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COMMENTARY / World
May 10, 2000

Modest hopes for summit between Koreas

Last month, the leaders of North and South Korea stunned the world with an announcement of plans to meet in Pyongyang in June at the first ever summit between the two nations. It is an event fraught with both danger and opportunity.
LIFE / Travel
May 10, 2000

Panasonic shows off high tech for the kids

What's a kyoiku mama to do?
JAPAN
May 10, 2000

Activists arrested in 'dioxin capital'

Four members of the environmentalist group Greenpeace International were arrested Tuesday after scaling a tower near an incinerator plant in Tokyo to protest Japan's waste-incineration policies, police and group members said.
JAPAN
May 10, 2000

Okinawa goods shops basking in G8, or pop-star spotlight?

Who is to thank for the recent brisk sales at an Okinawa goods shop in Tokyo, former Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi or pop singer Namie Amuro?
JAPAN
May 9, 2000

Algerian minister's visit to mark warming of ties

Algerian Foreign Minister Youcef Yousfi plans to visit Tokyo at the end of this month, a trip that will mark the end of decades of near-estrangement between Japan and the North African country.
JAPAN
May 9, 2000

Sumida fireworks face G8 delay

The popular annual Sumida River fireworks in Tokyo will be postponed by one month until Aug. 26 because police will be too busy in July providing security for the Group of Eight summit in Okinawa Prefecture, fireworks organizers said Monday.
CULTURE / Books
May 9, 2000

Testing times for Japan-U.S. alliance

ALLIANCE ADRIFT, by Yoichi Funabashi. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1999, 501 pp., $49.95 (cloth). The jacket of this hefty chronicle of the recent history of Japan-U.S. security relations proclaims that Japan has found its Bob Woodward. Consider yourself warned.
CULTURE / Books
May 9, 2000

'Shuttered' to the West, Japan opened to the East

CHINA IN THE TOKUGAWA WORLD, by Marius B. Jansen. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2000, 137 pp., $8.50 (paper). With the 400th anniversary of Japanese-Dutch relations upon us, interest has been rekindled in Japan's foreign relations during the Tokugawa period, and the part played...
EDITORIALS
May 8, 2000

The return of 'Red Ken'

Red is the color of the British Labor Party. Last week, British voters were a little too red for Prime Minister Tony Blair. The election of Mr. Ken Livingstone, known as "Red Ken" for his feisty leftwing politics, as London's first directly elected mayor, left Mr. Blair with a nasty black eye, but that...
BUSINESS
May 8, 2000

E-commerce tax under construction

PARIS -- Talk about the information technology revolution is everywhere. Electronic commerce is taking off, financial institutions are trading online, and schools are holding class on the Internet.
EDITORIALS
May 7, 2000

Gods and monsters

It wasn't so much a papal bull that was issued by the Vatican recently as a papal bear, and a teddy bear at that. In the week that "Pokemon: The First Movie" opened in Italy, an announcement on the Vatican's satellite television station reassured Italian children -- or their parents, since the children...
JAPAN
May 7, 2000

Golden Week travelers throng airports as they return home

The two major airports servicing Tokyo were congested Saturday with travelers returning home from the Golden Week holiday period.
CULTURE / Art
May 7, 2000

Of statues and men -- the fourth plinth problem

LONDON -- Trafalgar Square is all things to all people. For out-of-towners and tourists, it is where you have your photograph taken with the National Gallery and the church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields as a backdrop, or of you feeding the pigeons or climbing Sir Edwin Landseer's lions. Four of them...
COMMUNITY
May 5, 2000

Two Murakamis mull quake in Japanese life

A look at recent best-seller lists reveals several familiar faces. "Eien no Ko," a two-volume novel about the long-term effects of child abuse, is back with the broadcasting of a TV dramatization (Monday nights on NTV). There's another mystery by Nishimura Kyotaro and a book for improving one's English,...
BUSINESS
May 5, 2000

Bluetooth wants bite of mobile market

Portable computers' claim to fame is that they allow you to access and send information anytime and anywhere. But what if you leave a cable at home or bring the wrong one on a business trip?
CULTURE / Music / HOGAKU TODAY
May 5, 2000

Classification, distinction and ecumenism

There is a tendency in Japan to adhere to strict classifications and distinctions. This is especially true in regards to music. Hogaku is one kind of music, Western classical is another. Pop and world music belong to yet other genres. Each genre is considered entirely separate, and performers, audiences...
JAPAN
May 5, 2000

Chronology of bus hijacking

The following is a chronology of the 15-hour bus hijacking in Kyushu that ended Thursday morning after one woman was killed and at least four others were injured.
CULTURE / Art
May 5, 2000

Swimming 'Sea Monkeys' and rolling digital mice

Sometimes you just get lucky. That, better than anything else, works for me as the reason why the unfocused, gadget-dependent and low-tech exhibition "New Media New Face/New York" manages, against the odds, to end up being a fairly good show.
CULTURE / Music
May 5, 2000

Healing with grassroots harmony

Japanese-Jamaican-Korean fusion? Korean-flavored Japanese rock with a bit of Memphis blues thrown in? It's hard to put a label on the multiethnic multigenre sounds of the Pak Poe Band.
JAPAN
May 4, 2000

Should Constitution lead or follow?

Wednesday marked the first time Constitution Day -- commemorating the day the document was put into effect in 1947 -- coincided with lawmakers locking horns over whether to change the sacred charter.
JAPAN
May 4, 2000

Location of leader's summit hinges on the whim of nature

OSAKA — It's billed as the Kyushu-Okinawa Summit, but if Mother Nature turns capricious, then this year's Group of Eight gathering may be forced to a different venue.
COMMENTARY / World
May 4, 2000

Global economy faces a structural crisis

The Nasdaq has fallen 34 percent since March, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is following suit. The decline might be only a technical correction, but the world economy may be hit because the inflow of capital into the United States may decline and restrict that country's ability to import goods...
BUSINESS
May 4, 2000

More enroll for Harley training than expected

Japan's first training course on maintaining Harley-Davidson motorcycles is proving a hit, with more people enrolling than expected, officials at a car mechanic school in Sendai said Wednesday.

Longform

Atsuyoshi Koike, the president and CEO of Rapidus, says there is a “sense of urgency” when it comes to Japan’s efforts in manufacturing semiconductors. “We have to make sure we are successful,” he says.
Atsuyoshi Koike’s big game: Fourth down and 2 nanometers to go