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EDITORIALS
Aug 26, 2000

Making peace the hard way

Next month, the United Nations convenes its Millennium Summit. One of the key issues the world body must face in the next century is its role in peacekeeping operations. The magnitude of the challenges were made plain this week when a special commission released its final report. It makes for grim reading....
EDITORIALS
Aug 23, 2000

Pride before a fall

After a nine-day rescue operation that transfixed the world, the Russian government announced Monday that all 118 crew members of the downed submarine Kursk were dead. An international rescue team discovered that all the compartments in the vessel were flooded; it is likely that almost all of the crew...
JAPAN
Aug 23, 2000

Japan, North Korea resume talks

Japan and North Korea launched a 10th round of normalization talks Tuesday in Tokyo, reiterating basic positions over which the two sides clashed during the previous round of discussions in Pyongyang in April.
JAPAN
Aug 22, 2000

Policymakers visit Yoshino dam site

LDP policy chief Shizuka Kamei leads a ruling coalition mission on an inspection of the planned site of a dam along the Yoshino River. TOKUSHIMA (Kyodo) Policymakers from the Liberal Democratic Party, New Conservative Party and New Komeito on Monday inspected the planned site for a controversial project...
BUSINESS
Aug 21, 2000

Trade framework for Asia requires neighborhood effort

On July 19 the Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren) held the fifth Asian Neighbors' Forum, with participants freely ex- changing opinions over two main themes -- "Searching for a new model of Asian regional cooperation" and "The progress of globalization and cooperation among Asian...
EDITORIALS
Aug 19, 2000

Who is Al Gore?

That is the single most important question that the Democratic Party candidate for the U.S. presidency must answer in the months ahead. What is most troubling for Mr. Gore and his party is that, despite his 24 years of public service as a congressman, senator, vice president and two-time presidential...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 18, 2000

State-owned enterprises continue to hinder Chinese growth

WASHINGTON -- In January, Chinese Deputy Prime Minister Wu Bangguo said that whether or not China gets into the World Trade Organization, China's policy would be "to reform and build a market economy." Now that China is assured of entering the WTO, the hard work of transforming China's socialist market...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 17, 2000

Support the economy -- take a vacation

If all you knew about Japan was what you saw on Japanese TV, you might think the Japanese are the most well-traveled citizens in the world. No other broadcast culture offers as many travel programs in which happy-go-lucky celebrity guides see the sights, interact freely with the natives and, most importantly,...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 16, 2000

Australia splits on single mothers' rights

SYDNEY -- Sex and the single woman: This unlikely topic has suddenly become a political cause celebre in Australia. Even the Olympics are taking a temporary back seat to the debate on unmarried women's right to motherhood.
COMMENTARY
Aug 11, 2000

Mori reign remains shaky

It has been four months since Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori launched his coalition government. Mori's first Cabinet, inaugurated April 5, remained in office for less than three months before the general election was held June 25. He established his second Cabinet July 3.
EDITORIALS
Aug 9, 2000

Gore's surprising choice

Vice President Al Gore has made his first bold move in the race for the U.S. presidency. The selection of Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut as his running mate has won applause from both sides of the aisle. The senator is a thoughtful and serious politician, who is guided by a strong moral code. He...
JAPAN
Aug 9, 2000

Nakaumi land-reclamation project likely to be spiked

The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry has informally decided to terminate a controversial national project to reclaim part of Lake Nakaumi in Shimane Prefecture, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori effectively acknowledged Tuesday.
JAPAN
Aug 9, 2000

Bank officials tried to put an end to World War II

A Swedish international financial official, who later became the third managing director of the International Monetary Fund, engaged in secret maneuvers to help end World War II from neutral Switzerland at the request of his Japanese colleagues, declassified documents from Princeton University show....
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 6, 2000

Journalistic cleansing at the Boston Globe

The U.S. media has long been known for its left-leaning bias. That bias seems to be coming through at the Boston Globe in its treatment of columnist Jeff Jacoby, who is now serving what looks to be a politically inspired suspension over a column that he wrote commemorating America's Independence Day....
JAPAN
Aug 3, 2000

