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CULTURE / Stage
Jun 11, 1999

How to play Hamlet, that is the question

"There are few rules about playing Shakespeare, but many possibilities," said Shakespearean director, educator and theoretician John Barton, in his edifying book "Playing Shakespeare."
JAPAN
Jun 10, 1999

LDP OKs Hinomaru, 'Kimigayo' bill

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party approved a Cabinet plan Thursday to adopt a bill today to legally recognize the Hinomaru as the national flag and "Kimigayo" as the anthem.
JAPAN
Jun 9, 1999

C&W wins IDC stakes

Toyota Motor Corp. and Itochu Corp. on Wednesday announced their decisions to sell their 17.7 percent stakes in International Digital Communications Inc. to Britain's Cable and Wireless PLC.
EDITORIALS
Jun 8, 1999

Help for battered wives is overdue

With a series of shootings apparently related to an underworld gang battle taking place in various parts of the Kanto area and a constantly rising volume of illegal stimulant drugs to deal with, Japan's police forces would seem to have a busy enough summer ahead of them. That may be why some observers...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 8, 1999

The darkest shores of the soul

SHIPWRECKS, by Akira Yoshimura, translated by Mark Ealey. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1996, 180 pp., $21. Though Akira Yoshimura, born in 1927, is the author of some 20 novels, this is the first to be translated into English. Perhaps the reason for the delay is that he is better known as a historian...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 8, 1999

Recovery hinges on fast action

Following U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's comments suggesting a change in U.S. monetary policy, the surging U.S. stock market has apparently entered an adjustment phase. To prevent the booming U.S. economy from overheating, it is necessary to fine-tune monetary policy.
JAPAN
Jun 4, 1999

Ex-LTCB execs face criminal charges

The nationalized Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan filed a criminal complaint Friday against its former top executives, accusing them of falsifying the bank's balance sheets and illegally paying dividends to shareholders without earning enough profit.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 4, 1999

Both sides to blame for Sino-U.S. troubles

HONG KONG -- As the United States debates the security implications of the Cox report on Chinese spying in the U.S., and as China continues to deny the spying and to denounce the NATO attack on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, it is easy to lose sight of a basic reality: There is a remarkable symmetry...
CULTURE / Music
Jun 4, 1999

An audience with the Tokyo culture king

Moichi Kuwahara's office occupies a crumbing apartment building in Tokyo's Yutenji district. The warren of small rooms resembles an art squat -- packed full of editors, graphic designers, writers and other creative types who provide the artistic fodder for Club King, a company whose products, magazines,...
EDITORIALS
Jun 3, 1999

A new world for Japanese business

The latest earnings reports from Japanese corporations listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange provide a running commentary on their predicament. Reflecting a drawn-out recession, both sales and profits plunged in the year to March 1999 (fiscal 1998). On average, sales in all industries except financial services...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 2, 1999

France's Corsican question

PARIS -- "France," according to one of its best-known poets and political thinkers, Paul Valery, "is the most heterogeneous country that ever existed." The present tragedy in Kosovo makes this sound hyperbolic, yet there is an element of truth in it. The French who live on the shores of the Mediterranean,...
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Jun 2, 1999

Among the ruins of the Mayan Paris

You wouldn't have wanted to watch a ball game at the close of the season in the ancient Mayan city of Copan.
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 25, 1999

New Defense Role: Next step is to free up SDF

Staff writer
EDITORIALS
May 22, 1999

Red alert for the Loonies

There was gloomy news last week in the sphere of international politics -- so gloomy, in fact, that had it not been for Israel's spirited rejection of its most unhelpful prime minister ever, Benjamin ("Turn-the-clock-back Bibi") Netanyahu, monitors of social progress everywhere would now be inconsolable....
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
May 19, 1999

Voices in the machine

In the hyperaccelerated world of "news," my topic -- the Littleton, Colo., massacre -- may seem dated. But in living rooms, classrooms, legislatures and, of course, on the Net, the aftershocks are still reverberating
COMMUNITY
May 19, 1999

