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COMMENTARY
Apr 24, 2000

Help Japan: take time off

Japan's unemployment rate remains disturbingly high, as companies step up job-cutting efforts and bankruptcies increase. Although there are signs that the economy is recovering, there are no indications that the serious job shortage is easing. The Federation of Employers Associations, in recent negotiations...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Apr 23, 2000

Japan as No. 1 (in being bullied by U.S.)

With a refreshing bit of journalistic acuity, the USA Today reporter James Cox has reminded me how bizarre the U.S. attitude toward Japan has become. Under the headline, "U.S. bullies Japan like no other nation," Cox noted the astonishing extent of U.S. high-handed meddlesomeness with Japan, suggesting...
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...
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...
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.
COMMUNITY
Apr 16, 2000

Learn to draw on the right side

Once upon a time, there was a Japanese salaryman who truly believed he was 100 percent uncreative. Then he took an intensive workshop in Tokyo called "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" with an American teacher named Kristin Newton. Every evening he returned home, moved beyond words to discover...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 14, 2000

Behind the surprise inter-Korean summit

"Hold on to your hat. Korea is full of surprises," Don Oberdorfer advises us in the conclusion to his recent book, "The Two Koreas." And not since Egyptian President Anwar Sadat flew into Jerusalem more than two decades ago to mend fences with his arch rival, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and...
COMMUNITY
Apr 13, 2000

Grassroots effort helps sick kids

Like many of his Russian countrymen, 33-year-old Nikolai Lanine is not quick to smile. His steady and intelligent speech is punctuated with almost imperceptible shoulder shrugs, the body language of someone describing a seemingly futile situation, yet his actions provide evidence to the contrary.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 12, 2000

Residue of America's dirty fingerprints

PARALLAX VISIONS: Making Sense of American-East Asian Relations at the End of the Century, by Bruce Cumings. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999, 280 pp., $27.95 (cloth). The field of Asian studies has attracted some brilliant scholars, many of whom have controversial views. Chalmers Johnson...
CULTURE / Film
Apr 11, 2000

Lessons learned from the master

"What I really want to do is direct." This phrase, heard everywhere in Hollywood from interviews with A-list stars to conversations between waiters at Hamburger Inn, has become a joke -- to everyone but the legions of gottabe directors themselves. Among this crowd, scriptwriters have traditionally been...
EDITORIALS
Apr 5, 2000

After Mr. Obuchi's collapse

Worry, speculation and embarrassment have overwhelmed Japan's political world in the two days since Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi was incapacitated by a stroke on Sunday. As hopes vanished for his resumption of the nation's most responsible political post, the Obuchi Cabinet resigned en bloc on Tuesday...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Apr 5, 2000

Endangered species

Cassandra will always be with us. I don't mean whiners pining for a simpler time, halcyon days, community, blah blah blah. No, I mean voices warning of future dangers visible to anyone with the foresight, intelligence and time to follow a thought to its logical conclusion.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 4, 2000

If Japan is under your skin, get dirt under your nails

CREATING YOUR OWN JAPANESE GARDEN, by Takashi Sawano. Tokyo: Shufunomoto Co., Ltd., 1999, 120 pp., 3,800 yen (cloth). This is the kind of book you might give to a committed Japanophile like Larry Ellison, Oracle president and CEO. While professional landscape architect Takashi Sawano does not say whether...
MORE SPORTS
Apr 4, 2000

Cowboys, Falcons to clash in Tokyo

NFL Tokyo 2000, which pits the Dallas Cowboys against the Atlanta Falcons, is slated for Aug. 6 at the Tokyo Dome, the NFL announced Monday in Tokyo at a news conference attended by Cowboys star running back Emmitt Smith.
JAPAN
Mar 31, 2000

Factional fighting set to split Liberal Party

The Liberal Party, the smallest member of the ruling coalition, appears to be splitting up.
JAPAN
Mar 31, 2000

ODA guidelines set for Thailand, Bangladesh

The Foreign Ministry has issued policy guidelines for extending official development assistance to Bangladesh and Thailand, the first among nine initial country-by-country plans it has been preparing since November 1998.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Mar 29, 2000

