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EDITORIALS
Mar 3, 2000

'But it couldn't happen here'

There is no refuge from the senseless gun violence that plagues the United States. Homes, offices, places of worship, city streets and even schools -- no place is safe. This week, there was an especially horrifying episode: the shooting of one first-grader by another. The details tell a tragic story,...
BUSINESS
Mar 3, 2000

Online exchange mulled for after-hours trading

Major trading house Mitsui & Co. announced Thursday that it will launch a joint venture with 11 brokerages to establish the nation's first after-hours online trading exchange for individual investors.
JAPAN
Mar 2, 2000

Agencies examine software supplied by Aum-linked firms

Government agencies and major companies opted to double check various computer systems Wednesday after it was discovered that some of the the software may have been developed by a firm controlled by Aum Shinrikyo.
LIFE
Mar 2, 2000

Breaking from shame into song

When Tama Ozaki left for India at 19, she felt that she would never want to come back to Japan. "I was in a real emergency situation at the time," she says in a warm but powerful voice. "I was eating compulsively, and drinking too. I was completely unhappy."
JAPAN
Mar 2, 2000

U.S. expresses opposition to China's presence at G8

The United States expressed its opposition Wednesday to Japan's unofficial proposal to invite China to the Group of Eight major nations' summit in Okinawa in July, Japanese officials said.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 28, 2000

Defusing tension in the Spratly Islands

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- The tiny Spratly Islands are dwarfed by the magnitude of the sovereignty and demarcation problems that surround them.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 28, 2000

Managing global development

The United Nations University is an important marketplace of ideas. The U.N. is the normative center of international public policy. On Jan. 19-21, UNU brought together some of the best international scholarship with specialists from within the U.N. to focus on problems in the new century and possible...
COMMUNITY
Feb 27, 2000

'Dalit' priest researches caste system in Japan

As a child the Rev. Busi Suneel Bhanu had no inkling of his status in the Indian caste system. Enlightenment came in his early teens, when a teacher voiced shock on being told that Suneel was "Dalit," the name used for those Indians regarded as "untouchable" because of the traditional nature of their...
LIFE / Food & Drink
Feb 24, 2000

Luxembourg's grape history: wine country since day one

Mother Nature used her wintry palette to redefine Luxembourg in mere minutes, lacing its naked boughs and barren lawns with soft, tufted snow. This, too, is wine country.
JAPAN
Feb 23, 2000

Talks on drilling rights go down to the wire

Staff writer If Arabian Oil Co.'s last-ditch negotiations with Saudi Arabia to renew its 40-year oil drilling rights fail, the pioneer Japanese driller will be hard hit, but officials don't fear a national crisis. With his firm's rights in the Khafji oil field in the former neutral zone between Saudi...
JAPAN
Feb 21, 2000

Mexico promotes free trade pact

Japan and Mexico should seriously study the possibility of a bilateral free-trade agreement, visiting Mexican Foreign Minister Rosario Green reiterated Monday. "Concluding an FTA between Japan and Mexico would benefit both countries," Green told a news conference. "To Mexico, such an agreement would...
CULTURE / Art
Feb 19, 2000

Modern Japanese painting's other capital

The figure of Kakuzo Okakura, better known in Japan by his pen name Tenshin, looms large over modern nihonga (Japanese-style painting). Not a painter of distinction himself, his importance was as a critic, curator and organizer. As the founder of what is now Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and...
LIFE
Feb 17, 2000

Exploring sutras of sound

After two decades of journeying through Asia, the Middle East and Europe and living in the steep mountain ranges of the Himalayas and Japan, Kogan Murata finally chose his path in life: playing the bamboo flute as an itinerant beggar monk, a komuso.
COMMUNITY
Feb 17, 2000

Helping kids follow their noses

If you ask children what they want to be when they grow up, they will typically answer with a profession they have seen, either in daily life or on television: veterinarian, pilot, ice skater, or actress. How many times, however, have you heard a child say, "I want to be a perfumer"?
JAPAN
Feb 17, 2000

Quest on for firm English footing

First of two partsStaff writer Do all Japanese need to speak English? And will they? Yes, says an advisory panel to the prime minister that recently outlined Japan's goals for the 21st century. In the past, Japan has taken steps to improve English education by reportedly making textbooks more communication-oriented...
JAPAN
Feb 16, 2000