Support for Mori's Cabinet inches upward

The support rate for Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's Cabinet rose slightly over the past two months, but still remains far below the percentage of people who disapprove of his administration, according to a Kyodo News public opinion poll released Wednesday.
COMMENTARY
Jul 30, 2000

Summit's worth questionable

LONDON — The Japanese government spent huge amounts of money in an attempt to ensure that the Okinawa summit and related events in Fukuoka and Miyazaki was a success, but was the money well spent and did the summit increase Japan's prestige in the world? The answer to both questions that I as a generally...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jul 29, 2000

Play revives old debate over Nazi A-bomb

"Absence of A-bomb: Were the Nazis duped -- or simply dumb?" So asks the weekly U.S. News & World Report in a piece for its July 24-31 cover story, "Mysteries of History." The question is being revisited now perhaps because of a recent Broadway import from London: Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen."
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 29, 2000

Foreigners are key to economic reform

There are several indications that the Japanese economy is recovering from a serious depression. It seems that a large number of people share the opinion that structural reform is necessary to continue this recovery and put the economy on a steady and sustainable growth path.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 28, 2000

Yasser Arafat draws the line

BEIRUT -- At one fraught moment during Camp David, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak reportedly warned Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat: "If we don't finish the job now, at the next meeting I will no longer be prime minister." To which the Palestinian leader retorted: "If I give in on Jerusalem, I will...
JAPAN
Jul 26, 2000

Female civilians get intro to SDF boot camp

NARASHINO, Chiba Pref. -- The First Airborne Brigade is widely known as Japan's toughest Ground Self-Defense Force unit. But a recent two-day training session for "new recruits" did not appear to be as rigorous as its reputation.
BUSINESS
Jul 25, 2000

Panel drops idea of 20% consumption tax

A government advisory panel on taxation was planning to recommend in its triennial proposals unveiled July 14 that the consumption tax rate be hiked to 20 percent, only abandoning the idea out of concern over a probable public backlash, panel sources said Friday.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 25, 2000

The debate on Nanjing is now closed

DOCUMENTS ON THE RAPE OF NANKING, edited by Timothy Brook. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1999, 301 pp., 2,616 yen. AMERICAN GODDESS AT THE RAPE OF NANKING: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin, by Hua-ling Hu. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000, 184 pp. The adversity...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 25, 2000

Making peace in Cambodia

EXITING INDOCHINA: U.S. Leadership of the Cambodia Settlement & Normalization with Vietnam, by Richard H. Solomon, with a foreword by Stanley Karnow. United States Institute of Peace Press, 2000, 113 pp. (paper). Contrary to popular opinion, America's involvement with Vietnam did not end with the hurried...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 24, 2000

South Korea's new take on the world

The emotional pendulum swings in Korea are mesmerizing -- and predictable. First there was the euphoria triggered by last month's historic summit between the two Korean leaders. Then there was the inevitable reaction as more sober heads pointed out the difficulties that lie ahead: continuing talks to...
JAPAN
Jul 21, 2000

Residents of Nago proud to display town's charms

NAGO, Okinawa Pref. — Many locals were excited on the eve of the Group of Eight summit here today, expressing hope that the event will attract international attention to what they boast is the most beautiful coastline in Okinawa.
EDITORIALS
Jul 20, 2000

Remembrance and responsibility

Germany is closing one of the last chapters of its Nazi past this week. The establishment of a 10 billion deutsche-mark fund (520 billion yen) to compensate those who were slave laborers during World War II will, in the words of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, set down "a durable marker of historic...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 20, 2000

Okinawans behind Japan-U.S. alliance

Following the tragic rape of a 12-year old Okinawa school girl by three U.S. servicemen in 1995, Secretary of Defense William Perry, perhaps the most respected member of President Bill Clinton's Cabinet, invited former Ambassadors Mike Mansfield and Richard L. Armitage to have lunch with him and the...

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Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?