Search - about-us

 
 
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 22, 2000

Breakthrough or breakdown?

Last week's dramatic announcement of an inter-Korean summit provides an opportunity to test the momentum created by North Korea's pragmatic attempt to develop new relationships with the outside world. South Korean President Kim Dae Jung's "sunshine" policy has supported Pyongyang's own apparent efforts...
COMMENTARY
Apr 22, 2000

June ballot is in the works

Two weeks have already passed since the reins of government shifted from Keizo Obuchi to Yoshiro Mori. Nothing surprising has come out of recent opinion polls, which have generally shown that the new government is approved by about 40 percent of the public and disapproved by some 30 percent. A survey...
CULTURE / Art
Apr 22, 2000

Myriad layers emerge in Matsue's macrovision

On the wall is a field of 24 monochrome prints, light gray in tone, arranged in an eight-by-three horizontal grid. From a distance, the pictures all appear to be similar. They look a little like simple texture shots -- you know, burlap, canvas, that sort of thing. But step a little closer to Taiji Matsue's...
EDITORIALS
Apr 21, 2000

Putting the big lie to rest

A British court last week ruled against historian David Irving, branding him a "Holocaust denier," as well as a racist, anti-Semite and sympathizer of Adolf Hitler. The decision is a victory for the truth as well as the principles of free speech.
EDITORIALS
Apr 20, 2000

Russia votes for nuclear sanity

After years of resistance, Russia's Duma finally ratified the START II Treaty last week, thereby sending a statement that President-elect Vladimir Putin wants improved relations with Western nations rather than confrontation.
COMMUNITY
Apr 20, 2000

Fall/winter 2000: cool, calm and collected

The first Tokyo collections of the 21st century were a surprisingly understated event -- no real controversies, no massive surprises. Perhaps that in itself is surprising since you would expect more from a no-holds-barred trend setter like Japan's capital city.
COMMUNITY
Apr 20, 2000

Calligraphy with a global message

Tim Jensen confesses that the first time he saw Mitsuo Aida's calligraphy poems his immediate reaction was "I could do that!" Now Aida's greatest fan and translator of three volumes of his work into English, Jensen is not alone in his initial reaction. According to Aida's son Kazuhito, director of the...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 20, 2000

Kaigo hoken throws spotlight on life in 'nursing care hell'

A few weeks ago I submitted a proposal for an April Fool's story to a local publication. The piece would have been a news report about Japanese airline companies taking advantage of "Japan's rapidly aging society" by offering "nursing care miles" to frequent flyers in order to attract middle-aged travelers....
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Apr 20, 2000

Loose lips can sometimes sink skips

After the New York Mets lost their season opener in Tokyo last month, a few players headed to Roppongi for some beers. On their way to hailing a taxi, one of the team's starting infielders turned to his teammates and said: "I'll tell you one thing about Bobby Valentine. He's the smartest mother (expletive)...
EDITORIALS
Apr 19, 2000

Japan's task after the G7 meeting

The G7 finance ministers and central bank governors were uncharacteristically silent on the stock-market crash in New York — the worst ever in terms of single-day point losses. Instead, their statement, issued last weekend, emphasized that the world economy is improving and that U.S. growth remains...
COMMENTARY
Apr 19, 2000

New language for a new world

The prestigious Trilateral Commission met here in Tokyo earlier this month, bringing together some 130 influential people from three continents to focus on key world issues and offer some advice to participants in the forthcoming Okinawa Summit of world leaders. The commissioners heard speeches from...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Apr 19, 2000

E-nough already

Ahh, a blast of sanity from Scandinavia. The Swedish government recently announced that the Patent and Registration Office would no longer allow companies to register with the suffix .com in their names. And no se., www. or @ marks either.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Apr 19, 2000

Family life full of give and take

After 20 years of wedlock, my Japanese wife and I usually see things eyeball-to-eyeball, especially when staring at each other. Yet, there is one case where we match up like sushi and whipped cream.
LIFE / Travel
Apr 19, 2000

Kashgar to Turpan along the Silk Road

A journey on the Silk Road in the year 2000 is a less adventurous undertaking than when General Zhang Qian, the "Great Traveler," set off in 138 B.C. toward the unknown lands of Central Asia. His mission for the Han Emperor Wudi was to locate Western allies against the Huns and find the famous horses...
COMMENTARY
Apr 19, 2000

Skewed views of Obuchi par for the course

Memories are short. In 1998, most foreign media poured scorn on the choice of Keizo Obuchi to replace former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, who had been forced to resign because of the weak economy and an election setback.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Apr 19, 2000

