Search - 2000

 
 
EDITORIALS
Sep 22, 2000

China surmounts a WTO hurdle

The U.S. Senate voted on Tuesday to grant China permanent normal trade-relations status. That will provide an impetus to international negotiations on China's bid to join the World Trade Organization. Those talks are entering the homestretch with the start of the final round of negotiations in Geneva....
OLYMPICS
Sep 22, 2000

Atlanta ghosts topple fourth world champ

The ghost of Atlanta returned to haunt world champion Noriko Anno at the Sydney Olympics on Thursday as she made a surprise exit from the women's under-78 kg competition.
OLYMPICS
Sep 22, 2000

Inoue takes 100-kg gold

SYDNEY -- The closest thing to Kosei Inoue's heart as he took to the winner's podium Thursday night was not that he had won Olympic gold but that he had fulfilled his mother's dying wish.
BUSINESS
Sep 22, 2000

Oil prices, euro to top agenda for G7, but solutions unclear

Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa and Bank of Japan Gov. Masaru Hayami will join their Group of Seven counterparts for a meeting in Prague on Saturday that will inevitably focus on soaring oil prices, the euro's weakness and the potential damage these trends pose for the world economy.
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 22, 2000

One-man show moves beyond the big tent

"Snowflake," a silent one-man show created and performed by Gale LaJoye, will be held at the Rikkokai Hall in Shinagawa Sept. 26-28. Centering on a homeless man called Snowflake, the show follows his life after he finds a doll abandoned in a garbage dump.
BUSINESS
Sep 21, 2000

Government plans to subsidize computer classes

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party will consider making budget appropriations in fiscal 2000 to subsidize school fees for people who wish to learn how to operate personal computers, the party's top policymaker said Wednesday.
BUSINESS
Sep 21, 2000

Economists question scale of extra budget

The announcement Wednesday of a fiscal 2000 supplementary budget, which is expected to surpass 10 trillion yen in total size and include 4 trillion yen in new government spending, has prompted some economists to wonder why a budget of that scale is needed now.
JAPAN
Sep 20, 2000

Cabinet endorses salary cut for government workers

The Cabinet of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori on Tuesday endorsed a salary cut for government workers for fiscal 2000 as recommended by the National Personnel Authority, the second such reduction in two years.
CULTURE / Books
Sep 19, 2000

Kwangju: a turning point for South Korea

THE KWANGJU UPRISING: Eyewitness Accounts of Korea's Tiananmen, edited by Henry Scott-Stokes and Lee Jai Eui. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2000, 268 pp. $18.95 (paper). "Covering the Kwangju uprising -- and writing of it in the aftermath," a Korean observer writes, "I was stuck for words. A reporter is supposed...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 19, 2000

Laos' fractured human map

LAO HILL TRIBES: Traditions and Patterns of Existence, by Stephen Mansfield. Images of Asia: Oxford University Press, 2000. 120 pp., 21 color plates, 24 monochrome, unpriced. In a sense, Laos remains closer to a conglomeration of tribes than it does to a conventional state composed of a unified people....
JAPAN
Sep 18, 2000

Mori to promote budget, IT when extra Diet session opens

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori will promote the extra budget, the development of information technology and the continuation of talks with North Korea and Russia in his policy speech Thursday when an extraordinary session of the Diet begins, government sources said Sunday.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 17, 2000

World's eyes on Australia

SYDNEY -- With the Sydney 2000 Olympics in full swing, the country is getting used to having 3.5 billion TV viewers around the world watching our every move. This city's 4 million citizens are positively basking in the glory of staging the world's best Games yet. And to the south, Melbourne is just as...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 17, 2000

U.S. whaling sanctions smack of hypocrisy

Japan's whale-research vessels are now scheduled to return to port after completing their observations and sampling in the northwestern Pacific. Meanwhile, the United States continues to criticize Japan's research program and threaten trade sanctions. One can't help but suspect that all the antiwhaling...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 17, 2000

Fusing technology, arts in fabulous future shocks

Omote-sando's cafe-restaurant Las Chicas needs no introduction. But few realize that the two-floor building in which it is situated was once a consulate, designed to wrap around the central courtyard -- one of the nicest places to eat in town. Under the umbrella organization Vision Network, the complex...
BUSINESS
Sep 16, 2000

Group firms up ban on cross-share trades

The Japan Institute of Certified Public Accountants has released guidelines to ban client firms from conducting "cross-share trading," a practice to make their balance sheets look better.
OLYMPICS
Sep 16, 2000

Fire and glory open 2000 Olympics

SYDNEY-- Carrying the hopes of her nation both in sport and racial reconciliation, 400-meter world champion Cathy Freeman ran a guard of honor the length of the stadium before lowering the Olympic torch into a pool of water Friday to light a submerged cauldron to open the biggest and last Olympic Games...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 16, 2000

Shining a light on global 'Big Brother'

Perhaps more appropriately to the world of James Bond than to the European Union, Echelon -- an international spying network in which governments covertly cooperate to intercept global communications -- is causing a stir in the European Parliament.
OLYMPICS
Sep 16, 2000

Two Koreas make history during opening ceremony

SYDNEY -- While Japan kicked off its Sydney Olympic campaign without many of its star athletes at the opening ceremony, it was the country's Asian neighbors who grabbed the spotlight in the four-hour spectacular on Friday night.
JAPAN
Sep 16, 2000

OECD calls for life-long learning

Academic achievement was the goal of Japan's exam-oriented education system when life-time employment was intact.
JAPAN
Sep 15, 2000

Foreigners' crimes slightly down

The number of crimes committed by foreigners in Japan in the first half of 2000 dropped slightly from a year earlier, but thefts and burglaries are on the rise, according to a survey by the National Police Agency released Thursday.
JAPAN
Sep 15, 2000

Tokyo to recognize car-free day

Eight Tokyo-based nongovernment organizations are hoping people will give their cars a break on Tokyo Car Free Day 2000, scheduled for Sept. 23.
CULTURE / Books
Sep 15, 2000

The periphery vs. the center

LOCAL VOICES, NATIONAL ISSUES: The Impact of Local Initiative in Japanese Policy-making, edited by Sheila A. Smith. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000, 136 pp., $32.95 (cloth). For students of power and politics in Japan, Tokyo is where the action is. Important decisions are made in...
CULTURE / Books
Sep 15, 2000

An activist Emperor, pulling the strings

HIROHITO AND THE MAKING OF MODERN JAPAN, by Herbert P. Bix. New York: HarperCollins, 2000, 800 pp, $28 (cloth). This is a blistering and persuasive reassessment of Emperor Showa's reign, debunking the various myths that have accumulated about his allegedly powerless role in Japan's prolonged period...
JAPAN
Sep 13, 2000

Extra 1.4 billion yen set aside to observe Miyake eruptions

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's Cabinet decided Tuesday to use 1.4 billion yen from the fiscal 2000 budget to increase monitoring of volcanic activity on Miyake Island, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hidenao Nakagawa said.
OLYMPICS
Sep 13, 2000

What's new in Sydney? How about taekwondo, triathlon and keirin

A total of 300 gold medals will be up for grabs in Sydney as athletes from over 30 different sports take to the various arenas, stadiums, diamonds, pools, lakes -- even beaches -- that will play host to Olympic events at the 2000 Summer Games.
OLYMPICS
Sep 13, 2000

'The Greatest Show on Earth' hits Sydney

The "Greatest Show on Earth" is back and badly in need of an image makeover.

Longform

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