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JAPAN
Jan 18, 2000

Navajo fights relocation, sees coal interests at work

Staff writer An American Indian recently visited Japan to solicit support for the Dineh people, also known as the Navajo, facing relocation from their home in the Big Mountain area of northern Arizona. Lecturing in English and saying a prayer in his native tongue, Bahe Yazzie Katenay, 42, spoke about...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 17, 2000

Cut U.S. military presence

Japan faces intense pressure to settle uncertainties regarding the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps heliport now at the Futenma Air Station in Okinawa before July, when it hosts a Group of Eight summit. Unless the problems are settled by then, U.S. President Bill Clinton is likely to face a firestorm...
JAPAN
Jan 16, 2000

Viva Odaiba! Ishihara dreams of casinos in the bay

Cigarette smoke wafts out of noisy pachinko parlors, crowds armed with racing forms jostle one another on trains on horse racing days, and lines form in front of lottery ticket booths. You may or may not call it gambling, but playing to test your luck has grown into a huge industry in Japan.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jan 12, 2000

We have a future

Another megamerger, another Internet world-eating conglomerate emerges. Apart from its size, the AOL-Time/Warner deal is a big deal: The marriage of AOL and Time Warner matters (if it goes throtwo reasons. First, it combines one of the biggest Net presences with a broadband delivery systefinally makes...
COMMUNITY
Jan 3, 2000

Picture-book village looks to the children

Once upon a time, sometime in 1992, there were two communities, Kijo-cho and Ishikawauchi, nestled high in the mountains of Miyazaki Prefecture. As in many such rural communities, the sound of children's voices was becoming a rarity as young families left to find their fortune in the city of Miyazaki,...
JAPAN
Dec 17, 1999

Art group attempts to heal those ravaged by war

Staff writer In these days of "Pokemon" mania, who wouldn't want a personal note from Pikachu? Hector Sierra, 34, a fine arts doctoral student from Colombia, might not seem like the most likely recipient. But the filmmaker and NGO coordinator was as tickled as any kid. Arriving days before Sierra was...
JAPAN
Dec 16, 1999

Japan to host people-smuggling symposium

Japan will host the first international symposium exclusively focusing on ways to combat the increasingly serious problem of human smuggling in the Asia-Pacific region in mid-January, Foreign Ministry officials said Thursday.
JAPAN
Dec 9, 1999

Tokyo to host conference on future role of U.N.

Staff writer Some of the world's leading experts on development, security, governance and the environment will meet in Tokyo in mid-January for an international conference on the role the U.N. will play in the 21st century. According to a provisional program, the Millennium Conference will be held for...
CULTURE / Books
Nov 24, 1999

British bulldogs in a China shop

BRITAIN IN CHINA: Community, Culture and Colonialism 1900-1949, by Robert Bickers. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999; 276 pp., 45 pounds (hardcover), 15.99 pounds (paper). When Lord Macartney opened his British Embassy in China in 1792, he was told to ask for bit of land or,...
JAPAN
Oct 13, 1999

Regional Special: KYUSHU

Reclamation project splits locals, power elite> Staff writer
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Sep 22, 1999

Where the women are

No presses need to be stopped to inform you of the growing number of women on the Internet in Japan. And the sizes of our headlines won't increase to tell you that number will continue to rise steadily, if not dramatically, over the next few years
EDITORIALS
Sep 21, 1999

When the whole world is watching

What can we do when faced with atrocities being committed on a monstrous scale? It is an old question, but it has taken on a renewed urgency with the advent of new communications technologies and mass media eager to exploit them in the competition for viewers. Being blind to distant injustices is a luxury...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Sep 15, 1999

The family that surfs together ...

There is something mildly unsettling about the cyberpolice's fixation with child pornography. At the Internet Content Summit, held last week in Munich and hosted by the Bertelsmann Stiftung, kiddie porn was repeatedly denounced by participants. To judge from the general tone of the comments, it embodied...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Sep 1, 1999

Defying changes

Volunteer organizations come and go, often depending on who runs them. Many times a group will cease to exist when the person who held it together leaves Japan. Fortunately, there are still many people who give their time to volunteer organizations. Their number, however, has decreased as more professional...
JAPAN
Aug 25, 1999

Students call for halt to child conscription

Twenty students on Wednesday called on the government to take concrete steps to outlaw the recruitment of child soldiers.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 21, 1999

