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COMMENTARY
Mar 9, 2000

Telecommunications matters

Telecommunications has long been a contentious issue between the United States and Japan. This is because although Americans believe that the U.S. has the most advanced and most competitive telecommunications system in the world, market penetration in Japan for U.S. equipment suppliers and service providers...
ENVIRONMENT
Feb 28, 2000

Passion for traditional medicines, exotic pets, promotes illicit trade

Some among us seem to have an insatiable desire for novelty, be it living or dead. From rare primates and endangered tortoises for pets, to tiger bones consumed in pursuit of sexual vitality, Japan is the world's leading consumer of exotic species.
JAPAN
Feb 28, 2000

Arabian Oil loses drilling rights; Saudi aid canceled

The 40-year-old oil drilling rights of Arabian Oil Co., Japan's largest oil producer, in a major oil field in Saudi Arabia expired Monday morning as last-minute negotiations with Riyadh over the weekend ended in failure. Trade chief Takashi Fukaya expressed deep regret after the oil concessions officially...
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 17, 2000

Japanese team set to sell Mexico unprecedented investment pact

Staff writer After five months of preliminary talks, Japan and Mexico will launch full-scale negotiations in mid-March on a pact aimed at protecting and facilitating Japanese investment in the Latin American country. The Japanese negotiating team will visit Mexico for the first round of full-scale negotiations...
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...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 22, 2000

Vision, not structure, is key to recovery

This is a time of unprecedented opportunity for Japan. It may seem strange to speak of opportunity when the country's political and economic experts are struggling with the challenges of structural change. However, I believe the current pessimism in the country is the result of two misconceptions.
COMMENTARY
Jan 22, 2000

Close the bases, start again

Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi's Cabinet deserves praise for changing Japan's policy stance regarding the Japan-U.S. security system. First, the Cabinet recently proposed a 15-year time limit on U.S. use of the facility that would take over operations of the U.S. Futenma Marine Air Station in Okinawa, which...
COMMUNITY
Jan 19, 2000

Lafcadio Hearn: interpreter of two disparate worlds

He created an illusion and lived his days and nights within its confines. That illusion was his Japan. He found in Japan the ideal coupling of the cerebral and the sensual, mingled and indistinguishable, the one constantly recharging the other and affording him the inspiration to write.
BUSINESS
Jan 17, 2000

Fukushima exits chamber on bright note

To the eyes of the former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, the Japanese business environment has changed over the last several years, thanks in part to an influx of foreign companies and capital.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 17, 2000

Cut U.S. military presence

Japan faces intense pressure to settle uncertainties regarding the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps heliport now at the Futenma Air Station in Okinawa before July, when it hosts a Group of Eight summit. Unless the problems are settled by then, U.S. President Bill Clinton is likely to face a firestorm...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 10, 2000

How to level the business playing field

CRISIS AND OPPORTUNITY IN A CHANGING JAPAN, by William R. Farrell, with a foreward by Walter F. Mondale. Westport/London: Quorum Books, 1999, 275 pp., $60 (cloth). It's the Black Ships, round II. JETRO reports that foreign direct investment into Japan leaped 89.4 percent last year, topping $10 billion...
BUSINESS
Jan 4, 2000

ACCJ chief aims to fortify bilateral bridge

While major elections are likely to consume Tokyo and Washington in 2000, trade disputes are simmering beneath the relatively calm surface of Japan-U.S. economic relations.
JAPAN
Jan 4, 2000

Another Century: Strategies turn to partnerships with Asia

Staff writer For Elok Halimah, 21, an Indonesian student at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, learning Japanese in Tokyo has been a long-term aspiration. "Eventually, I hope I will be able to work for a Japanese company in Indonesia," said Halimah, who came from Jakarta in October. "In Indonesia,...
COMMENTARY
Jan 3, 2000

