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LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
May 19, 1999

Voices in the machine

In the hyperaccelerated world of "news," my topic -- the Littleton, Colo., massacre -- may seem dated. But in living rooms, classrooms, legislatures and, of course, on the Net, the aftershocks are still reverberating
JAPAN
May 19, 1999

Pollution sparks action to halt Universal Japan

OSAKA -- Three people living near the construction site of the Universal Studios Japan theme park in Konohana Ward here filed a petition Wednesday with the Osaka District Court, seeking a court order against USJ Co. and Sumitomo Metal Industries Ltd. to suspend the ongoing project.
JAPAN
May 19, 1999

Ramsar signatories aim to extend treaty's scope

Staff writer
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
May 19, 1999

Once more, Chiang Mai

I had a mission in Chiang Mai. Many years ago I bought a reclining black lacquer Burmese Buddha there. It had been gilded but much of the gold had been worn off, probably by the hands of the faithful seeking some special blessing. It has a remarkable face. It changes expression as the viewer moves even...
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
May 19, 1999

Back bayous of the Danube Delta

Adrift on a boat, with a wall of freshly leafed willows passing steadily on each side, I could not help thinking of Ratty and Mole's adventures on the river in "The Wind in the Willows." There were fresh mole hills to be found on the banks, and here and there holes in the riverbanks that might just have...
COMMUNITY
May 19, 1999

Redevelopment fiasco leaves locals in limbo

KOFU, Yamanashi Pref. -- The home of Yutaka Endo (not his real name) resembles one in a lesser-developed nation. His living room walls are stained where the rain has leaked through cracks; the wind whistles through warped window and door frames.
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
May 19, 1999

Journeying into the valley of death

"Death Valley," noted our guidebook, "is an inhuman environment: barren and monotonous, burning hot and almost entirely without shade or water." In short, the ideal antidote to Japan's rainy season, which is why we went.
COMMUNITY
May 19, 1999

Memories of old Honmoku

This is a story of Honmoku Motomachi, my hometown in Yokohama, a neighborhood on the southwest coast of Tokyo Bay. Not too long ago, the land extended to tidal flatlands that were abundantly endowed with a wide variety of marine life and provided sustenance and a livelihood to generations of fishermen....
JAPAN
May 19, 1999

Life term sought for Asahara's driver

Prosecutors demanded life in prison Wednesday for a former Aum Shinrikyo fugitive accused of chauffeuring one of the cultists accused of releasing sarin in the deadly Tokyo subway gas attack of March 1995.
EDITORIALS
May 18, 1999

Keep trade reform alive

An open international trade system is the backbone of the global economy. Vigorous trade has been the instrument of international prosperity in the past half-century. The secret of the trading order's success has been its continual expansion in terms of members (the number of nations) and reach (such...
JAPAN
May 18, 1999

Digital camera sales continued steep ascent in '98

Domestic sales and exports of digital still cameras increased dramatically in fiscal 1998, with shipments jumping 36 percent in terms of units and 78 percent in terms of value, an industry association said Monday.
JAPAN
May 18, 1999

FRC panel declares failed NCB stocks worthless

A committee of the Financial Reconstruction Commission said Monday it has evaluated the stocks of the failed Nippon Credit Bank as worthless.
JAPAN
May 18, 1999

New Komeito plays up role as fickle ally

Staff writer
JAPAN
May 18, 1999

Third brain-death transplants conducted in Osaka, Kyoto

Heart and liver transplants from a brain-dead donor got under way in Osaka and Kyoto prefectures Monday in the third case since Japan legalized the procedure in 1997.
JAPAN
May 18, 1999

Diet session may run to early September

The government and the Liberal Democratic Party decided Monday to seek an extension of up to 85 days for the current Diet session to accommodate a supplementary budget for fiscal 1999 as well as other legislation to finance industrial competitiveness measures.
JAPAN
May 18, 1999

Volunteers struck by refugees' fortitude

Staff writer
CULTURE / Music
May 18, 1999

Alec Empire's mission: disturb and offend

At first glance Alec Empire, in black leather from head to foot, appears the archetypal rocker, but his short clean hair and his drug-free, no-drinking, no-smoking stance hardly screams "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll."
CULTURE / Books
May 18, 1999

Half a biography of Fujimori

THE PRESIDENT WHO DARED TO DREAM: Alberto Fujimori of Peru, by Rei Kimura. Worcester, U.K.: Eyelevel Books, 184 pp., $14.90 (paper). Peru and Japan just celebrated the 100th anniversary of the first Japanese immigrants' arrival in Peru on April 3, 1899. President Alberto Fujimori, himself the son of...
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
May 18, 1999

Holy big beat funk, Captain!