No mystery to doing business in China

It seems that many so-called China experts try to enhance the value of their services by attributing a certain amount of "inscrutability" to the Chinese that only they can decipher. Besides being a patently offensive assertion, this is also grossly misleading.
EDITORIALS
Aug 3, 1999

Mending relations with Russia

NATO's bombing campaign may have won the war in Kosovo but damaged relations between Russia and the West were part of the price of victory. The decision by Moscow and Washington to open new talks on arms control and renew efforts to integrate Russia into the world economy is a welcome sign that the breach...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Jul 25, 1999

Lasting tastes

A friend has sent me a clipping from her home-town paper. It is about a new telephone service staffed exclusively by women, a point they wanted to emphasize in the name they selected. It is called Miss Information. That is not what you get from Tokyo's information service, which is also provided by women....
JAPAN
Jul 22, 1999

'Kimigayo' controversy leaves students indifferent, confused

Staff writer
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jul 21, 1999

'A grotesque gap'

The United Nations Development Program's annual Human Development Report is usually a pretty grim document. Sure, life is improving for most people, but the poorest seem to get poorer and the gap between haves and have-nots is continually widening. The richest 20 percent of the world's population has...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 10, 1999

India's window of opportunity in Kashmir

As the war drags on to a slow and gory conclusion on the Himalayan heights, India has an unprecedented opportunity to seize the moral high ground and take the Kashmir problem right off the international agenda.
EDITORIALS
Jun 21, 1999

Mr. Mandela's mixed legacy

With a wave of his hand and a few humble words, South African President Nelson Mandela bid farewell to his nation Wednesday but left behind a rich legacy of democracy and racial reconciliation. His successor, Mr. Thabo Mbeki, sworn into office immediately following Mr. Mandela's retirement, now faces...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jun 16, 1999

Vocal as we wanna be

"The process of tying two items together is the important thing," wrote Vannevar Bush in a seminal essay titled "As We Think," published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1945. Bush described a hypothetical device that would allow the storage and retrieval of data, the memory of mankind. It would be constructed...
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Jun 12, 1999

Legacies live on in kingdom of Kato

In many ceramic centers around Japan a common thread in the community is not only a particular style but also a last name. For instance, if you walked into the middle of Tachikui, where Tanba is made, and shouted "Ichino-san!" almost all the houses would empty.
JAPAN
Jun 1, 1999

Bills formed, driven by international pressure

A package of bills allowing investigators to wiretap private communications resulted from pressure from the global community calling on Japan to provide a legal framework to help efforts to crack down on international organized crime.
COMMUNITY
May 23, 1999

Whaling town Taiji dreams for miracle IWC reprieve

TAIJI, Wakayama Pref. -- Nestled between clear Pacific waters and richly forested mountains and valleys, Taiji and it's pristine surroundings have remained largely unspoiled thanks to the town's isolation in southeast Wakayama and the community's long-standing relationship with the sea and its resources....
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
May 2, 1999

A remarkable lady

There should be trumpets. On May 8 at 10 a.m., Music for Youth will celebrate its 60th anniversary. The program with the New Japan Philharmonic will repeat MFY's first concert in 1939, which was designed to help young people enjoy and appreciate classical music. In this program, Schubert's "March Militaire"...
CULTURE / Books
Apr 20, 1999

Learning from the real world, not the schoolroom

LEARNING IN LIKELY PLACES: Varieties of Apprenticeship in Japan, edited by John Singleton. Cambridge University Press, 376 pp. For many foreigners living here, the chance to study some Japanese art or craft, be it aikido, shakuhachi or tea ceremony, is very much a part of their "Japan experience."...
EDITORIALS
Apr 9, 1999

Justice for victims of Pan Am 103

On Dec. 21, 1988, Pan Am flight 103 exploded in midair over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. Three years after the blast, a Scottish court petition named two Libyan officials, Mr. Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah and Mr. Abdel Basset Ali al Megrahi, as the individuals responsible for the atrocity. Earlier...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 7, 1999

In the wake of the spy boats

Two North Korean spy boats disguised as trawlers recently intruded deep into Japanese territorial waters in the Sea of Japan. This was the second incident to have heightened tension between Tokyo and Pyongyang since last August, when a Taepodong ballistic missile test-fired by North Korea flew over northern...

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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