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CULTURE / Books
Jan 16, 2001

Three identities and one life

LIVES OF YOUNG KOREANS IN JAPAN, by Yasunori Fukuoka, translated by Tom Gill. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2000, 330 pp. It is estimated that there were 2.5 million Koreans living in Japan at the end of World War II. Although many returned home after the war, there are still approximately 600,000...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 15, 2001

Tory grip on rural areas must be broken

With a British general election schedded for May 3 or earlier, the party machine is geared to turn out again those who gave us victory in 1997 -- traditional Labor voters and those who voted Labor for the first time -- to win that elusive second term. Yet this is not enough. We must also win the battle...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 12, 2001

India paying dearly for its bully image

NEW DELHI -- Although world attention is invariably riveted on India-Pakistan hostility, New Delhi's ties with its other neighbors have been uneasy in the best of times.
JAPAN
Jan 10, 2001

Women tackle stalking menace head-on

Exercise combining aerobics and self-defense skills is the latest craze among young women in Tokyo, where the number of reported stalking cases is also on the rise.
EDITORIALS
Jan 8, 2001

Symbolism and the strait

In 1958, the Nationalist forces that ruled Taiwan conducted a 44-day artillery duel with the mainland, firing from the tiny islands of Matsu and Quemoy. At the time, the exchange prompted fears of a wider conflict. Slowly, however, the barrages became routine: China only fired on odd-numbered days to...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 8, 2001

APEC paving the way for cooperation

We believe history will judge the eighth APEC Economic Leaders Meeting held in Brunei Darussalam Nov. 15-16 an important milestone in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum's mission to create a peaceful, prosperous and open Pacific community. The Brunei meeting saw three "firsts" for APEC.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jan 7, 2001

CL pitchers happy to see last of Gomez

Opposing Central League pitchers of the Chunichi Dragons should have an easier time during the 2001 season. Slugger Leo Gomez has left that team after four years of punishing hurlers on the other five CL clubs, especially the Yomiuri Giants, as one of the most feared cleanup hitters in Japanese baseball....
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jan 7, 2001

Yoshitami Arai

As a precocious 15-year-old in 1946, Yoshitami Arai looked around at a Japan that was, he said, "totally destroyed." Then at school in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, he was already beginning to understand the need of the nation to produce businessmen who would rebuild the economy. From that time on, he...
COMMUNITY
Jan 7, 2001

Good manners make comfortable relations

In Japan, there has been much discussion of late of both morals and manners. Indeed, one national newspaper on Jan. 1, in a section devoted to scrutinizing how Japanese have changed in recent years, devoted a whole page to the question: Are good manners a thing of the past?
JAPAN
Jan 6, 2001

Yen hits 17-month low on fears that economy is losing steam

The yen has come under fresh downward pressure on world currency markets amid lingering worries about the flagging Japanese economy.
JAPAN
Jan 6, 2001

Mori to embark on African trip

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori leaves Sunday for a nine-day trip to South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Greece with the aim of boosting diplomatic ties with sub-Saharan Africa. He will be the first Japanese prime minister to visit the region.
COMMENTARY
Jan 6, 2001

China and Taiwan fight over the WTO

WASHINGTON -- The changing of the political guard will soon be under way in Washington. Despite disquiet in many foreign capitals, few dramatic changes in U.S. foreign policy are likely.
JAPAN / STAGING A COMEBACK
Jan 4, 2001

Information disclosure could give power to citizens if they get involved

Satoru Ienishi felt overwhelming anger as he watched a newscast at his Tokyo office on June 13, 1998.
JAPAN
Jan 4, 2001

July election to be verdict on Mori

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori appears to be pinning his survival on a shift from postwar economic materialism to a revival of traditional values, but his true prospects will depend more on his ability to avoid making blunders.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jan 4, 2001

Blips that stayed on the media radar

Media Persons of the Year: Yasuo Tanaka and Shintaro Ishihara
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Jan 1, 2001

