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COMMENTARY
Dec 1, 2000

Kato shoots himself in the foot

Koichi Kato failed in his high-profile rebellion last week against the government of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori. The leading dissident in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party had vowed to unseat Mori by voting for an opposition-sponsored no-confidence motion against the Mori Cabinet. But when faced with...
JAPAN
Nov 30, 2000

Kajima to compensate Chinese for war labor

Kajima Corp. on Wednesday agreed to set up a 500 million yen fund to compensate the Chinese victims of a World War II labor camp in Odate, Akita Prefecture, where a major uprising took place toward the end of the war.
JAPAN
Nov 30, 2000

DPJ head proposes boosting SDF role

The leader of the Democratic Party of Japan proposed Wednesday to discuss a revision of the Constitution to enable the Self-Defense Forces to take part in overseas peacemaking missions that may involve the use of force.
JAPAN / FREEDOM OF PRESS IN THE BALANCE
Nov 29, 2000

Media considering best way to handle public's loss of faith

An amendment in June to Japan's 54-year-old Canon of Journalism apparently reflects the sense of crisis within the nation's news organizations over the apparent growing public dissatisfaction with the industry.
MORE SPORTS
Nov 29, 2000

Hitachi to disband volleyball team

Major electronics maker Hitachi Ltd. will disband its once-mighty women's volleyball club next March, at the end of the upcoming season, as part of its restructuring drive, company officials said Monday.
JAPAN
Nov 28, 2000

State adopts national info-tech strategy

The government adopted a national strategy Monday to turn Japan into the world's most advanced country in the area of information technology within the next five years.
CULTURE / Books
Nov 28, 2000

Thunderstruck by the Asian ascent

THUNDER FROM THE EAST: Portrait of a Rising Asia, by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, 377 pp., $27.50. This is a mediocre potboiler of scant significance. One suspects that these Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters for The New York Times know a great deal more about...
EDITORIALS
Nov 27, 2000

Europe chokes on its beef

Fears of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, mad cow disease, are spreading across Europe. New incidents of the disease have been identified in herds across the continent. Several suspected cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human variant of BSE, have been reported as well. European governments must...
JAPAN
Nov 27, 2000

Detente mission to Russia to follow Cabinet reshuffle

Japan will send its foreign minister to Russia to seek a breakthrough in a decades-old territorial dispute after a Cabinet reshuffle expected in early December, government sources said Sunday.
EDITORIALS
Nov 26, 2000

Emissaries with feet of clay

Sometimes there is nothing for it but to send out the troops. Doubtless frustrated by the slow pace of progress toward unification with its "renegade province" of Taiwan, China last week announced plans to do just that. A small force of soldiers, it said, is being prepared to cross the Formosa Strait...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Nov 26, 2000

Get ready for the Ichiro onslaught

Hold onto your hats. The contract agreement between the Seattle Mariners and Ichiro (Suzuki) promises to offer an exciting, fun time with a frenzied media circus, possible extra events, increased tourism and brisk souvenir sales, as the former Orix BlueWave outfielder and seven-time Pacific League batting...
JAPAN
Nov 26, 2000

Hase killer still at large, lawyer fears

KOBE -- The May 1997 murder of 11-year-old Jun Hase in Suma Ward here shocked Japan and made world headlines for the sensational nature of the crime.
JAPAN
Nov 26, 2000

Climate meeting ends in deadlock

THE HAGUE -- U.N. climate talks collapsed at the 11th hour Saturday after the European Union and the United States failed to settle a bitter row over ways to stop global warming.
JAPAN
Nov 26, 2000

Chelsea Rinku Town's raison d'etre

IZUMISANO, Osaka Pref. -- With nearly half of the land yet awaiting a buyer, a 318-hectare plot known as Rinku Town just across the bay from Kansai International Airport can hardly be called a bustling shopping district.
JAPAN
Nov 26, 2000

Japan IT strategy eyes more telecom deregulation

Japan's national strategy on information technology, scheduled to be adopted Monday, calls for greater deregulation of the telecommunications industry to promote competition, according to a final draft made available to Kyodo News on Saturday.
COMMUNITY
Nov 26, 2000

Visual abstractions in old-fashioned language

Imagine the gentle good humor to be found in the name Michael England but being, say, Scottish. In fact England's mother is Irish and his father Welsh, so quite the national conundrum. "Do I think of myself as Gaelic? Only when drinking and dancing. First and foremost I'm a painter."
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 / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Nov 24, 2000

From the underground up

Ryoji, the charismatic frontman and mastermind behind skacore group Potshot, has the impossibly skinny, graceful physique of a true rock star. Think Mick Jagger in 1969 or Kurt Cobain 20 years later: the ugly duckling reborn through the grace of a power chord.
COMMUNITY / BODY AND SOUL
Nov 23, 2000

You gotta know when to fold 'em

One evening 20 years ago, Kiyomi Takahashi (not her real name) happened to stop at a coffee shop on her way home from work. She found a computer poker game machine in the corner of the shop, and started playing it just for fun. Little did she know this would be the beginning of a decade-long nightmare....
LIFE / Food & Drink / NIHONSHU
Nov 23, 2000

The man who never forgets a sake

Haruo Matsuzaki raises the small glass to his nose, sniffs for but a couple of seconds, and takes in a small sip. Slurping in a bit of air, he scribbles for a few seconds into his ever-present tiny notebook, finally expelling the sake into the spittoon next to the table. On to the next.
JAPAN
Nov 23, 2000

Mori foot-in-mouth blunders catching

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, notorious for his verbal blunders, may not be the only Cabinet member who needs to watch his tongue.
JAPAN
Nov 22, 2000

Justice Minister Yasuoka to make three-day visit to China

Justice Minister Okiharu Yasuoka will make a three-day visit to China from Dec. 3, marking the first visit by a Japanese justice minister to the country in seven years, Justice Ministry officials said Tuesday.
JAPAN
Nov 22, 2000

Pair arrested for harboring Red Army founder Shigenobu

OSAKA -- Police on Tuesday arrested two supporters of Japanese Red Army founder Fusako Shigenobu for allegedly harboring the fugitive while in Japan.

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