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JAPAN
May 3, 1999

Ready for 2000?: Japan's efforts overlooked when not in English

Sixth in an occasional series on Japan's Y2K preparedness
COMMENTARY / World
May 3, 1999

Balkans destroy old certainties

BY SARAH BENTON LONDON -- The consequences of the war in Kosovo are almost unimaginable. But whatever they turn out to be, one is already clear: the rough fashioning of the 19 members of NATO into a cohesive fighting force.
JAPAN
May 3, 1999

Constitution's anniversary sparks debate on revision

With last month's Lower House passage of bills covering the updated Japan-U.S. defense cooperation guidelines as a backdrop, the nation on Monday celebrated the 52nd anniversary of the postwar Constitution with heated debate over the document itself.
JAPAN
Apr 29, 1999

State-employed Sony candidate upset with civil servant law

Staff writer
EDITORIALS
Apr 28, 1999

No victory for the security alliance

Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi has his "omiyage" for U.S. President Bill Clinton. Following Monday night's approval of three bills to implement the updated Japan-U.S. defense guidelines by a special Lower House committee, the full Lower House approved them Tuesday, and Mr. Obuchi will be able to tell the...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Apr 28, 1999

Tyranny of temptation

The future was supposed to be darker. Technology, in the service of some vast, all-encompassing power, was going to enslave us. Human beings would be reduced to ciphers, forced to live anonymous, interchangeable lives.
JAPAN
Apr 27, 1999

Yanagisawa vows to speed up action on bad debt woes

Hakuo Yanagisawa, state minister in charge of financial system revitalization measures, pledged Tuesday to accelerate efforts to solve bad debt problems.
JAPAN
Apr 26, 1999

Ready for 2000?: Expert questions official Y2K stats

Fourth in an occasional series on Japan's Y2K preparedness
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 25, 1999

NATO steps into a quagmire

Call it the first humanitarian empire. For a moment, look beyond the horrific slaughter and the terrible plight of ethnic Albanian refugees. The immediate crisis obscures a host of profound long-term -- and largely unintended consequences -- of the current Balkan intervention that will impact U.S. foreign...
JAPAN
Apr 23, 1999

Falsified autopsy blames straitjacket

A group of doctors at the Tokyo Medical Examiner's Office falsified a forensic report on an intoxicated man who died of a heart attack in February 1997 to claim he suffocated after police put him in a straitjacket, it was learned Friday.
EDITORIALS
Apr 22, 1999

When the military says 'enough'

Going on appearances, there is little reason to compare the elections held in recent days in Algeria and Turkey. Algeria's ballot, held last week, was marked by the withdrawal of all major opposition candidates two days before the poll; not surprisingly turnout was a lackluster 60 percent, although the...
JAPAN
Apr 21, 1999

Hewlett Packard chief talks of split

The chairman and chief executive officer of Hewlett Packard Co. on Wednesday talked about the most difficult question his firm faced in deciding its future -- whether to keep the hard-copy unit with the computing unit.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Apr 14, 1999

It's the little things

Cultural contrasts! Everywhere there are traps. I was late when I left home yesterday so I quickly kicked off my slippers as I ran out the door. Later, I returned with a Japanese friend. She laughed when she saw my slippers. "We would never do that!" she said. Do what? I asked. Of course. I should have...
CULTURE / Art
Apr 14, 1999

A British art gallery finds an answer to a perennial problem

SOUTHAMPTON, England -- The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is generally acknowledged to be the world's first modern museum worthy of the title. Unlike its predecessors, it was not just a cabinet of curiosities -- archaeological relics and anthropological wonders amassed by some explorer and shown in his...
LIFE / Travel
Apr 14, 1999

Where the roof of Europe scrapes the sky

The pictures in the tourist pamphlet showed an ideal mountain scene in the French Alps, almost too good to be true: a lake of purest blue in the foreground surrounded by bright green hills leading up to spectacular snow-capped mountains under cloudless skies. If this were real, I doubted I could afford...
CULTURE / Books
Apr 13, 1999

