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CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Oct 3, 2000

We've got a personality crisis

If you go to a live event you don't just want to listen to music, you want to witness a show, right? You want the people on stage to be rock stars for the night. And you want to be swept away on a flood of shared adrenalin.
CULTURE / Music
Oct 1, 2000

Tryouts at NHK Symphony: Some work, and some don't

The NHK Symphony Orchestra boasts the largest complement of musicians (113), the most subscription concerts (60), the healthiest annual budget (3 billion yen), the highest visibility (over NHK radio and television) and the most interesting programs of any of the 30 professional symphony orchestras in...
CULTURE / Art
Sep 30, 2000

Korean folk traditions come alive on porcelain

Folk art motifs on the painted plates of Kim So Sun In our contemporary world, where art is commissioned for anything from airplanes to automobiles, the transposition of 17th-century Korean folk art to modern porcelain dishes should not prove too surprising. In a wonderful burst of innovation, artistKim...
EDITORIALS
Sep 29, 2000

Mr. Mori's missing road map

Six months after he took office, what is Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori aiming to achieve? Equally important, what does the opposition have to say about his policy -- or the lack thereof? These questions went largely unanswered during the Lower House debates that took place this week. The exchanges proved...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 28, 2000

Japan's nonprofits carve out a space of their own

When the Nature Conservancy's Lori Forman addressed the College Women's Association of Japan at a luncheon earlier this year, the topic was supposed to be nongovernmental organizations in Japan. But instead of providing a nuanced description of Japan's not-for-profit movement, Forman seemed more interested...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 28, 2000

Birth of a new generation

Turn on the television or flip through any popular magazine, and you're sure to come across gyarumama (gal mamas) -- teenage moms with tanned skin, trendy clothes and towering platform shoes.
JAPAN
Sep 27, 2000

Tokyo International Film Festival to screen 16 films by new directors

Sixteen films by new directors will be screened in competition at the 13th Tokyo International Film Festival, which will begin Oct. 28, according to event organizers.
EDITORIALS
Sep 24, 2000

A feminist ties the knot

A lot of fun has been had this month at the expense of longtime American feminist icon Gloria Steinem. After decades of pointing out the drawbacks of marriage, the 66-year-old Ms. Steinem recently surprised and titillated the world by going off and getting married.
COMMUNITY
Sep 24, 2000

Creative outsider paints orderly inside of chaos

Yuji Oki lives in a big house and paints increasingly large paintings -- by Japanese standards at least.
JAPAN
Sep 23, 2000

Mori, Cohen agree to keep watch on Pyongyang

Japan, the United States and South Korea must still closely watch North Korea despite Pyongyang's recent gestures of detente, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen agreed Friday.
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Sep 23, 2000

Stopped in my flippin' tracks by a Shino tea bowl

I'm lucky enough to live only five minutes away from one of my favorite Mino potters -- and I don't even live near the Mino area. That's in Gifu Prefecture, whereas I reside in the potting wasteland of Numazu. I'm always asked about how I ended up here and I can only say that it was the will of something...
CULTURE / Art
Sep 23, 2000

Artists heed the call of the cat

"I don't feel that I decide to carve the cats," Makoto Nishi says. "The cats call on me to carve them."
JAPAN
Sep 22, 2000

Mori starts extra Diet with 'e-Japan' pitch

Employing a new catchword, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori opened the 72-day extra Diet session Thursday pledging to create an "e-Japan" that would enrich people's lives and make the nation's industries more competitive.
JAPAN
Sep 22, 2000

Chairman of Osaka city arrested over bid-rigging

OSAKA -- Osaka Prefectural Police on Thursday arrested the chairman of the Osaka City Assembly and two others for allegedly disrupting the smooth execution of bidding for contracts for city-ordered public works projects in 1997.
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 22, 2000

Festival for Asian theater

The Agency for Cultural Affairs will host the Asian Art Festival Oct. 25-Nov. 5 at the New National Theater, The Pit, featuring plays by the leading Singaporean playwright/director Kuo Pao Kun as well as a lecture and a symposium on the contemporary theater scene in Asian countries.
JAPAN
Sep 21, 2000

Mori targets damage control, economic stimulus in session

During the extra Diet session convening today, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori hopes to fix the damage done to his ruling bloc by recent money scandals and boost the fragile economic recovery with a stimulus package worth more than 10 trillion yen, including 4 trillion yen in new spending.
JAPAN
Sep 21, 2000

10 trillion yen stimulus package ordered

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori on Wednesday formally ordered the government to draft a 10 trillion yen economic stimulus package that will include an extra budget of nearly 4 trillion yen for the current fiscal year.
BUSINESS
Sep 21, 2000

Economists question scale of extra budget

The announcement Wednesday of a fiscal 2000 supplementary budget, which is expected to surpass 10 trillion yen in total size and include 4 trillion yen in new government spending, has prompted some economists to wonder why a budget of that scale is needed now.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Sep 21, 2000

The healing power of ginger

This is a good time of year to bring out the ginger. As we move into autumn and the days get shorter and the air cooler, ginger is a great way to replace sunshine and summer heat and warm things up a bit. I've written about ginger before, but like a few other special classics in the botanical medicine...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Sep 19, 2000

Program laying groundwork to conserve rivers and trails

John Monroe jokingly refers to himself as a "conservation venture capitalist." Unlike most investment bankers, however, Monroe is investing for the long term.
JAPAN
Sep 18, 2000

Mori to promote budget, IT when extra Diet session opens

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori will promote the extra budget, the development of information technology and the continuation of talks with North Korea and Russia in his policy speech Thursday when an extraordinary session of the Diet begins, government sources said Sunday.
JAPAN
Sep 17, 2000

Capital relocation scheme under attack

The Liberal Democratic Party and one of its two allies, the New Conservative Party, plan to start adjusting opinions within the ruling bloc on freezing the government's plan to relocate the functions of the central government outside Tokyo, party sources said.
JAPAN
Sep 17, 2000

Drought leaves Lake Biwa low, dry

OSAKA -- A prolonged drought in western Japan that forced local authorities to order a reduction in water taken from Lake Biwa appears to have ended, but officials warn that water levels are still low.
CULTURE / Books / POETRY MIGNETTE
Sep 17, 2000

Tokyo poets get a night out to Howl

Howl, the bar in Aoyama, was founded just after Allen Ginsberg's death in 1997.
BUSINESS
Sep 16, 2000

Economic institutes more optimistic about fiscal 2000 growth

Revised projections by several private think tanks show that many of them believe the economy will expand by about 2 percent during this fiscal year, greater than the government target of 1 percent growth in real terms.

Longform

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