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JAPAN
Dec 18, 2000

Societal barriers facing disabled may prove the most formidable

As deputy chief of the Japanese delegation at the Sydney Paralympic Games this summer, Tsunenobu Wakana was impressed with the handicapped-friendly facilities and transportation system.
COMMUNITY
Dec 17, 2000

Naturalist issues guide to Tokyo wildlife

Kevin Short leads two quite distinct lives. In California, he is a husband and father, with a home, a dog and three cars. In Japan -- based in Chiba -- he is a natural history writer and environmental consultant, involved with fieldwork, writing, botanical illustration and lectures, and leading secret...
JAPAN
Dec 16, 2000

LDP moves step closer to cutting China's ODA

The Liberal Democratic Party's top foreign policy planners approved a panel report Friday proposing that Japan's official development assistance to China should be reduced in the light of the domestic economic situation.
JAPAN
Dec 16, 2000

New U.N. relief chief hopes to up funds, aid worker safety

Securing adequate financial resources and improving the safety of U.N. aid workers are two of the most important tasks to ensure the United Nations can carry out its humanitarian activities, according to the newly appointed chief overseeing such activities.
JAPAN
Dec 13, 2000

Kobe man says he was a spy for Pyongyang for 20 years

KOBE -- For nearly 20 years, Cho Ryu Un, a Korean resident of Japan born and raised in Kobe, lived a double life. To friends and business partners, he was a normal businessman, albeit connected with the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon).
CULTURE / Books
Dec 13, 2000

Okinawa's Ota makes a case for redress

ESSAYS ON OKINAWA PROBLEMS, by Masahide Ota. Gushikawa City, Okinawa: Yui Shuppan Co., 2000, 302 pp., 1,600 yen (paper). Okinawa's history is essentially that of a poor ethnic group at Japan's southern extremity. The island has been continually exploited and abused for the interest and convenience of...
CULTURE / Books
Dec 13, 2000

Television as a pillar of the state

BROADCASTING POLITICS IN JAPAN: NHK and Television News, by Ellis Krauss. Cornell University Press, 2000, 278 pp., $35 (cloth). Many of us know NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai) for its film documentaries, its cultural programs -- stunning or plodding, depending on your perspective -- or its Sunday morning singalongs....
JAPAN
Dec 12, 2000

Citizen exchanges said key to Japanese-Korean ties

Japan and South Korea should increase citizen exchanges, especially of young people, to build a new partnership and jointly play a leadership role in the Asia-Pacific region, panelists at a symposium on Japan-South Korea relations agreed Monday.
JAPAN
Dec 10, 2000

Efforts afoot to boost foreign students' career opportunities

KOBE -- In an ongoing effort to forge stronger ties between Japan and her home country of Myanmar, Kobe University graduate student Thin Aye Aye Ko has spent recent years working as a translator, interpreter and even tour guide.
JAPAN
Dec 10, 2000

Murayama offered Pyongyang compromise for past

Former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama offered a compromise to North Korea earlier this month to break a deadlock in normalization talks between Tokyo and Pyongyang, but the North Korean response was not positive, sources to close to Japan-North Korea relations said Saturday.
JAPAN
Dec 7, 2000

Journalists debate role of English in Asia

English, as the dominant language in cyberspace, is becoming an indispensable communication tool for Asian people. And the increased use of English among nonnative speakers should make it more colorful as a world language.
JAPAN
Dec 7, 2000

Slovakia hopes for Japanese Embassy in capital

Slovakia wants Japan to establish an embassy in its capital, Bratislava, and scrap visa requirements to enhance bilateral ties, according to Jozef Migas, president of the National Council -- Slovakia's parliament.
BUSINESS
Dec 7, 2000

Retail chains under siege

Conventional Japanese supermarket chains, which are suffering dwindling sales and being cold-shouldered by consumers, will be dealt another blow with the advance of foreign retail giants wielding aggressive business plans into the Japanese market.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Dec 7, 2000

