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CULTURE / Art
Jun 20, 2001

Face to face with individuality

"Are you Korean or Japanese?" goes the question.
SOCCER / World cup
Jun 7, 2001

Kamamoto learns to live with cohosting

Kunishige Kamamoto was the Hidetoshi Nakata or the Kazu Miura of his day.
COMMENTARY / World
May 19, 2001

Koreans' dream of unity is still remote

SEOUL -- In less than a month, Koreans will commemorate the first anniversary of the historic inter-Korean summit. In mid-June last year, the leaders of the divided country met for the first time and vowed to open a new chapter in peninsular relations. Numerous political and academic events will take...
COMMENTARY
May 5, 2001

Racism loses its grip in Britain

LONDON -- "Britain risks becoming a mongrel land"; "Britain will become a foreign land to most of the British": two thoughts from the Tory Party uttered in the past few weeks, one from a back-bench MP of little repute (John Townend), the other from the Tory Party leader, William Hague, whose reputation,...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Apr 30, 2001

One man's fight for the unvarnished truth

My historian friend Richard Minear tells me that Saburo Ienaga has been nominated for the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. He then follows up on this news by sending me Ienaga's autobiography, which he has translated, "Japan's Past, Japan's Future: One Historian's Odyssey" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).
EDITORIALS
Apr 20, 2001

Use agriculture safeguards sparingly

Japan is set to impose emergency restrictions on three Chinese agricultural products, imports of which have risen markedly in recent years: leeks, shiitake mushrooms and rushes for tatami matting. It is the first time Japan has decided to invoke "safeguards," temporary import curbs recognized by the...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 20, 2001

Shame on the government

The Mori administration and the Foreign Ministry in particular have been taking an ambiguous attitude toward a request for a Japanese visa from former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui. I must criticize this attitude categorically.
EDITORIALS
Apr 19, 2001

Beyond the textbook controversy

A junior high-school history textbook edited by a nationalist group continues to stir controversy and provoke anger, especially in South Korea. The textbook in question, written by the Japanese Society for Textbook Reform, which calls existing history textbooks "masochistic," recently cleared censorship...
SOCCER / THE BALD TRUTH
Apr 17, 2001

Small minds behind the small screen

Have you been lucky enough to follow England's World Cup qualifiers or Liverpool's progress in the UEFA Cup on SKY PerfecTV recently? Let me rephrase that: Have you been clever enough?
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 12, 2001

Will Pyongyang split U.S., South Korea?

SEOUL -- The recent shakeup in Seoul's foreign policy and security team in the aftermath of the Washington summit represents a double effort to patch up relations with the United States, while persuading North Korea to come back to the bargaining table. Both tasks require supreme diplomatic skill.
CULTURE / Film
Apr 11, 2001

Comical Sturm und Drang , all in the family

Rendan Rating: * * * * Director: Naoto Takenaka Running time: 104 minutes Language: JapaneseNow playing "What does woman want?" Freud famously asked -- a question that is just as famously unanswerable. At the dawn of the modern feminist era, however, many women seemed to want what Anais Nin, in a 1974...
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Mar 22, 2001

What's in store for the third Musketeer?

By now Ichiro Suzuki is making a name for himself in America. The only question is what that name is. When The Associated Press and some other news organizations report on the former Orix BlueWave star, they refer to a player named "Suzuki." But back here in Japan he's always been known as "Ichiro."...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 20, 2001

U.S.-ROK ties show new signs of strain

SEOUL -- It is difficult not to compare the Seoul summit between South Korean President Kim Dae Jung and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and its sequel in Washington between Kim and U.S. President George W. Bush, given both countries' long history and deep involvement in Korean affairs. The stark...
JAPAN
Mar 2, 2001

Murakami arrested over bribes

Prosecutors on Thursday arrested Masakuni Murakami, a powerful member of the LDP who quit the party last week in the midst of an ongoing scandal, for allegedly accepting bribes from mutual aid foundation KSD.
MULTIMEDIA / SPORTS SCOPE
Mar 1, 2001

IOC delegates: the questions they should be asking

The International Olympic Committee has come Japan to check out Osaka's facilities for staging the 2008 Olympics.
BUSINESS
Feb 19, 2001

Toward financial transparency

Fifth in a series
BUSINESS
Feb 19, 2001

Toward financial transparency

Fifth in a series
EDITORIALS
Feb 4, 2001

Ginger, the new IT girl

Among the many things for which whiz-bang American inventor Dean Kamen is famous is an automated wheelchair that can ride over uneven ground and climb stairs. That particular breakthrough device was code-named "Fred." Now, as everyone this side of the grave must have heard, there is also "Ginger." Some...
BUSINESS
Jan 15, 2001

Next U.S. president should use surplus to pace savings rate

Amid growing signs of a slowdown in the U.S. economy, the whole world is closely awaiting the new policies of President-elect George W. Bush, who prevailed in one of the closest presidential races in U.S. history after more than a month of unprecedented legal wrangling.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 9, 2001

Caution and patience are key to Japan-North Korea relations

There have been earthshaking developments on the Korean Peninsula in the past six months. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il began to play a central role in Pyongyang's international relations, a year after the country started making diplomatic overtures worldwide. North Korea relaxed tense relations with...
JAPAN
Dec 2, 2000

Bill foot-dragging belies pluralist goal

The postponement of debate on a bill that would grant limited suffrage to foreigners until next year at the earliest has prompted long-term foreign residents of Japan to question whether the nation is serious about embracing the foreign population.
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.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 19, 2000

Education yesterday, today and tomorrow

My four children have attended Japanese schools from kindergarten up. Over the years there have been innumerable positive experiences connected with this. Yet one thing has always struck me as, at best, blatantly incongruous. Virtually every principal addressing pupils and parents at the commencement...
EDITORIALS
Nov 15, 2000

Ground the flying-tanker plans

With the government budget for fiscal 2001 now in preparation, a controversial question concerning defense procurement looms large: Do the Self-Defense Forces need in-flight refueling aircraft? The Defense Agency is requesting appropriations to purchase one such aircraft in the year beginning next April....
EDITORIALS
Nov 6, 2000

Neighbors, yet strangers

The latest round of normalization talks held in Beijing last week between Japan and North Korea failed to reach any specific agreement. Although no statement was issued, it seems clear that the two sides largely agreed to disagree, at least for the moment. The two nations remained divided over the pivotal...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Oct 30, 2000

U.S. reporter misses the mark on Japan

"Given America's willingness to avert its eyes from the most troubling chapters of its history and to resist critical self-evaluation and discussion of the country's atrocities against native Americans and African Americans . . ."
JAPAN
Oct 18, 2000

How dead is dead enough?

The line between life and death has grown increasingly obscure in the United States, the world's most active organ-transplant community, as surgeons grapple with a delicate problem: Organs available for transplant may become less viable if pronouncement of a donor's death is delayed until death is beyond...
COMMENTARY
Oct 13, 2000

Communists to 'tolerate' SDF

The national convention of the Japan Communist Party is expected to approve a proposal in November to revise its charter in order to tolerate the mobilization of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces in a military emergency. The policy turnaround to match the party's basic stance to reality was long overdue....
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 23, 2000

No German blueprint for the two Koreas

SEOUL -- The relationship between local autonomy and unification is becoming an increasingly hot topic in South Korea, as more and more local authorities aspire to an active role in the process of rapprochement with the North. It is clear that this nation is passing through a historic moment. Hardly...

Longform

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.