The first to go

The outlook for the economy may be brightening, but the glow is not apparent among museums. First to close was Seibu's museum in Ikebukuro, followed by the Roppongi Arts and Crafts Museum in 1998 and Mitsukoshi's Shinjuku museum which closed last year. Next will be Tobu's Ikebukuro museum, which will...
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Apr 19, 2000

Too harsh for humans, perfect for birds

Think of the automobile and which country comes to mind first? America, of course.
EDITORIALS
Apr 18, 2000

Drawing the line in Peru

In most countries, a runoff ballot in a presidential election is unwelcome. It means the public is divided, and it delays the crucial business of putting together a government. In Peru's case, news of a runoff is a positive sign. It means that President Alberto Fujimori is heeding the concerns of international...
COMMUNITY
Apr 18, 2000

Japanese maps Mayan shamanism

As a university student in the early 1970s, little did Katsuyoshi Sanematsu know that picking up a Carlos Castaneda book would propel him on a nearly three-decade odyssey culminating in the publication this month of the first exhaustive account of Mayan shamanism by a Japanese scholar.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 18, 2000

The art of hearing what lies behind words

HEART OF BAMBOO: Poetry and Music in the Zen Tradition, by Sam Hamill, Elizabeth Falconer, Christopher Yohmei Blasdel. CD and Listener's Guide (32 pp.), Copper Canyon Press, 1999; $12. "The roots of poetry inevitably return us to music," Sam Hamill writes in "Listening in the Zen Tradition," one of...
CULTURE / Books
Apr 18, 2000

Reflective poems from well-lived lives

IN THE NINTH DECADE, by Edith Shiffert, distributed by Katsura Press, P.O. Box 275, Lake Oswego, OR 97034, USA, 1999; 78 pp., $14.95. KOMAGANE POEMS, by David Mayer, SVD, Techny Mission Books, Divine Word Missionaries, The Mission Center, Techny, Illinois, 1999; 93 pages, unpriced. "In the Ninth Decade"...
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 18, 2000

Festival of fools makes its Tokyo debut

In Europe, clown and mime performances have always been acknowledged as respected forms of entertainment, with some countries even establishing national circus schools. These types of entertainment have never enjoyed the same level of recognition in Japan, however, where clowning and mime have traditionally...
MORE SPORTS
Apr 18, 2000

Cowboys star Emmitt Smith running after NFL records

Nobody will argue that Emmitt Smith of the Dallas Cowboys is one of the premier running backs in National Football League history.
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Apr 18, 2000

Heaven knows it's miserable with psyche-scarring Neurosis

Waking up to find Tokyo's governor is a racist pig is a little unnerving, especially if you are foreigner scum like me who at the first rumble of an earthquake will be out on the streets raping schoolgirls, pillaging sushi shops and torturing puppy dogs.
EDITORIALS
Apr 18, 2000

Help for the neediest

In a change of position, the Japanese government last week announced that it would forgive 100 percent of the debt owed to it by the world's poorest countries. The news is welcome: The countries involved are in desperate straits. But reports that accepting the offer would mean forfeiting future assistance...
CULTURE / Books
Apr 18, 2000

Lessons of the Nanjing debate

THE NANJING MASSACRE IN HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY, edited by Joshua Fogel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000; 238 pp, $49 (cloth), $15.98 (paper). Did the Nanjing Massacre really happen? In a review of Katsuichi Honda's excellent book on this subject last year ("The Nanjing Massacre:...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 18, 2000

Living in a high-tech world

Trading in the shares of Internet-related venture businesses is booming on the Japanese stock market. The media are full of reports on information technology and Internet-based e-commerce. Computer and telecommunications technologies are bringing revolutionary changes to society, but Japan and the United...
EDITORIALS
Apr 17, 2000

URL burial is grave news

Is there anyone who still really thinks the Internet is not transforming the world -- or at least those spreading patches of the planet that are connected to it? Every day, some new swath of mental territory falls prey to the Web, as if a gigantic, benevolent spider had suddenly taken control of humanity...
ENVIRONMENT
Apr 17, 2000

Germinating a new attitude toward brown rice

A new way of eating rice may revolutionize the Japanese diet in the next century.
ENVIRONMENT
Apr 17, 2000

Southern white rhino comes back

HLUHLUWE-UMFOLOZI, South Africa -- The ample white rhino sighted on a visit to Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park might lead one to believe that they are plentiful in the wild.

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.