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JAPAN
Mar 2, 2000

Terrorists tease press from cells

BEIRUT -- With just days left before five Japanese Red Army members are due to be released here, local and foreign press interest in the captives is heating up.
EDITORIALS
Mar 1, 2000

Who is policing the police?

Two high-ranking police officials resigned Tuesday as an expression of responsibility for their misconduct amid a public outcry that they deserved even heavier punishment. In fact, such was the degree of public disgust that the resignations of the disgraced officials, Mr. Yoshiyuki Nakada, head of the...
COMMUNITY
Mar 1, 2000

In quest of Amelia Earhart

Ric Gillespie has been chasing the same lady for more than 12 years. Now he reckons he knows where she is. If he's right -- and the evidence his foundation has collected is pretty compelling -- then one of the longest-running mysteries in the history of aviation has been solved.
JAPAN
Mar 1, 2000

Leap day efforts not enough: Aoki

A leap day computer glitch affected some systems and automatic teller machines Tuesday, but the government did not found any severe malfunctions, Chief Cabinet Secretary Mikio Aoki said.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 29, 2000

Afghanistan drags Pakistan down with it

ISLAMABAD -- More than 20 years after Soviet troops marched into Afghanistan in support of the last communist coup, the central Asian country's turmoil is unending. Descriptions such as "extreme impoverishment," "a lost generation" and "the ultimate pariah state" are just some of the ways that Afghanistan...
JAPAN
Feb 29, 2000

High court overturns ruling on juvenile killer's privacy

OSAKA -- The Osaka High Court on Tuesday nullified a lower court ruling and rejected the claim of a defendant in a 1998 murder case seeking damages from a publisher who printed his name and photograph although he was a minor at the time of the crime. Presiding Judge Makoto Nemoto ruled that even if...
CULTURE / Music
Feb 29, 2000

I just want to go to Chelsea; the best live show in Japan

You're cruising on a silent sea in a big warm boat when suddenly a tsunami hits and you're dumped in the ocean and you're chased by sharks to the nearest island where you encounter mustachioed cannibals with Spock haircuts waving Hinomaru flags who chase you through a snake-infested jungle and up a mountain,...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 29, 2000

Pilgrimage for the 21st century

EXPLORING KANTO: Weekend Pilgrimages from Tokyo, by Michael Plastow. New York: Weatherall, 1996, 262 pp., with color photos and maps, $19.95. A long journey of exalted purpose is one of the dictionary definitions of pilgrimage. One makes such a demanding endeavor for personal or, if you will, spiritual...
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 29, 2000

Anti-glamor Idevian Crew hit the stage

Shigehiro Ide is back on stage with his dance company Idevian Crew after all too long an absence from performing. His comeback in "Which," the piece he choreographed to open the Next Dance Festival at Shinjuku Park Tower Hall Feb. 18, establishes him as the most promising dancer/choreographer on the...
JAPAN
Feb 28, 2000

New FRC chief vows fairness, details transparency hurdles

Staff writer Sadakazu Tanigaki, new chief of the Financial Reconstruction Commission, said Monday that he will be committed to "fairness and transparency" in handling reforms to the banking system, following the sudden resignation of his predecessor for seemingly antireform remarks. "The nation's administration...
JAPAN
Feb 28, 2000

Additional slots at Haneda sought for Skymark, Air Do

An advisory panel to the Transport Ministry compiled a report Monday recommending that additional slots for three daily flights each be allocated to Skymark Airlines and Hokkaido International Airlines (Air Do) at Haneda airport in July. The airport in Tokyo's Ota Ward will be able to handle 57 additional...
CULTURE / Art
Feb 27, 2000

Artistic exchange leaves a rich legacy

"Yokohama does not improve on further acquaintance," wrote Isabella Bird in 1878. "It has a dead-alive look. . . . I long to get away into real Japan." She quickly left and went in search of authenticity, complete with its dangers and delights. Bird was a purist to the point of eccentricity, but most...
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 27, 2000

Israeli play showcases values

Israel's Acco Theatre Center will present the holocaust play "The Anthology: Values for the Next Millennium" in Tokyo and Kyoto.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 26, 2000

If Taro is really going to speak English

Would you hire a typewriter repairman as a systems analyst? That's sort of what the Japanese Ministry of Education is doing. It set up a committee to study English-education reform that is about as up to date in what's needed to improve English teaching in this country as the poor repairman who thinks...
CULTURE / Art
Feb 26, 2000

Religious art meets shamanism

People in the village of Monobe, Kochi Prefecture, nestled deep in the mountains, have passed down from generation to generation a mysterious folk religion that worships paper gods.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 25, 2000

Defections among coalition partners in Malaysia's ruling National Front strain ties