Building peace in a new era

As we greet the new millennium, we should ask ourselves what Japan should do to contribution to peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region, establish military and nonmilitary security, help solve global problems and prevent conflicts.
BUSINESS
Jan 1, 2000

The next loud bang could be in retailing

Just as foreign companies have accelerated reorganization of financial and automobile industries, powerful foreign chain stores are now gearing up to expand in the general merchandising market in Japan.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 30, 1999

Japanese politics, a model democracy

JAPANESE DEMOCRACY: Power, Coordination and Performance, by Bradley Richardson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. 325 pp.. $17. Do the revisionists have any clothes? Bradley Richardson argues that the interpretations of Japan popularized by the revisionist school do not bear scrutiny and that...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 28, 1999

Happy in the Gucci nation

What kind of country will Japan be in the 21st century? The millennial forecast is in and it looks like this: Japan's cultural elite is quickly converging around the notion that Japan should be the first boutique state of the 21st century -- distinctive, well designed and expensive.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 20, 1999

A diplomatic 'paper tiger'?

In recent years, we have seen active debate on Japan's sanctions-based diplomacy. Discussions focused on the justifications for and effects of sanctions, as well as changes in the balance of power resulting from the lifting of such measures. The lifting of sanctions against North Korea Dec. 14 renewed...
COMMENTARY
Dec 17, 1999

Why put up with U.S. bases?

Why is Japanese officialdom so willing to tolerate troublesome U.S. military bases? In Okinawa, Tokyo constantly risks harmful local antagonism in its efforts to satisfy U.S. base demands there.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Dec 15, 1999

Follow the money

Japan's back. After nearly a decade of economic stagnation, this country is getting its act together.
COMMUNITY
Sep 23, 1999

Tenure in bronze for Todai's foreign professors

The number of outdoor statues of foreigners (five) on the campus of the University of Tokyo might seem unusually high for a Japanese institution.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Sep 5, 1999

Late returns

A reader remembers a column about Gen. Douglas MacArthur's office in the Dai-Ichi Insurance building. It was ideally situated for the role he was to play -- it overlooked the Imperial Palace. He established his own imperial pre-eminence when the Chinese carpet he always used in his office was delivered:...
JAPAN
Jul 7, 1999

Economic progress hoped for at China summit

Staff writer
JAPAN
Jun 25, 1999

Nuclear plants feared vulnerable coastline targets

MIHAMA, Fukui Pref. — A North Korean submarine runs aground on the nuclear plant-dotted shores of Fukui Prefecture and 11 commandos armed with antitank rockets storm ashore.
JAPAN
Jun 24, 1999

U.N. ambassador presses for UNSC role in future conflicts

Although Japan supported Western efforts to end the atrocities in Kosovo, the government wants the U.N. Security Council to authorize future actions, according to Yukio Satoh, Japan's ambassador to the United Nations.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 11, 1999

Come clean on defense policy

In July last year I took issue with an article written by former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa ("Japan-U.S. Security Treaty: A kind of insurance policy" July 11, 1998). In his recent May 31 article "A de facto treaty revision," Hosokawa called for "a full dress debate on se curity issues, including...
COMMENTARY / World
May 31, 1999

A de facto treaty revision

The Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, signed in 1951, is understood to be an arrangement whereby the United States, in exchange for the use of military bases in Japan, is committed to the rescue of this nation in the event of external aggression. Japan, with its "war-renouncing" Constitution, follows a policy...
COMMENTARY
May 28, 1999

A step in the right direction

Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi agreed with U.S. and South Korean officials in Tokyo Monday on the need to continue trilateral cooperation in their policies toward North Korea. It is highly significant that Obuchi's agreement with U.S. policy coordinator William Perry and South Korean Unification Minister...
JAPAN
May 24, 1999

Diet enacts defense bills, but doubts on alliance linger

Staff writer

Longform

People in cities across Japan will pop into their local convenience store for any number of products they believe will help them with a night of drinking.
Hangover cures are everywhere in Japan — but do they work?