Get Shorty

For many of us living in Japan, the Academy Awards ceremony serves as a reminder of where we are in the bigger scheme of things: behind the curve. We often haven't seen many of the nominated or winning films, some won't be here for another year, and others might not come at all. This is a distribution...
COMMUNITY / How-tos
Mar 29, 2000

Very little help

A foreign woman married to a Japanese is concerned about her son who refuses to go to school, a problem that is shared by a lot of other families today. Many kids are revolting against Japan's education system. It could be an indication that they are getting smarter, but unfortunately it doesn't make...
ENVIRONMENT
Mar 27, 2000

World's forests cut to feed voracious Japanese industry

For those who suffer from cedar pollen allergies, these dry, sunny days of spring are sheer torture. After Finland and Sweden, Japan has the most forest cover in the world: 67 percent. My itchy eyes tell me 98 percent of those trees must be cedar.
CULTURE / Art
Mar 26, 2000

Vast private collection housed in London's 'unofficial attic'

LONDON -- Museums in Britain are nervously awaiting the results of the Internet publication of an official inventory of 350 works of art in British national collections whose provenance in the period between 1933 and 1945 is unclear. More than half belong to the National Gallery and the Tate, 109 and...
CULTURE / Art
Mar 25, 2000

Artist places new focus on gender roles in Japanese art

If one were to compile a list of things taboo in Japan, it would read a little like a catalog of Yoshiko Shimada's subjects over the last 10 years. Shimada, 41, has addressed feminist politics in general, the Korean sex slaves Japanese media euphemize as "comfort women" in particular, and even (gasp!)...
LIFE / Food & Drink
Mar 23, 2000

The magic of dancing spores

Sake fans these days are quite often inundated with information (much of it extraneous) about how a sake was made. The rice, yeast strain, water quality, nihonshu-do (specific gravity) and acidity are commonly found listed on the labels of most decent bottles of sake.
LIFE / Food & Drink
Mar 23, 2000

In the realm of the culinary senses

Some people celebrate the cherry-blossom season in doggedly internationalist mode: Aoyama cemetery or the Tamagawa embankment; a few bottles of bubbly with cheese and crackers; maybe even some beluga roe if they're feeling flush. Others prefer to stagger down the well-worn path of traditionalism: Ueno...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 20, 2000

Built on a foundation of fear

THE SHOGUN'S PAINTED CULTURE: Fear and Creativity in the Japanese States -- 1760-1829, by Timon Screech. London: Reaktion Books, 2000, 312 pp., with 33 color plates and 111 b/w photos, 19.95 British pounds. The argument of this prodigiously detailed study is that Japan as we now know it did not exist...
COMMUNITY
Mar 19, 2000

Illegal worker in catch-22 for love of daughter

"Ram Sharma" and I talked long about the wisdom of doing this piece. He wanted to share his isolation and humiliation with another human being and possibly get some help in extricating himself from his situation. Regarding an interview, he said I should decide. No, I replied; he was the one at risk....
CULTURE / Books
Mar 19, 2000

Found language and fragmented identity

Yuriya Julia Kumagai's first volume of poetry, "Her Space-Time Continuum," originally written in English and published in 1994, used text layout, language "found" in everyday life, as well as literary theory and language poetry techniques to shape her own idiom. This hybrid approach reflected the speaker's...
JAPAN
Mar 15, 2000

Tokyo hails progress in North Korea talks

Japanese leaders welcomed on Tuesday the results of a meeting Monday between representatives of the Red Cross societies of Japan and North Korea in which Pyongyang agreed to take appropriate steps if it locates any missing Japanese nationals.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Mar 15, 2000

Baseball fantasies

www.padres.com/ballpark/index.html Larry Lucchino has been busy conceiving another baseball stadium, and this time he's convinced the city of San Diego to foot most of the bill and flesh out his dreams. The last time he turned on his charm, the result was Oriole Park at Camden Yards. He says A Ballpark...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Mar 15, 2000

Living the easy, or at least convenient, life

"Life ain't easy for a foreigner in Japan."

Longform

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