BY DAVID CHEW Special to The Japan Times SINGAPORE -- The defection of key politicians from one to the other of the two main Chinese components in Malaysia's ruling multiparty coalition has caused bad blood and made the role of mediator difficult for the coalition's Malay leader.
MORE SPORTS
Feb 25, 2000

End of rugby road for Suntory warrior Ennis

For the past 20 years, Glenn Ennis has loved throwing his weight around the rugby pitch.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 24, 2000

Americans hold positive view of Japan

An important new poll on U.S. attitudes toward Japan's wartime past will please neither those who feel that Japan has not done enough to atone nor those who believe that Japan has done all it needs to do. Using a sample of 1,000 registered voters in California, the survey by Pacific Research & Strategies...
JAPAN
Feb 24, 2000

FRC chief in hot water

The chairman of the Financial Reconstruction Commission came under fire Thursday for recent remarks to financial executives that some have interpreted as indicating a willingness to intervene during government inspections. The nationwide inspections -- to be conducted by the Financial Supervisory Agency...
JAPAN
Feb 24, 2000

DPJ's Kumagai sees yen in the Net

In what appears to be the first such attempt in Japan, Hiroshi Kumagai, deputy secretary general of the Democratic Party of Japan, has begun soliciting political donations through the Internet. Kumagai, a veteran Lower House member, said the move is an attempt to secure more funds from individual donors...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Feb 23, 2000

Private eyes

On the Net and off, personal data is a currency, an entity that can be bought, sold, bartered and, yes, stolen. Ideally, this information connects companies with potential clients and consumers with products and services. Ads with the precision of surgical airstrikes are swell for advertisers, but on...
JAPAN
Feb 23, 2000

Talks on drilling rights go down to the wire

Staff writer If Arabian Oil Co.'s last-ditch negotiations with Saudi Arabia to renew its 40-year oil drilling rights fail, the pioneer Japanese driller will be hard hit, but officials don't fear a national crisis. With his firm's rights in the Khafji oil field in the former neutral zone between Saudi...
EDITORIALS
Feb 22, 2000

Iran changes -- its own way

Iranians went to the polls last week in the sixth general elections held since the Islamic revolution of 1979. The ballot was the most fiercely contested since the overthrow of the shah, and for good reason: The stakes could not have been higher. Voters knew that a win for reformers could break the religious...
JAPAN
Feb 22, 2000

Ex-fugitive again denies Itoman breach of trust

OSAKA -- Former fugitive real estate developer Heo Young Joong, 52, on Tuesday pleaded not guilty again to charges of causing damage to the defunct trading house Itoman Corp. The Osaka businessman restated the plea when his Osaka District Court trial resumed Tuesday following a 28-month recess caused...
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 22, 2000

Edo Period internationalism: kabuki's Hakata smugglers

The Kabukiza's programs for the month of February offer some of kabuki's biggest stars, including tachiyaku (male leads) Danjuro Ichikawa, Kikugoro Onoe and Kichiemon Nakamura. Jakuemon Nakamura, the distinguished 79-year-old onnagata actor, appears opposite Kichiemon in two plays in the evening program,...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 22, 2000

The mathematics of love and loss

RABBIT OF THE NETHERWORLD, by Reiko Koyanagi. Illustrated by Monica Tamano, translated by Hiroaki Sato. Red Moon Press, 1999, 62 pp., $12 (paper). "Rabbit of the Netherworld" is a unique and often compelling memoir, a fragmentary poetic recreation of the author's wartime childhood and its many painful...
JAPAN
Feb 21, 2000

WHO wants battle against disease on agenda of G8 summit

The World Health Organization has asked Japan to prioritize the battle against infectious and parasitic diseases by placing the topic high on the agenda for the Group of Eight summit in Okinawa this summer, government sources said Monday.
JAPAN
Feb 21, 2000

Election timing to be set with coalition partners: Obuchi

Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi said Monday that he will determine the date for dissolving the Lower House in close consultation with his two ruling coalition partners, keeping alive media speculation over the timing of the next general election.
JAPAN
Feb 21, 2000

Wired new world challenges Japan's old model: U.S. exec

Staff writer The American Management Association leads by example. By adapting its raison d'etre -- to provide business education and management development programs to thousands of companies worldwide -- to the Internet-wired world, the organization is hinting at the direction it believes its members...
CULTURE / Art
Feb 20, 2000

All of life in Daumier's cartoons

A picture is worth a thousand words, and no one knows that better than Honore Daumier. His life story reads like a strand in a novel by Victor Hugo. The poor son of a failed poet and glazier, young Daumier chanced his luck as an artist in Paris in the 1830s. He studied the new technique of lithography,...

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