Yahata keeps the Bunnies hopping

You might say Shin Yahata is the Tom Jones of the Japan Ice Hockey League. And while he has yet to experience women tossing their underwear at him as he tools around the ice for the Kokudo Bunnies, it may only be a matter of time.
JAPAN / CABINET INTERVIEW
Dec 7, 2000

Yohei Kono warns against turning inward

Japan needs to constantly examine the contents of its official development assistance, but a large-scale reduction in ODA spending could jeopardize relations with Asian countries, Foreign Minister Yohei Kono said Wednesday.
JAPAN
Dec 4, 2000

Red Army kin could return by yearend

Prospects increased that five family members of the former Red Army Faction members who hijacked a Japan Airlines jet in 1970 will return to Japan from North Korea as government sources said Japan plans to allow an agent to apply for visas for them.
COMMENTARY
Dec 4, 2000

Fight the spread of small arms

The United Nations General Assembly has decided to hold the U.N. Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Aspects in New York in July 2001. The trade involves a broad range of hand-carried arms from automatic rifles to portable missiles.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 3, 2000

Middle-class myth comes tumbling down

This is the eighth of a 10-part series on contemporary Japan.
BUSINESS
Dec 2, 2000

ODA gives way to domestic political pressure

The government may be succumbing to strong domestic political pressure to make Draconian cuts in Japanese official development assistance. If you want evidence, keep a close watch on an upcoming gathering of Vietnam's aid donors.
JAPAN
Dec 2, 2000

Bill foot-dragging belies pluralist goal

The postponement of debate on a bill that would grant limited suffrage to foreigners until next year at the earliest has prompted long-term foreign residents of Japan to question whether the nation is serious about embracing the foreign population.
JAPAN
Dec 2, 2000

HIV-positive lawmaker fights battle against discrimination

When he tested positive for HIV 13 years ago, Satoru Ienishi could not imagine becoming a father -- let alone living long enough to hold his healthy, smiling baby girl.
JAPAN
Dec 2, 2000

No dispute over interpretation of 1956 pact: Kono

Japan believes its interpretation of a 1956 joint declaration with the then Soviet Union that stipulates two of the four disputed islands off Hokkaido be returned to Japan after a peace treaty is signed is the same as Russia's, Foreign Minister Yohei Kono said Friday.
JAPAN
Dec 1, 2000

Tokyo slates meeting with Myanmar

In defiance of mounting international pressure, Japan appears firmly determined to go ahead with technical assistance for Myanmar.
JAPAN
Dec 1, 2000

Opponents sidetrack suffrage debate

The ongoing debate on a bill to grant foreigners voting rights is being sidetracked by opponents who claim the issue can be resolved by amending the nation's naturalization policy.
JAPAN
Nov 30, 2000

U.S. mulled nuclear SDF during '60s China buildup

The U.S. State Department considered arming Japan with nuclear weapons in the early 1960s as a strategic counterweight to China's military buildup, which included an atomic weapons program, according to a document obtained by Kyodo News.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Nov 30, 2000

Ignore the skipper and go west, young men

What on earth has Bobby Valentine been smoking these days? The guy is a great manager and he keeps us sportswriters in business with witty quotes and humorous antics. But this time he's gone too far. We're talking Siberia here. In a recent interview with the Boston Herald, Valentine expressed his feelings...
SOCCER / J. League
Nov 30, 2000

Alex: Dreadlocks in deadlock at S-Pulse

SHIMIZU, Shizuoka Pref. -- It's an image that sticks very firmly in the mind. Sixty seconds into a crucial game against the Yokohama F. Marinos, a brilliant 60-meter pass out of defense by Kazuyuki Toda catches a flurry of dreadlocks on the run.
CULTURE / Books
Nov 28, 2000

When writing Asia-Pacific history, the rhetoric is the reality

JAPAN AND PACIFIC INTEGRATION: Pacific Romances 1968-1996, by Pekka Korhonen. London/New York: Routledge, 1998, 246 pp., $50 (cloth). The title of this book suggests that it is about the integration of the Asia-Pacific area, about regionalism, and about the role Japan plays in this process.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 28, 2000

Back to square one in politics

Koichi Kato, a leading dissident in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, failed miserably in his latest attempt to unseat Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.

Longform

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