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COMMENTARY
Aug 9, 2001

The dangers of cohabitation

LONDON -- The institution of marriage has been taking some hard knocks lately. It is not just that cohabitation -- living together without the marriage commitment -- is now increasingly popular. Nor yet that, as is widely known, one in four British marriages end in divorce. (In the United States, the...
EDITORIALS
Aug 9, 2001

Argentina's turn in the spotlight

There has been a dangerous complacency in the world of international finance since the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Although that contagion spread through emerging markets with breathtaking speed, once the crisis was weathered, talk of real global financial reform was first muted and then seemed to...
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Aug 7, 2001

Rubbing noses with a musk ox

The Northwest Territories cover approximately one-third of Canada. Given that Canada is the second-largest country in the world, it can therefore be said without fear of contradiction that the NWT is rather large.
EDITORIALS
Aug 6, 2001

Restoring a MAD world's sanity

Fifty-six years ago, on the morning of July 16, 1945, the United States exploded the first atomic bomb at a testing range at Alarmogordo, New Mexico. Watching the blast, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, who played the leading role in the last stages of the Manhattan Project, reminded himself of a doomsday passage...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Aug 5, 2001

Terrors, real and imagined

August means hot weather and ghost stories to add a little chill to the muggy air. Tonight, on TV Tokyo's "Sunday Big Special" (7 p.m.), host Tsurutaro Kataoka will explore various occultish phenomena for either your terrified delectation or your nonbelieving derision.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 4, 2001

Fight the good fight for press freedom

What strange set of circumstances could connect the issue of tax probes of South Korean media outlets with China's bid for the Olympics and the advertising policy of a Hong Kong bank? While it may not seem obvious at first glance, the linkage relates to freedom of expression.
COMMUNITY
Aug 3, 2001

Togetherness with calisthenics

School is out for the summer but still, remarkably, kids in this fitness-savvy society turn out -- at 6:30 a.m., no less -- at parks, shrines and quiet streets across Japan for NHK's daily "Radio Taiso" workout, a 15-minute live broadcast of morning calisthenics.
JAPAN
Aug 2, 2001

Panel touts benefits of ODA budget

An advisory panel to Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka on Wednesday stressed the importance of official development assistance with regard to Japan's foreign policy.
CULTURE / Art
Aug 1, 2001

A century down along the Sumida

In most of the great European capitals, wide, impressive rivers flow through the very heart of the cities, providing the perfect setting for stately buildings such as the Houses of Parliament in London or the Orsay Museum in Paris.
EDITORIALS
Jul 30, 2001

Mr. Kim goes to Moscow

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is on his way for two-day talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A special train carrying him and his entourage arrived in the Russian Far East Thursday en route to Moscow. This is the first Moscow trip by a North Korean head of state since Mr. Kim's father, the...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 29, 2001

Multilateralism triumphed for Kyoto

With the Kyoto deal finally in the bag after a marathon round of negotiations, delegates to the resumed session of the climate change talks congratulated themselves on a job well done. For many of the negotiators who have followed these grueling negotiations over the last 10 years it was a bitter sweet...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 28, 2001

Now it's time for New Labour to deliver

BRUSSELS -- The historic second landslide election victory for the Labour Party has given Tony Blair an opportunity that no Labour prime minister has had before -- a second term of office. For the first time in history, a Labour government can build on its work and set in place radical reforms to realize...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jul 26, 2001

The king is a beast, but the queen is a democrat

Imagine a place where all the females give birth at the same time, where grandmothers nurse their daughters' children and baby-sit for them, and where all children are raised in a protective nursery. Where females join together in defending the community against dangerous strangers and those of the same...
COMMENTARY
Jul 25, 2001

A nasty taste of things to come

LONDON — Conventional wisdom has it that the future is impossible to predict, or at least to predict with any accuracy.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 24, 2001

Visiting educators find confidence lacking

Japan should make greater efforts to instill a sense of self-confidence in its children and help them to develop the ability to express themselves, according to foreign educators invited to speak at a recent discussion session in Tokyo.
LIFE / Travel
Jul 24, 2001