Redevelopment fiasco leaves locals in limbo

KOFU, Yamanashi Pref. -- The home of Yutaka Endo (not his real name) resembles one in a lesser-developed nation. His living room walls are stained where the rain has leaked through cracks; the wind whistles through warped window and door frames.
EDITORIALS
May 18, 1999

Keep trade reform alive

An open international trade system is the backbone of the global economy. Vigorous trade has been the instrument of international prosperity in the past half-century. The secret of the trading order's success has been its continual expansion in terms of members (the number of nations) and reach (such...
CULTURE / Books
May 18, 1999

Progress is fleeting in the fight for sexual equality

THE MOUNTAIN IS MOVING: Japanese Women's Lives, by Patricia Morley. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1999, 240 pp., $39.95 (cloth). The mountain is moving, according to Patricia Morley, but mountains are, by nature, difficult to budge, and this particular one is demonstrating a firm...
EDITORIALS
May 16, 1999

'Star Wars' in their eyes

The lines started forming outside theaters in Hollywood in early April. By last week they had sprouted all over America, despite the fact that with just a few days to go fans can now get advance tickets online or by phone. Tickets for what? What event could possibly be worth waiting in line for six weeks...
EDITORIALS
May 13, 1999

President Kim takes up the challenge

Among Asia's crisis-hit economies struggling for recovery and reform, South Korea may well claim it leads on both counts. Interest rates, the currency and equity prices have markedly improved from the depths of a year and half ago. A return of market confidence is also in evidence as foreign capital...
CULTURE / Books
May 13, 1999

Miyazawa comes to life for young English readers

GAUCHE THE CELLIST; SNOW CROSSING; THE STORY OF THE ZASHIKI BOKKO and Three Poems; THE RESTAURANT OF MANY ORDERS (4 vols. with four CDs and read-along booklet in English and Japanese), by Kenji Miyazawa, translated by Roger Pulvers, illustrated by Osamu Tsukasa. Tokyo: Labo Teaching Information Center,...
CULTURE / Books
May 11, 1999

Coming of age, piece by piece

NAMAKO: Sea Cucumber, by Linda Watanabe McFerrin. Coffee House Press, 1998, 256 pp., $14.95 (paper). Like the sea cucumber, Ellen, the multicultural 9-year-old narrator of Linda Watanabe McFerrin's delightful first novel, cannot be easily classified. Animal or vegetable? Living and feeling, or merely...
JAPAN
May 10, 1999

Reform of Diet debate questioned

Staff writer
COMMENTARY
May 8, 1999

Japan remains a military laughingstock

After much political wrangling, the House of Representatives has passed the bills relating to the new defense guidelines between Japan and the United States. Deliberations in the House of Councilors got under way April 28. With the full cooperation of the Liberal Party and Komeito, and with the partial...
COMMENTARY
May 8, 1999

Hope returns to Lebanon

LONDON -- While the lights go out and buildings collapse in one great European city -- the Serbian capital, Belgrade -- some 1,500 km to the east, in another once war-ravaged metropolis, a glittering reconstruction obliterates the recent past.
EDITORIALS
May 7, 1999

A brush with history

Mallory, Hillary.... The airwaves have been buzzing this week with two of the best-known names in mountain-climbing history. Some people even reportedly got confused, thinking the body found near the summit of Mount Everest May 1 was that of Sir Edmund Hillary (who is very much alive in New Zealand)...
JAPAN
May 7, 1999

Dioxin: Levels high in incinerator-happy Japan

Last in a series Staff writer
CULTURE / Books
May 4, 1999

A dose of reality for Asia's high-flyers

TIGERS TAMED: The End of the Asian Miracle, by Robert Garran. Allen Unwin, 1998, 228 pp. (paper). "Tigers Tamed," "The Trouble with Tigers," "Asian Contagion." It's hard to miss a touch of what seems like gloating in the attempts to chronicle Asia's recent misfortunes.
EDITORIALS
May 3, 1999

Hope in East Timor

The people of East Timor have been given the chance to choose their own destiny. Indonesian President Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie decided last week to hold a referendum on independence in the province. On Aug. 8, East Timorese will vote for independence or autonomy within the Indonesian state under an...

Longform

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