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BUSINESS
Jun 5, 2001

Hiranuma to hold talks with Taiwanese official

Trade chief Takeo Hiranuma will meet Thursday in Shanghai with Taiwan Economic Affairs Minister Lin Hsin-yi to discuss bilateral economic relations, a top Japanese trade official said Monday.
JAPAN
Jun 5, 2001

New Zealand offering Japan 'soft trade' alternative: envoy

New Zealand is better-placed than other English-speaking nations to help Japan's goal of internationalizing its citizens, according to Ambassador Phillip Gibson.
JAPAN
Jun 4, 2001

Group calls for education of illegals' kids

OSAKA — Members of an Osaka group supporting children of illegal immigrants in Japan will deliver to the United Nations letters from children facing deportation with their parents but who wish to remain in Japan to continue their studies, group members said.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 2, 2001

AIDS in prisons: a spreading problem

NEW YORK -- Several investigations worldwide have shown that the human immunodeficiency virus responsible for AIDS is spreading rapidly in prisons, where the rate of infection has been found to be several times higher than in the general population. Prisons have become one of the most potentially dangerous...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jun 2, 2001

Glen S. Fukushima

"To me, the U.S. and Japan are fascinating, as they stand at polar extremes in the way their societies are organized. Philosophy, culture, history set Japan apart from other industrialized countries, especially the U.S. Having spent many years in both the U.S. and Japan, I enjoy assisting the two peoples...
JAPAN
Jun 1, 2001

Tanaka may raise issue of marine drill relocation

Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka said Thursday she is prepared to consider Okinawa Prefecture's demand that some U.S. Marine drills on the islands be moved overseas.
JAPAN
Jun 1, 2001

Koizumi urges adoption of 'e-voting' in local polls

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi urged a government information technology panel Thursday to consider ways to introduce electronic voting in local elections, officials said.
JAPAN
May 31, 2001

Work of Canada's 'tragic historian' now regaining spotlight in Japan

The life and work of Edgerton Herbert Norman, a Canadian diplomat and researcher of modern Japanese history who committed suicide in the 1950s amid allegations that he was a communist sympathizer, is now being spotlighted.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
May 31, 2001

White lines, blowin' through my brain

Until 1903, a bottle of Coca-Cola contained around 60 mg of cocaine -- enough, it has now been shown, to trigger long-lasting changes in brain activity. According to a report in today's issue of Nature, giving a single dose of cocaine to mice changes the way that nerve connections transmit signals in...
JAPAN
May 30, 2001

Ogi plans 160 billion yen outlay to cut train time to Narita

The government is ready to allocate money in fiscal 2002 for a new railway track that would reduce the time to get to Narita airport in Chiba Prefecture from Nippori station in Tokyo by 15 minutes, Land, Infrastructure and Transport Minister Chikage Ogi said Tuesday.
JAPAN
May 30, 2001

Elementary school teachers to run English gantlet

Offering English language education in an entertaining, communicative way sounds just fine. In theory.
CULTURE / Art
May 30, 2001

Transcend the frame

About 30 landscape monochromes by up-and-coming Italian photographer Lorenzo Nenchioni are currently on display at the Polaroid Gallery in Tokyo.
BUSINESS
May 29, 2001

Keidanren hopeful over Russia visit

Takashi Imai, chairman of the Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren), said Monday he hopes an upcoming government-sponsored economic mission to Russia will be an important opportunity to revitalize bilateral economic cooperation.
COMMUNITY
May 27, 2001

Sleep on this

* Insomnia is not a modern-day phenomena: Aristotle penned his "Sleep and Sleeplessness" in 350 B.C.
CULTURE / Books
May 27, 2001

Japan's traditions aren't lost, they're buried

DOGS AND DEMONS: Tales From the Dark Side of Japan, by Alex Kerr. Hill and Wang, 2001, 432 pp., $27 (cloth). An ancient Chinese tale holds that dogs are difficult to draw because they are ubiquitous; demons are easy to create because they spring from the artist's imagination. Or, to put it more plainly,...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
May 26, 2001

Jane Finch

This year's Azalea Tea, the 46th sponsored annually by the Yokohama International Women's Club, was a sellout event. It featured a fashion show presented by international designer Takeo Nishida. As always, it ran a raffle for covetable prizes. Club President Jane Finch said she appreciates the friendship...
JAPAN
May 25, 2001

Tanaka puts reforms ahead of diplomacy

Staff writer Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi took the nation by surprise in late April by appointing the key foreign ministry post to Makiko Tanaka, who despite her enormous popularity with voters obviously lacked experience in foreign policy.
JAPAN
May 23, 2001

Loan firms linked to rise in personal bankruptcies

With colorful billboards at train stations, TV commercials showing Brazilian soccer legend Zico or a carefree, successful young woman, major consumer loan firms seem to have shed the shady images that previously haunted them.
COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE
May 23, 2001

Rookie president seizes the political initiative by zeroing in on a few core issues

Our first MBA president is managing the agenda of action in Washington in textbook fashion. Unlike his predecessor or his father, George W. Bush is limiting his exposure to the myriad issues waiting to be tackled and fights available to be fought. By this time in his first year, President Bill Clinton...
JAPAN
May 22, 2001

Suspicions true: communists defied ban in U.S.-run Okinawa

A secret communist group was formed within the Okinawa People's Party on Okinawa Island in the 1950s during U.S. rule when such organizations were outlawed, according to the latest study by a group of researchers.
COMMENTARY
May 21, 2001

Better a wooden chicken than a tornado

As soon as Diet member Makiko Tanaka was sworn in as foreign minister, a powerful "Tornado Makiko" rampaged throughout the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, sending some of the officials way up in the air and forcing others to retreat to hospital. For onlookers, the greater the chaos the more fun it was to...
CULTURE / Books
May 20, 2001

Fortress Japan? Blame MacArthur and his team

THE GENESIS OF THE JAPANESE FOREIGN INVESTMENT LAW OF 1950, by Richard Rabinowitz. German-Japanese Lawyers' Association Vol. 10, 1999, 11,000 yen, $ 84.50. In 1853, Commodore Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay and demanded that Japan's quasi-military government allow foreign trade. The resulting interactions...
COMMUNITY
May 20, 2001

Osaka's great, but hold on to your purse

OSAKA -- Osaka produces some of Japan's best comedians, tastiest food and most enterprising businesspeople. But who should really be taking the credit for keeping the prefecture at No. 1 over the past 25 years are its purse-snatchers.
CULTURE / Music / HOGAKU TODAY
May 20, 2001

Now that's what I call internationalism

Beginning in the 1970s and continuing into the "bubble" years of the 1980s, one of the buzzwords heard often in the media and from the mouths of politicians was "internationalization." Internationalization supposedly meant that the Japanese would become confident world citizens, fluent in English and...
JAPAN
May 17, 2001

72,000 eager graduates jobless in late March

An estimated 72,000 of this year's crop of high school and university graduates looking for immediate employment had not secured jobs as of late March, according to two recent government surveys.
MULTIMEDIA / SPORTS SCOPE
May 17, 2001

Time for the young ones to leave the nest

Philippe Troussier on the J. League: "The Japanese are soft and the players are soft and the referees are soft. One little bump in a game and it's a foul. These would never be fouls in Europe, in Spain or England."

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