Signs of the cross in China

LOU GUAN TAI, China There is only one way into the pagoda, through a small window 10 meters above ground. Climbing the walls would likely land me behind bars: The building is around 1,300 years old and leans as prominently as the Tower of Pisa -- no doubt a result of an earthquake 500 years ago.
LIFE / Food & Drink / BEST BAR NONE
Jul 22, 2001

This one goes out to all the grrls

For 121/2 years, I lived within a 10-minute walk of Shinjuku Ni-chome. "Ni-chome," as most habitues refer to it, is synonymous with gay, even though every neighborhood in Tokyo has an area called Ni-chome, which, roughly translated, means "Sector 2." One should even be careful not to refer to an escapade...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 22, 2001

Dead-end lives in the suburbs of Tokyo

LIFE IN THE CUL-DE-SAC, by Senji Kuroi. Translated by Philip Gabriel. Berkeley, Calif.: Stone Bridge Press, 2001, 231 pp., $12.95. To read this version of "Life in the Cul-de-Sac" is to experience two conflicting emotions. On the one hand, there is admiration for the storyteller, as the dozen linked...
EDITORIALS
Jul 21, 2001

A foundation for Africa's renewal

The Organization of African Unity, created nearly four decades ago as a symbol for the new Africa, is about to enter the history books. It will be replaced by the African Union, perhaps as early as next year, to achieve a new mission: developing a region plagued by conflict, AIDS and poverty. It remains...
COMMENTARY
Jul 21, 2001

What happens after the Agra summit?

ISLAMABAD -- If India and Pakistan, South Asia's two nuclear-armed neighbors, were conscious of global concerns over the breakdown of the summit between their leaders at the historic city of Agra, they took little time before sending out identical messages.
COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE
Jul 19, 2001

Campaign finance reform bill continues to dominate a divided U.S. Congress

This was "the week that was" for campaign finance reform. The stakes were high. The votes were close. You could cut the tension around the Capital with a knife. And when it was over, just like all the years in the recent past, there was no result. The only winner may well have been U.S. President George...
CULTURE / Art
Jul 18, 2001

Brushes with the divine

Karma works in mysterious ways.
CULTURE / Art
Jul 18, 2001

A breakfast to blow your mind

I recall reviewing a group exhibition at an embassy gallery last year and referring to it as a "hodgepodge" of styles and media. So incensed were the amateur curators that they fired off a complaint to the paper protesting the use of the word. When the husband of one of them caught up with me in public,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 13, 2001

Indonesian human-rights law wide open to manipulation by military and its allies

When a law clearing the way for ad hoc courts to try human-rights violations was passed in Indonesia last November, some saw it as a sign that high-ranking military officers would finally be punished for the many abuses committed by the nation's armed forces.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 13, 2001

Injustice across borders?

The arrest and transfer of former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic to the international tribunal at The Hague is but the latest of several dramatic twists and turns in the last few years in the search for universal justice. Just as the indictment issued against him during the NATO war in Kosovo was...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 11, 2001

India and Pakistan once again eye peace

ISLAMABAD -- India and Pakistan will try yet again to come a step closer to peaceful coexistence this weekend when Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf travels to India to meet with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
CULTURE / Film
Jul 11, 2001

The family that bathes together . . .

Shower Japanese title: Kokoro no Yu Rating: * * * * Director: Zhang Yang Running time: 92 minutes Language: MandarinNow showing When you're born Japanese, certain notions are drummed into you at a very early age. Among them is the deep-seated conviction that a long soak in a hot bath is pretty much...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 8, 2001

Love town where time stands still

OSAKA -- Osaka Mayor Takafumi Isomura repeatedly says he wants to turn the city into an international tourist destination. But camera-toting foreigners snapping pictures of Tobita, one of its oldest and most famous neighborhoods, are probably not what either he or the local business community have in...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 8, 2001

The Japanese Constitution gets a provocative look

FIVE DECADES OF CONSTITUTIONALISM IN JAPANESE SOCIETY, edited by Yoshio Higuchi. University of Tokyo Press, 2001, 368 pp., 8,000 yen. A major stumbling block for Japan on its road to becoming a more influential member of the global community has been a profound absence of voice. Japanese politicians,...

Longform

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