guilty to another infant's death.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 18, 2000

Rich and poor have stake in cleaner planet

Supermarket shelves offer a choice of two light bulbs: the standard incandescent type and the compact fluorescent type. In Bangladesh, the price difference is 20 taka compared to 450 taka. The fluorescent type will last at least 10 times as long and consume one-fifth of the energy. Overall, savings from...
JAPAN
Nov 17, 2000

Lawmaker's ex-aide arrested over loan scam

Prosecutors on Thursday arrested a former secretary of House of Representatives member Koichi Yoshida for allegedly receiving illegal commissions from a loan broker in return for securing debt guarantees from a public corporation, investigative sources said.
JAPAN
Nov 16, 2000

Press mulls role of English in Asia

Foreign Press Center/Japan will hold its annual one-day Asia-Pacific Journalists Meeting on Nov. 30 in Tokyo.
JAPAN
Nov 15, 2000

Costly Kansai airport plagued by pullouts, rivals, debts, sea

OSAKA -- Six years after opening, Kansai International Airport is struggling to stay above water -- literally and figuratively.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 15, 2000

Timeless tales reflect the times

SANSHO DAYU, by Dudley Andrew & Carole Cavanaugh. BFI Film Classic Series. London: British Film Institute, 2000, 80 pp., with b/w illustrations, $20. Kenji Mizoguchi's 1954 film, "Sansho Dayu" (Sansho the Bailiff), is based upon the well-known 1915 Ogai Mori narrative, which was in turn taken from...
LIFE / Travel
Nov 15, 2000

Hard reality of a not-so DMZ still divides the two Koreas

The troops of North Korea's crack invasion units are shorter than the average Western tourist.

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