Despair and disillusionment, after the revolution

SPIDER EATERS, by Rae Yang. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1998, 296 pp. w/ 10 pp. photos, $16.95 (paper). In her memoir "Spider Eaters," Rae Yang writes about how she wasted years of her life in China's northern countryside during the Cultural Revolution. She was an educated youth who,...
JAPAN
Apr 12, 1999

Ishihara takes aim at Yokota

As the Liberal Democratic Party scrambled to squelch any finger-pointing over the poor showing of its candidate, Shintaro Ishihara took his first stab Monday at the U.S. following his election to the Tokyo governorship, saying bilateral ties will improve if the U.S. Yokota Air Base is returned or used...
EDITORIALS
Apr 9, 1999

Justice for victims of Pan Am 103

On Dec. 21, 1988, Pan Am flight 103 exploded in midair over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. Three years after the blast, a Scottish court petition named two Libyan officials, Mr. Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah and Mr. Abdel Basset Ali al Megrahi, as the individuals responsible for the atrocity. Earlier...
JAPAN
Apr 9, 1999

More students get serious about part-time work

OSAKA -- More students are taking their part-time jobs seriously as training for the future despite decreasing pay during Japan's economic slump, according to a survey released Friday of 500 students in the Kansai region.
JAPAN
Apr 9, 1999

No. 2 prosecutor may resign over sex scandal

Japan's second-highest ranking prosecutor indicated Friday that he is ready to step down over allegations that he used public funds to take his mistress on business trips.
COMMENTARY
Apr 9, 1999

National security put to test

Two suspected North Korean spy boats recently invaded Japanese territorial waters in the Sea of Japan. A national controversy still rages over the incident, which came at a time when the Diet was debating legislation covering the new Japan-U.S. defense cooperation guidelines. The intrusion sparked a...
JAPAN
Apr 8, 1999

Cities protest TV talent's purse-snatching slight

OSAKA -- The Wakayama and Nara prefectural governments are protesting a remark made by popular TV personality Ryutaro Kamioka on a talk show that "people from Wakayama and Nara are snatching purses in Osaka," it was learned Thursday.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Apr 7, 1999

I am what I spam

Tom Clancy couldn't have weaved a better web of suspense and intrigue. It had everything: a villain working under a string of shadowy aliases; news hype mixed with general chaos; an FBI manhunt led by expert freelance bloodhounds
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 7, 1999

In the wake of the spy boats

Two North Korean spy boats disguised as trawlers recently intruded deep into Japanese territorial waters in the Sea of Japan. This was the second incident to have heightened tension between Tokyo and Pyongyang since last August, when a Taepodong ballistic missile test-fired by North Korea flew over northern...
JAPAN
Apr 7, 1999

Experts air views on defense bills

Further military cooperation with the United States is vital to maintain a bilateral security alliance the nation cannot do without, former Ambassador Hirohisa Okazaki told a Diet committee Wednesday.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 3, 1999

Rethinking joint strategy on North Korea

North Korea continues to confound the world. The country's economy is on the rocks; it is estimated to have shrunk by more than 50 percent between 1992 and 1996. The government is unable to feed its own people; hundreds of thousands are thought to have died as a result of malnutrition-related diseases...
EDITORIALS
Mar 30, 1999

Prodi steps into the breach

Wasting no time, the leaders of the 15 members of the European Union last week nominated former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi to be the new president of the European Commission. Mr. Prodi replaces Mr. Jacques San ter, who resigned March 15 along with the 19 other commission ers after an independent...
JAPAN
Mar 26, 1999

The Asahara Trial: Guru acted like 'a god'

A former Aum Shinrikyo cult member convicted of killing a fellow cultist in 1994 testified Friday that cult founder Shoko Asahara started behaving as if he were a god toward the end of the 1980s.
COMMUNITY
Mar 25, 1999

Nurturing the inner child within us

"Emotional intelligence" is what interests Gabriele Frohlich: the connection between the brain and the heart.
COMMENTARY
Mar 23, 1999

Strategies for a secure Japan

Diet has finally begun debating the enabling bills for the Japan-U.S. defense cooperation guidelines, almost a year after the government sent them to the legislature last April. How the debate will develop in the weeks ahead has an important bearing on the security environment of Asia, including the...

Longform

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