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COMMENTARY / World
May 15, 2000

Fix the mood, fix the economy

The United States has been urging Japan to expand domestic demand, as if that was the only policy Japan could implement to help promote recovery of the global economy. Washington repeated that demand at the recent Group of Seven meeting of finance ministers and cen- tral bankers.
BUSINESS
May 15, 2000

Female condoms perfect fit for Japanese market

Amid rising concern over the spread of AIDS throughout Asia, The Female Health Company of Chicago has begun shipping the first of 2.5 million female condoms to Japan through local partner Taiho Pharmaceutical.
EDITORIALS
May 14, 2000

The rites of spring

Anyone poking about in newspapers or on the Internet lately might have come across a couple of essays expressing a view that seems to pop up seductively in public discourse whenever the weather turns warm. Like a view of cool woods from the window of a stuffy classroom in spring, this idea offers the...
CULTURE / Music
May 14, 2000

Japan's greatest battle in song and story

Oct. 21 this year marks the 400th anniversary of the most decisive battle in Japan's history, fought at Sekigahara near the border between Shiga and Gifu prefectures, where Tokugawa Ieyasu overcame all opposition to set the course of events for the next three centuries.
CULTURE / Music
May 14, 2000

Yomiuri Nippon Symphony

Yomiuri Nippon Kokyo Gakudan
JAPAN
May 12, 2000

Usui backs lowering age limit for adult trials

Justice Minister Hideo Usui indicated Thursday that he supports lowering the minimum age at which people can be penalized for crimes as adults, which currently stands at 16.
COMMUNITY
May 11, 2000

Young women study up for the future

A high attendance in classes ranging from aromatherapy, beadwork and flower arrangement to exotic languages and cooking, offered at department stores and community centers all over Japan, is a sign of a new trend among women in their late 20s and early 30s.
JAPAN
May 10, 2000

Police chief wants juveniles to repent

National Police Agency chief Setsuo Tanaka told senior police officials at a meeting Tuesday to make juvenile crime suspects reflect on their offenses.
JAPAN
May 10, 2000

Honohana leader, 11 cohorts arrested for bilking believers

The Metropolitan Police Department arrested Hogen Fukunaga, the founder of the foot-reading cult Honohana Sanpogyo, and 11 other senior cult members Tuesday on suspicion of fraud.
JAPAN
May 10, 2000

Crane to help team watch forest

A group of scientists from Japan and Malaysia will soon begin monitoring a tropical forest in Malaysia's Sarawak region from a lookout atop the world's largest nature-observation crane.
ENVIRONMENT
May 10, 2000

Trees and taste at Mito Botanic Garden

Mito, in Ibaraki Prefecture, is well known throughout Japan for natto (fermented soybeans), an acquired taste. It is also known for Kairakuen Garden, one of the Three Famous Gardens in Japan, which I've written about before. Just a couple of kilometers south of Mito in the lush green countryside, there...
CULTURE / Books
May 9, 2000

Testing times for Japan-U.S. alliance

ALLIANCE ADRIFT, by Yoichi Funabashi. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1999, 501 pp., $49.95 (cloth). The jacket of this hefty chronicle of the recent history of Japan-U.S. security relations proclaims that Japan has found its Bob Woodward. Consider yourself warned.
CULTURE / Books
May 9, 2000

'Shuttered' to the West, Japan opened to the East

CHINA IN THE TOKUGAWA WORLD, by Marius B. Jansen. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2000, 137 pp., $8.50 (paper). With the 400th anniversary of Japanese-Dutch relations upon us, interest has been rekindled in Japan's foreign relations during the Tokugawa period, and the part played...
COMMENTARY / World
May 7, 2000

Controversial look at Constitutional change

Resurgent nationalism by Japan's youth, a feeling that military dependence on the United States cannot last forever and a sense that Tokyo should be more ready to participate unambiguously in peacekeeping are reasons for a renewed interest in constitutional change, analysts say.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
May 7, 2000

Mari Ito

Mari Ito describes herself as "a photographer who has been taking photos of ethnic minorities and free-range pigs in Yunnan, China, for the past 10 years."
JAPAN
May 4, 2000

Divisions run deeper on Constitution Day

Activists from the left and right of the political spectrum staged rallies Wednesday as Japan observed its 53rd Constitution Day, coinciding with an increase in interest in the document because of the establishment of Diet panels to study its revision.
JAPAN
May 4, 2000

Should Constitution lead or follow?

Wednesday marked the first time Constitution Day -- commemorating the day the document was put into effect in 1947 -- coincided with lawmakers locking horns over whether to change the sacred charter.
COMMENTARY / World
May 3, 2000

Regaining the spirit of prewar Japan

The budget committees of both Houses of the Diet met April 24 and 25 to hear Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's views on various matters facing his new Cabinet. Throughout both days, he answered questions from the opposition parties. As a result, he seems to have cleared his first hurdle as the head of government....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 2, 2000

Everything about Tanizaki

TANIZAKI IN WESTERN LANGUAGES: A Bibliography of Translations and Studies, by Adriana Boscaro, with a list of films based on Tanizaki's works compiled by Maria Roberta Novielli. Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2000, 82 pp., $19.95. This fine bibliography is one...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Apr 30, 2000

Colin McCulloch

"Those of us in New Zealand interested in live theater used to rely on shows put on by companies coming on tour from London. Over the last 30 years, all that has changed. Provincial professional theater groups grew up overnight. New Zealand now has its own flourishing theater," said Colin McCulloch....
CULTURE / Books
Apr 25, 2000

Return to Ishiguro's fog-bound world

WHEN WE WERE ORPHANS, by Kazuo Ishiguro. London: Faber & Faber, 313 pp., 16.99 British pounds. Ever since "A Pale View of Hills" (1982), Kazuo Ishiguro has been playing games with his readers' minds. Some people find this infuriating, some fascinating, as the mixed reception accorded his novels...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 24, 2000

Mongolian state faces its horrific past

ULAN BATOR -- G. Tserendulam remembers the year Josef Stalin detained her father and his family during a trip to Moscow and sent them to the Soviet Union's Black Sea. It was 1936, and the pro-Soviet government of Mongolia told the people that Prime Minister Genden had felt the urgent need for a holiday....
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 24, 2000

NPT facing uncertain future

NEW DELHI -- When the complete history of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty gets written, its 1995 permanent extension will prove the beginning of its end. Although all nations of the world except four are today party to it, the NPT is in trouble, its future uncertain. From Japan to New Zealand, and...
COMMUNITY
Apr 23, 2000

Man of many parts puts dreams in action

It's not unusual to meet people who are adept at juggling. But dish-spinning is a whole new ball game -- the ability to conjure up one form of creative activity and set it in motion while starting up a second, third or more. Yet according to Milton Katselas, an American of Greek parentage based in Los...
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...
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.
COMMENTARY
Apr 16, 2000

A challenge to democracies

Democracies pride themselves on their efficient transfer of power from one elected leader to the next. But death or disability can strike a leader and cause immediate crisis.
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...
CULTURE / Art
Apr 16, 2000

Picasso, magic and childhood

You may not like Picasso very much. You may even agree with the American who said, "If I can do it, it ain't art!" But you would have to be very thick-skinned to remain unmoved by "Picasso's World of Children."

Longform

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