Dioxin in soil contaminating fish, report says

High levels of dioxin have been detected in river fish, apparently after they consumed food contaminated by microorganisms from soil carrying the deadly chemical, an Ehime University research team said Wednesday. According to a five-year study by the group, led by Tadaaki Wakimoto, a professor of environmental...
JAPAN
Feb 16, 2000

Battle over Constitution begins

Breaking a postwar taboo, politicians started a full-scale parliamentary discussion Wednesday on whether to rewrite parts of the nation's hitherto untouchable Constitution. In the first session of an Upper House Constitution study panel, parties remained sharply divided over the premise of the panel...
JAPAN
Feb 11, 2000

BOJ's ultraeasy-credit policy a double-edged sword

As the Bank of Japan carries its zero-interest rate policy into the second year, there is no sign that the policy the BOJ itself calls abnormal will end anytime soon.
COMMUNITY
Feb 10, 2000

Psychic knowledge to a degree

Housewife Utako Ando (not her real name), 41, has been interested in fortunetelling for a long time. One day, a fortuneteller told her that her home would be robbed, and when she came back from vacation she found the prediction had come true. "That really surprised me," she says. "I believe fortunetellers...
JAPAN
Feb 8, 2000

Diet boycott resolved

After 11 days of turmoil under an opposition boycott, the Diet is ready to return to normal today after the ruling triumvirate and the Democratic Party of Japan on Tuesday agreed on an arbitrated proposal from the Lower House speaker. Executives of the six main parties met with Speaker Soichiro Ito...
JAPAN
Feb 8, 2000

State appeals Amagasaki pollution ruling

The central government and Hanshin Expressway Public Corp. filed an appeal Tuesday with the Kobe District Court over a Jan. 31 ruling ordering them to compensate residents in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, for air pollution-related health damages allegedly caused by an expressway. The ruling states that...
COMMUNITY
Feb 6, 2000

The best parents are both parents

David Brian Thomas (who with a name like that can only owe his heritage to Welsh Wales) carries two photos in his wallet. One shows a baby; the other a gravely sweet 3-year-old -- the age Thomas last saw his son seven years ago.
CULTURE / Music
Feb 5, 2000

At last, a live house for hogaku

Tokyo, being a vibrant, world-class metropolis, is home to hundreds of small musical venues ("live houses") which offer everything: the top names in the jazz world, rock and punk, piano parlor music, ethnic music from Asia, China, Korea, Africa, India, among others, as well as American and European folk...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 5, 2000

'Tea and sympathy' mark U.S.-Japan ties

There are new frictions looming just over the horizon in U.S.-Japan relations, based mainly on the perceived growth of nationalist sentiment.
ENVIRONMENT
Feb 2, 2000

Look out for masked bandits at roadside

It is amazing what one can see out of the corner of an eye.
JAPAN
Feb 1, 2000

Panel recommends making new constitution by 2008

A new Constitution should be introduced in 2008, the head of the Upper House's constitutional research panel reiterated Tuesday. Masakuni Murakami, a senior member of the Liberal Democratic Party, told the Upper House plenary session that he aims to wrap up discussions by the panel by 2005 have the...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 1, 2000

Because of memory, because of hope

BRIDGE ACROSS BROKEN TIME: Chinese and Jewish Cultural Memory, by Vera Schwarcz. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1998, 232 pp. (cloth). Staff writer Rarely does a book challenge a reader -- or a reviewer -- as this one does. "Bridge Across Broken Time" is equal parts academic study, meditation...
COMMUNITY
Feb 1, 2000

Dance craze swinging into action

The 1996 hit movie "Shall We Dance?" has helped the Japanese appreciate the charm of ballroom dancing. Yet despite the surging popularity of dance schools across the country, social dance continues to play a minor role in the local nightlife. Now, some devotees are promoting swing, a more casual version...
JAPAN
Feb 1, 2000

Aum pays redress to its victims

Aum Shinrikyo has paid 25 million yen as the first installment of its own compensation package for victims of crimes attributed to the religious cult, senior Aum officials said Tuesday. At a press conference held at the cult's Yokohama branch, top members, including Fumihiro Joyu, said Aum remitted...
CULTURE / Art
Jan 29, 2000

Marubeni Collection not to be blinked at

Department store exhibitions are the butterflies of the art scene: blink and they're gone!

Longform

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