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JAPAN
May 10, 2000

Report focuses on NGOs, missile threat

The government will step up its efforts to build partnerships with nongovernmental organizations and other groups to meet emerging diplomatic challenges, according to the Foreign Ministry's annual foreign policy report released Tuesday.
JAPAN
May 9, 2000

City strives to school foreign youth

TOYOTA, Aichi Pref. -- When the bell signals the end of the day at Homi Junior High School here, students run out of the building to play on the grounds.
COMMENTARY / World
May 8, 2000

Tackling sectarian strife in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD -- A volley of gunfire that followed a grenade attack last month in a small village two hours from Islamabad shattered the myth that the government had begun to effectively contain the country's religious extremists.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
May 7, 2000

All good things

Here is good news for all Kenny Endo fans, and if you aren't a fan you will be once you attend one of his performances. Kenny is a master of the taiko. Most of you know that taiko is drum, and then there is "odaiko," a huge drum. In general, taiko is to drum like the tea ceremony is to a tea bag. It...
COMMENTARY
May 4, 2000

Will Clinton crumble again?

If Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's overseas foreign-policy tour this week has a theme, it is "coverup" and "damage control." Mori, known as a colorless political fixer, has been tasked with assuring foreign leaders that the July G8 summit will go forward successfully no matter what happens on the Japanese...
COMMENTARY / World
May 2, 2000

A quest for human rights

ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has launched a drive to improve his country's human rights.
COMMUNITY
Apr 27, 2000

Celebration to wash away tears

A water festival without any water may sound like a contradiction in terms, but in Tokyo that's exactly how the Myanmarese community celebrate the New Year.
EDITORIALS
Apr 25, 2000

Combating cross-border crime

With international exchanges of people and goods expanding at an accelerated pace, cross-border organized crime is also rising rapidly. In a concerted effort to combat the globalization of crime, the United Nations in 1999 set up a special panel to work out a global anticrime treaty. Now that drafting...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 22, 2000

Use Earth's ecosystems more sustainably

The findings of a new report sponsored by the U.N. Development Program, the U.N. Environmental Program and the World Bank, titled "World Resources 2000-2001: People and Ecosystems: The Fraying Web of Life," underscore the fact that the growing worldwide demand for resources is threatening the world's...
JAPAN / Society
Apr 21, 2000

Racism in business rampant: groups

A group fighting to eradicate discrimination in Japan reported on a number of recent cases of discriminatory practices by businesses across the country on Thursday at a gathering in Tokyo and called for legislation to ban such practices.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 17, 2000

Alternative nuclear futures

The world community will gather in New York from April 24 to May 19 for the first review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty since it was indefinitely extended in 1995. Unfortunately, the nuclear future looks a lot less rosy than it did five years ago. Since then, India and Pakistan have crashed through...
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 14, 2000

Adventures in cross-cultural theater

NEW YORK -- In the Japan Society's latest cross-cultural experiment, the subtlety and spirituality of Japanese noh drama was played off the stirring pace of Kurt Weill's opera.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 9, 2000

Peace's high price in Kosovo

I previously argued that to supporters, NATO cured Europe of the Milosevic-borne disease of ethnic cleansing. To critics, however, the NATO cure worsened the disease ("NATO in the Balkans: Between disaster and failure," April 1).
CULTURE / Music
Apr 9, 2000

Conductors introduce some new stars

It is fair to assume that anyone reading this column is a music lover of some degree. Take a moment to reflect, though, that there was a time in your life when you had never heard a note of music. What was it that inveigled your innocent ear? When was it? Where were you? Who introduced you?
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 8, 2000

Shall we hula dance?

MATSUSHIGE, Tokushima Pref. -- "It began with a cold," Lance Kita, 24, replied when asked how he came to teach hula in Japan. Kita, raised in Hawaii, had never taught or even performed the dance native to his home state before coming to Shikoku, Japan's least visited major island.
EDITORIALS
Apr 7, 2000

Two steps forward, one step back

On the face of it, Russia's refusal to let Ms. Mary Robinson, the United Nations' chief human-rights official, visit sites where atrocities are alleged to have occurred during the Chechen war is a setback for her cause. But appearances are deceiving. Moscow's readiness to pretend such things did not...
COMMENTARY
Apr 6, 2000

Still searching for balance

Every spring, the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan sends a delegation to Washington, D.C. to meet with senior U.S. administration officials and key members of Congress to discuss issues of concern to the U.S. business community in Japan. Participating in the ACCJ visit last month for the seventh...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Apr 5, 2000

Endangered species

Cassandra will always be with us. I don't mean whiners pining for a simpler time, halcyon days, community, blah blah blah. No, I mean voices warning of future dangers visible to anyone with the foresight, intelligence and time to follow a thought to its logical conclusion.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 4, 2000

Rationales for new whaling weak

Whaling nations are again girding for the battle to resume industrial whaling ahead of the meeting this spring of the two bodies that could lift the international moratorium on industrial whaling -- the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and the International Whaling Commission....
ENVIRONMENT
Apr 4, 2000

Group struggles to replant beeches

SHIROISHI, Miyagi Pref. -- Mountains are special for Shizue Hata, the 54-year-old owner of a small Chinese dumpling shop in this quiet city of 40,000.
COMMUNITY
Apr 4, 2000

Mongolian educator building Japan-style school back home

YAMAGATA -- When Galbadrakh Janchiv returns to his home country later this month, his souvenir from this snowy prefecture will be a lesson for future generations.
EDITORIALS
Apr 1, 2000

Tokyo's new tax raises big questions

The tax debate sparked by Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara has reached a milestone now that the metropolitan assembly has almost unanimously approved his plan to impose a new asset-based tax on large banks operating in the capital. The bank tax, which is good for five years and replaces the current business...
EDITORIALS
Mar 31, 2000

Familiar faces in a new Cabinet

In France, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin resorted to a compromise strategy in a Cabinet reshuffle announced earlier this week. Rattled by a series of missteps, Mr. Jospin needs to rebuild public confidence. To do so, he appointed two prominent rivals from his Socialist Party to key positions. It is a...
LIFE / Style & Design
Mar 30, 2000

The fun of slipsliding away

You persevered. You sweated, ignominiously landed on your backside and ignored the relentless pounding of fall after fall so that you could master the art of snow boarding. But now that you feel as cool on the slopes as you thought you looked when you first zipped up your baggy shell pants, you are helplessly...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Mar 29, 2000

Get Shorty

For many of us living in Japan, the Academy Awards ceremony serves as a reminder of where we are in the bigger scheme of things: behind the curve. We often haven't seen many of the nominated or winning films, some won't be here for another year, and others might not come at all. This is a distribution...
COMMUNITY / How-tos
Mar 29, 2000

Very little help

A foreign woman married to a Japanese is concerned about her son who refuses to go to school, a problem that is shared by a lot of other families today. Many kids are revolting against Japan's education system. It could be an indication that they are getting smarter, but unfortunately it doesn't make...

Longform

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