Much ado about nothing

In a fierce fit of free-market commercialism, ads in Moscow subway insist that the real new millennium will start today. With the economy weakened by crisis, revenues from the advent of Y2K were not as impressive as in the West, and now Russian boutiques, travel agencies and software stores are trying...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

Japan needs open, clear agenda in an age of life science

The 21st century will be called the century of life science. In fact, an enormous amount of money has already been reinvested for research in this field on a global scale. A representative example is the human genome project, which is closing in on the complete deciphering of human DNA. In addition,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

Progress alone won't be enough

IT, shorthand for information technology, was a buzzword in Japan in 2000. Never before had computers and the Internet caused such a furor in the media. To be sure, IT had created a boom several times in the past, but its impact had been confined to the corporate sector. In contrast, the latest boom...
COMMUNITY
Dec 31, 2000

Michinoku Ginko chief banks on Japanese-Russian relations

Talk about a profitable end to the year. Invited to meet a Taisho man -- that is, someone born in the last year of what many consider to be Japan's most liberal period of the 20th century -- I was met in one location to be maneuvered into a taxi and delivered outside another: a nondescript utility block...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 31, 2000

Solving the Kashmir dispute

Three of the world's most protracted conflicts are in Asia: the Palestinian-Israeli crisis in West Asia, Kashmir in South Asia and Korea in East Asia. The world's interest is engaged in South Asia because of the fate of over 1 billion people, the importance of India as the world's most populous democracy...
EDITORIALS
Dec 30, 2000

Economy still stuck in a rut

Looking back to 2000, the critical question hanging over the Japanese economy is: Has there been movement, or at least the preparations for a move, toward a new system befitting the start of a new century? The answer, unfortunately, is no.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 29, 2000

Rare rumblings of dissent ruffle Dalai Lama's agenda

NEW DELHI -- Even as the Dalai Lama has softened his attitude toward China -- which annexed Tibet in 1950 and drove him to an Indian exile nine years later -- the spiritual leader of his people, who was honored with a Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, now finds himself facing dissent within his own community....
JAPAN
Dec 28, 2000

Three years sought for health official in HIV contamination case

Prosecutors on Wednesday demanded that a former health official be given a three-year prison term for failing to stop the use of HIV-tainted blood products in the mid-1980s.
COMMENTARY
Dec 28, 2000

The fight for liberty continues

WASHINGTON -- We are entering a new year, the true third millenium. Unfortunately, the prospects for liberty do not burn bright. Human history is largely one of tyranny. The history of the last couple thousand years has been largely one of combatting tyranny.
JAPAN
Dec 27, 2000

Education panel hits individuality, stresses Japanese-language focus

An Education Ministry advisory panel is calling for increased Japanese-language study and reading opportunities for children, saying a good command of the language provides a solid platform for education and cultural literacy.
LIFE / Travel
Dec 27, 2000

In a gray concrete world, a city of beautiful churches

GRODNO, Belarus Most Belarusian cities get a bad press, at least for good looks, in foreign guidebooks. Polatsk is notable for "what was once there," Mogilev is decidedly "uninspiring," Homel's biggest drawing card is a bust of its most famous son, the late Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, and...
CULTURE / Music / MUSIC NOMAD
Dec 26, 2000

The best of this year's world music crop

Strangely, I had thought this year was not a particularly vintage one for world and roots music. That was until I had to whittle down a list to come up with a top 10, as part of a panel for the British magazine fRoots.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 26, 2000

A moral beacon in Japan's darkest days

YANAIHARA TADAO AND JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE: Redeeming Empire, by Susan C. Townsend. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000, 296 pp., 50 British pounds (cloth). Scholarship can be a dangerous vocation. The ideological witch-hunt against Tadao Yanaihara, holder of the prewar chair of colonial policy at Tokyo...
CULTURE / Books
Dec 24, 2000

Palestinian families at a scholarly remove

POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND THE PALESTINIAN FAMILY: Implications for Mental Health and Well-Being, by Vivian Khamis, Haworth Press, 144 pp., $20. The appearance of a book on the impact of political violence on Palestinian families could hardly be timelier. Deaths caused by the present unrest in Israel and...

Longform

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