Check him out now, the funky captain. Check him out now, the F-U-N-K-Y captain. Ch-ch-ch-ch-nu-nu-na-na. (cue big drums) . . . . There's a new superhero in town, folks. His name is Captain Funk. He's touching down in a disco den near you. His manifesto is simple:
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 18, 1999

Culture: mirror or straitjacket?

THE WORLDS OF JAPANESE POPULAR CULTURE: Gender, Shifting Boundaries and Global Cultures, edited by D.P.K. Martinez. Cambridge University Press, 1998, 212 pp., unpriced. THE WORLDS OF JAPANESE POPULAR CULTURE: Gender, Shifting Boundaries and Global Cultures, edited by D.P.K. Martinez. Cambridge University...
CULTURE / Books
May 18, 1999

Tracing a profile of the new Japan

REGIME SHIFT: Comparative Dynamics of the Japanese Political Economy, by T.J. Pempel. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998, 263 pp. I'm confused. On the one hand, we're told Japan has undergone tumultuous change since the beginning of the '90s. The Liberal Democratic Party lost its 38-year-long...
CULTURE / Books
May 18, 1999

Progress is fleeting in the fight for sexual equality

THE MOUNTAIN IS MOVING: Japanese Women's Lives, by Patricia Morley. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1999, 240 pp., $39.95 (cloth). The mountain is moving, according to Patricia Morley, but mountains are, by nature, difficult to budge, and this particular one is demonstrating a firm...
JAPAN
May 18, 1999

Toyota parts affiliates connect in U.K.

In a move to its auto parts operations to Europe, Toyoda Gosei Co. has set up a joint venture with fellow Toyota affiliate Toyota Tsusho Corp. in Rotherham, England, to produce weatherstripping, it announced at a Monday news conference at the British Embassy in Tokyo.
EDITORIALS
May 16, 1999

'Star Wars' in their eyes

The lines started forming outside theaters in Hollywood in early April. By last week they had sprouted all over America, despite the fact that with just a few days to go fans can now get advance tickets online or by phone. Tickets for what? What event could possibly be worth waiting in line for six weeks...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
May 16, 1999

So long ago

A woman writes of a quest, not hers but a friend's. This friend is looking for a man she knew many years ago. He was born in Hokkaido in 1913. He was a Christian and was active with the Young Men's Christian Association. He traveled widely in foreign countries in connection with that work.
CULTURE / Art
May 16, 1999

Doors of modest home open to lessons of the past

Slide open the door to a two-story wooden house in Tokyo's Ota Ward and enter into the life of an ordinary family in the mid-Showa Era, when people lived in homes with mostly tatami rooms, wooden furniture, traditional cooking tools and fetched their water from a well.
COMMENTARY
May 16, 1999

Does NATO really have justice on its side?

Tokyo is urging Beijing to accept U.S. explanations that the bombing of its Belgrade embassy was a genuine mistake. Maybe it was. But why automatically rule out the possibility it was a devious scheme by rogue hawks in the powerful U.S. military/intelligence machine to encourage China to veto any U.N.-backed...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
May 16, 1999

Hate is a many-booted creature that bites

The word in Japanese politics these days is reform. Japan is faced with an aging population, a weakened yen and a less-than-thriving economy.
COMMUNITY
May 16, 1999

Yokota base gives Fussa its multicultural charm

Living next to a foreign military base may not seem like an ideal situation, given the antibase rallies in Okinawa, antinoise lawsuits elsewhere and new Tokyo Gov. Ishihara's calls for the return of Yokota Air Base.
COMMENTARY
May 16, 1999

Enhancing regional security

In recent months, South Korean President Kim Dae Jung and Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi have separately called for the creation of a formal, governmental Northeast Asia Security Forum, to bring key regional states together to discuss common security interests and concerns. Russian President Boris Yeltsin...

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone.
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan