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COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Mar 4, 2001

Lydia Gomersall

Each year for 11 years now, Refugees International-Japan has been sponsoring its Art of Dining Exhibition. In this display, participants present highly individual, beautiful and imaginative tabletop settings for viewers' admiration and inspiration. Proceeds from the event go to RIJ's programs for the...
MORE SPORTS
Mar 4, 2001

'Toto' soccer lottery kicks off -- slowly

Sales of the J. League's "toto" soccer lottery kicked off Saturday at around 6,200 officially sanctioned sales points across the country.
LIFE / Travel
Mar 4, 2001

Shangri-La: Paradise beyond the clouds

LIJIANG, China -- The mystical land of Shangri-La, lost and found in recent years, has moved. It has also upgraded its attractions. This eastern Utopia still offers the tea shops, Tibetan lamas and snow-capped peaks of James Hilton's 1933 bestseller "Lost Horizon," but today's pilgrims can also sample...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 3, 2001

South Korea's media and transparency

SEOUL -- As so often, one opinion stands against another: South Korea's opposition party has leveled an accusation against the government that by launching a tax investigation of the media it is in effect waging a war against the press. The government retorts that the tax investigation is a routine matter,...
JAPAN
Mar 3, 2001

Tokyo monument honors victims

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government unveiled a peace monument Friday at Sumida Ward park, honoring some 100,000 people who died or were listed as missing as a result of the firebombing of Tokyo during World War II.
CULTURE / Music / HOGAKU TODAY
Mar 3, 2001

New frontiers for hogaku

Music in Japan tends to be highly categorized. Ongaku is the Japanese generic term for music, but most Japanese understand it to refer to Western music (the word yogaku is more specific). Hogaku (Japanese music) indicates both Japanese music in general or, more specifically, the music of the Edo Period....
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 3, 2001

Wake us for the next dance

The abundance of new dance and theater available in Tokyo during the months of February and March is a sure indicator of just how profoundly new work in this city depends on grants and other handouts from funding bodies. These budgets, such as they are, must be used by the end of the fiscal year, and...
JAPAN
Mar 3, 2001

Official claims innocence in HIV scandal

A former high-ranking Health and Welfare Ministry official repeated a not guilty plea Friday to the charge of professional negligence in an HIV infection scandal involving the deaths of more than 500 hemophiliacs as his lawyers made final arguments in the Tokyo District Court.
MORE SPORTS
Mar 3, 2001

JRFU unveils new coaching staff

The Japan Rugby Football Union announced its new coaching lineup on Friday, a staff consisting of experienced Kiwi Ross Cooper and Australian Gary Wallace, who will assist newly appointed head coach Shogo Mukai. Cooper, former head coach of Romania and an ex-All Black selector, will become Japan's new...
COMMENTARY
Mar 2, 2001

Mori's time is running out

There is an increasing likelihood that Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, lambasted at home and abroad as a symbol of political incompetence, will announce a decision sometime this month to step down to end the leadership crisis. This is hardly surprising, given Mori's abysmal performance since he was appointed...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 1, 2001

The spy game: high stakes, low payoffs

LONDON -- It's an impressive list: CIA official Aldrich Ames jailed for life in 1994 for spying for Moscow; CIA agent Harold Nicholson jailed for 23 years in 1997 for the same offense; FBI employee Earl Pitts sentenced to 27 years later the same year for passing information to Moscow; U.S. Army Col....
EDITORIALS
Feb 28, 2001

Pirates without the romance

It is not just children who play pirate these days. The International Maritime Bureau reports that there were 469 attacks on ships last year, a 56 percent increase over 1999. That number has increased throughout the last decade; without concerted action by governments -- and especially those in Southeast...
COMMENTARY
Feb 28, 2001

Alleviating anxiety in Seoul

SEOUL -- On the surface, U.S.-South Korean relations have seldom seemed better. Last fall's contentious issues -- negotiations over revisions to the Status of Forces Agreement and over South Korean missile-development plans -- were settled amicably. The new U.S. administration has firmly endorsed the...
JAPAN
Feb 27, 2001

Imperial Household irked by photo

The Imperial Household Agency said Monday it will consider demanding an apology or a correction from a German newspaper for publishing a picture of the Crown Prince with a caption inferring he may be impotent.
JAPAN
Feb 27, 2001

Kamei received 30 million yen cash, witness tells court

A witness told the Tokyo District Court on Monday that he saw an Osaka real estate developer give 30 million yen to Shizuka Kamei, chairman of the Policy Affairs Research Council of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
JAPAN
Feb 27, 2001

Kamei received 30 million yen cash, witness tells court

A witness told the Tokyo District Court on Monday that he saw an Osaka real estate developer give 30 million yen to Shizuka Kamei, chairman of the Policy Affairs Research Council of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
BUSINESS
Feb 27, 2001

Towel makers call for ban on imports

An industry association representing Japanese towel makers filed a petition with the government Monday to invoke import restriction measures to combat a steep increase in towel imports from China and Vietnam.
BUSINESS
Feb 27, 2001

Towel makers call for ban on imports

An industry association representing Japanese towel makers filed a petition with the government Monday to invoke import restriction measures to combat a steep increase in towel imports from China and Vietnam.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 27, 2001

Soar with Madame Butterfly

MADAME BUTTERFLY: Japonisme, Puccini, and the Search for the Real Cho-Cho-San, by Jan van Rij. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2001, 192 pp., 24 b/w photos, drawings, map, $24.95 (casebound). Giacomo Puccini's "Madame Butterfly" has become more than just a pretty piece of music. It has turned into something...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 27, 2001

Fairy tales for modern Japan

GHOST OF A SMILE: Stories, by Deborah Boliver Boehm. Kodansha International, 2000, 288 pp., 2,900 yen (cloth). Imagine Lafcadio Hearn venturing to 21st-century Tokyo reincarnated as a single American woman with a penchant for the exotic and erotic, and you will have a sense of the stories in "Ghost of...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Feb 26, 2001

Incineration as usual in Kanagawa, despite suit

If the video were not so alarming, it would be humorous: Chaplinesque workers scurry to and fro while a claw-loader swivels and bends in every direction, making piles of waste disappear, covering others with paper and cardboard, and using a mattress clenched in its claw to sweep its work area clean....
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 25, 2001

Myanmar's best hope lies in reconciliation

"To those who have visited even briefly, Myanmar is one of the most attractive and intriguing places in Asia. It has vast potential for economic growth thanks to its natural resources. And its human resources are equally promising. Indeed, it was expected that after independence the country would do...

Longform

The building of new high-rise residential buildings has some alarmed that they could empty and fall into disrepair as Japan's population shrinks.
The high cost of letting Japan's condos crumble