Search - article

 
 
JAPAN
Nov 2, 1999

Hatoyama calls Obuchi government a 'moral hazard'

Calling the new coalition government of Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi a "moral hazard" formed solely to reinforce political power, DPJ head Yukio Hatoyama on Tuesday demanded the early dissolution of the Lower House.
JAPAN
Nov 1, 1999

Child pornographers vanish as law takes effect

Staff writer
EDITORIALS
Oct 22, 1999

Speaking without thinking

Barely two weeks after he was named parliamentary vice minister for defense, Mr. Shingo Nishimura of the Liberal Party was forced to resign Wednesday over outrageous views made public in a Japanese weekly magazine. In a two-hour interview, Mr. Nishimura suggested that the Diet consider discussing whether...
JAPAN
Oct 18, 1999

Global sports body promotes 'sacred unity'

Staff writer
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 9, 1999

Chongqing leads the next China boom

Japan is poised to lead foreign investment in the next important phase of China's development, centered on Chongqing, an inland city whose name most outsiders have never heard.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 6, 1999

Back to the brink in Indonesia

"What we have now in Indonesia is the same old New Order without Suharto. Nothing is really changing."
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 2, 1999

Taiwan quake shakes China's mandate

BEIJING -- Chinese news coverage of the killer earthquake in Taiwan has been both muted and sporadic, ranging from solicitous concern for the rogue province to no news at all. When the earthquake did get print or air time in the week following the temblor, coverage tended to focus on what mainland authorities,...
EDITORIALS
Sep 30, 1999

Russia's Chechen scapegoat

A wave of terrorist bombings in Moscow is pushing Russia once again toward war. No government can permit its citizens to be terrorized, and the scale of the recent attacks suggests that a formidable enemy is at work. Still, Moscow's response to the bombings seems ill-planned and desperate. Just as troubling...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 28, 1999

Amnesty International fetes the Year of Child

Amnesty will stage its annual Tokyo charity concert Oct. 3 with one of Tokyo's longest-running bands, the Howling Loochie Brothers, providing music to get people up and dancing.
LIFE / Travel
Sep 22, 1999

Good things come in Iki packages

Iki Island, administratively part of Nagasaki Prefecture but located in the straits between Fukuoka and Korea, has some of the finest white sand beaches in Kyushu.
JAPAN
Sep 16, 1999

PKO law hindering SDF action, Kato says

Japan should revise the five principles under which the Self-Defense Forces can participate in international peacekeeping operations, a senior member of the Liberal Democratic Party said Thursday.
EDITORIALS
Sep 12, 1999

Fashion and its victims

How does one get inside a girl's head? This rueful question must have occurred to many people recently on hearing reports of the death of a 25-year-old woman in Kanagawa Prefecture after she tripped and fell while wearing sandals with 10-cm-high cork soles. To observers of the elevated-shoe fad over...
JAPAN
Sep 10, 1999

Analysis: Kan's fading star may reflect DPJ's fate

Staff writers
COMMENTARY
Aug 31, 1999

ODA helps Japan, the world

Medium-term policy guidelines for Official Development Assistance, announced by the government Aug. 10, set the standards for implementing Japan's ODA between 1999 and 2003. The guidelines place emphasis on aid to Asian countries to help them implement structural reforms aimed at solving their economic...
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Aug 18, 1999

Refuge of the world's wildest rabbit

The wildlife of the Nansei Shoto is a fascinating mixture of species, and as is clear from recent research on the spiny rats that are unique to the central islands, there may be more species there than we realize.
JAPAN
Aug 12, 1999

Liberals offer to extend seat cut debate

The ruling coalition and New Komeito, which intends to join it, continued last-minute negotiations Thursday to resolve their differences over a bill to cut 50 proportional representation seats in the Lower House.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 5, 1999

Emperors, journalists, critics and other influential people

Several weeks ago Time Magazine's Tokyo bureau asked Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi to nominate someone for the magazine's series of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, and Obuchi chose Emperor Showa.
JAPAN
Aug 4, 1999

Wiretap legislation enters final debate

The Upper House Judicial Affairs Committee held a first public hearing Wednesday on controversial bills to allow law enforcement authorities to monitor communications during investigations of organized crime.
JAPAN
Jul 22, 1999

Literary critic Eto, 66, commits suicide

Renowned literary critic Jun Eto was found dead Wednesday night in an apparent suicide at his home in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, police said. He was 66.
EDITORIALS
Jul 22, 1999

Pointless and reckless in Taipei

It is still unclear why Mr. Lee Teng-hui, the president of Taiwan, said earlier this month that relations between his government and China's mainland government should be conducted on a "special state-to-state" basis. (Any hopes that he had been misquoted were shattered when he repeated the comments...
JAPAN
Jul 22, 1999

No national consensus on national symbols

Staff writers
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 10, 1999

India's window of opportunity in Kashmir

As the war drags on to a slow and gory conclusion on the Himalayan heights, India has an unprecedented opportunity to seize the moral high ground and take the Kashmir problem right off the international agenda.
EDITORIALS
Jul 7, 1999

Toward a debate on national security

The Democratic Party of Japan, the largest opposition group, has so far lacked a clear-cut security policy. The reason is clear. As a "scratch team" put together by breakaways from various parties, including the Liberal Democratic Party and the former Japan Socialist Party, the DPJ has found that its...
JAPAN
Jul 7, 1999

Will wiretapping hurt the news?

Staff writer
JAPAN
Jul 6, 1999

Setouchi Special: Bridge-linked isles hope for tourist blitz

Staff writer
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 4, 1999

Promise of autonomy fades in Hong Kong

HONG KONG -- Right from the start, the current legal and political case concerning "right of abode" in Hong Kong has been a journalist's nightmare. Highly complex, profoundly nuanced, and containing contradictory strands, the case was impervious to easy simplification. Both sides to the dispute could...
JAPAN
Jun 24, 1999

U.N. ambassador presses for UNSC role in future conflicts

Although Japan supported Western efforts to end the atrocities in Kosovo, the government wants the U.N. Security Council to authorize future actions, according to Yukio Satoh, Japan's ambassador to the United Nations.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 19, 1999

China's oppression of Tibet continues

Fifty years after being invaded by Chinese troops in 1949, Tibet is still experiencing repression and violence on the part of Chinese occupying forces. According to Amnesty International reports, human-rights violations such as ill-treatment of prisoners and torture are widespread in Tibet. Even those...
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Jun 17, 1999

Do you have that not-so-fresh feeling?

After writing the column on flowers and flowery teas and all things bloomingly lovely and springlike, I came across an article about the current trend for all things "fresh." The feeling of now, it seems, is freshness. The millennium approaches, and with it the newness of the year 2000, and the 21st...
JAPAN
Jun 11, 1999

Expanded SDF peacekeeping role urged

Staff writer

Longform

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