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COMMENTARY
Oct 25, 2000

When leaders fail to lead

LONDON -- Countries and peoples that make peace after years or even generations of enmity require very strong leaders. Just as it needed a Charles de Gaulle to tell the French to stop fighting the Algerians, a Konrad Adenauer to tell the Germans to love the French, a Harry Truman or a Douglas MacArthur...
JAPAN
Oct 25, 2000

It's a matter of life and death

Staff writer Brain death: It's a phrase we hear every day. In Japan, the public has been exposed to it to the point of numbness through nationwide campaigns for more organ donors. "Brain death is human death, and organ donation saves lives," we are exhorted. In the United States, the world's leading...
JAPAN
Oct 25, 2000

Obituary: Ramiro Piriz Ballon

Uruguayan Ambassador to Japan Ramiro Piriz Ballon died of cirrhosis Friday at a Tokyo hospital, embassy officials said Tuesday. He was 65.
LIFE / Travel
Oct 25, 2000

Deep in the ancient forests of the U.S. northwest

A soft light glows from the emerald-green moss covering every tree trunk, rock and piece of ground. The glow feels brighter than the light filtering down through the massive Douglas fir and Sitka spruce trees towering overhead, whose crowns prick the silver clouds that obscure the sun.
LIFE / Food & Drink / KISSA KULTUR
Oct 25, 2000

A Thrush perches between two worlds

One foot in the past, one foot in the present.
COMMENTARY
Oct 25, 2000

Western policies ignore Serbia's history

Japan can be criticized for its simplistic, one-track mind at times. But over problems like Yugoslavia, the one-tracked Western mind, hardened by ideology and moralistic bias, can do far more harm.
LIFE / Digital
Oct 25, 2000

Xpect the unxpected

SEATTLE -- What does Microsoft know about fun? The engineers who designed Xbox, the new 128-bit video game console that Microsoft plans to release sometime next year, know too much for their own good.
EDITORIALS
Oct 24, 2000

The reality gap still looms

The latest economic stimulus package, unveiled last Thursday, reinforces the impression that deficit spending in the name of economic recovery has become an annual routine. In fact, almost every year since the economic bubble burst a decade ago, the government has pumped trillions of yen into the system,...
JAPAN
Oct 24, 2000

Honohana cultists admit to fraud

Four former members of the Honohana Sanpogyo foot-reading cult on Monday pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring with cult founder Hogen Fukunaga to swindle 15 people out of 750 million yen.
JAPAN
Oct 24, 2000

Tokyo lauds Albright trip to Pyongyang

Japan hopes that U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's visit to North Korea that began Monday will have a good effect on Tokyo's talks on normalizing ties with Pyongyang, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hidenao Nakagawa said.
JAPAN
Oct 24, 2000

Kawada sees victory as step to changing politics

Etsuko Kawada, winner of Sunday's House of Representatives by-election in Tokyo's No. 21 single-seat constituency, said Monday she felt a great sense of mission in being elected at a time of strong public distrust in politics.
JAPAN
Oct 24, 2000

Traffic deaths top 7,000 faster than in '99

This year's death toll from traffic accidents was 7,013 as of Friday, topping 7,000 four days earlier than last year, the National Police Agency said Monday.
JAPAN
Oct 24, 2000

Lower House panel debates poll reform

A House of Representatives committee began deliberations Monday on a controversial electoral reform bill that was the center of an 18-day opposition Diet boycott.
JAPAN
Oct 24, 2000

Seller of fake smokes avoids prison

The Tokyo District Court on Monday sentenced a 51-year-old company executive to 21/2 years in prison, suspended for four years, for selling counterfeit cigarettes sold by Japan Tobacco Inc.
BASEBALL / MLB
Oct 24, 2000

Kuwata, Kiyohara free

Yomiuri Giants veterans Masumi Kuwata and Kazuhiro Kiyohara top the list of eight players added to this year's group of free agents, the commissioner's officer of Japanese professional baseball said Monday.
JAPAN
Oct 24, 2000

Japan, Russia agree to seek new avenue

Japan and Russia on Monday agreed to seek new ways to resolve territorial disputes by the end of this year, now that it appears unlikely the row over a group of islands off Hokkaido will be resolved in time to conclude a bilateral peace treaty this year as planned.
JAPAN
Oct 24, 2000

Police develop picklock alarm

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police has developed an alarm to detect picklocks as the number of thefts based on the crime continues to grow, department officials said Monday.
JAPAN
Oct 24, 2000

New version given of Mori's secret proposal

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hidenao Nakagawa on Monday contradicted Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori by saying the prime minister did not make a secret proposal to Pyongyang to resolve alleged abductions of Japanese.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 24, 2000

Portrait of Laos, Asia's 'forgotten country'

LAOS: Culture and Society, edited by Grant Evans. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books, 2000, 313 pp., $24.95 The colorful volumes of anthropology produced in the past by gifted amateurs, lady travelers of independent means, colonial officers and the like, have been replaced by the works of highly trained...
CULTURE / Music
Oct 24, 2000

Creating soundtracks for modern pop culture

Dodgeville, Mich. Ever heard of it? Perhaps not. It's just another small Midwestern town you pass through on your way to the big city. It certainly wouldn't occur to you it's where one of America's most talented and hardworking composers was born.
JAPAN
Oct 24, 2000

Internet site helps blind to connect

Being blind doesn't slow Osamu Miyazono down much -- the Internet was still untested water for most Japanese when he started logging on five years ago. Now he gets some 50 e-mails a day.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 24, 2000

Revealing the nation one grain at a time

THE POLITICS OF AGRICULTURE IN JAPAN, by Aurelia George Mulgan. London & New York: Routledge, 2000, 856 pp.,82 British pounds/$125 (cloth). In 1890, a young German academic agreed to evaluate a survey of landowners in the German provinces east of the Elbe River. Overcoming the limitations of biased...
JAPAN
Oct 24, 2000

Nurse denies negligence in SIDS case

A nurse at a Tokyo hospital pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of professional negligence resulting in the death of a newborn in a controversial case involving sudden infant death syndrome and medical professionals.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 24, 2000

Asia getting mixed messages from U.S.

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- The issue is not new, but it has recently resurfaced: How is U.S. foreign policy coordinated and articulated, particularly when it affects Asia?
CULTURE / Music / MUSIC NOMAD
Oct 24, 2000

Okinawan sounds old and new resonate through the mainland

For a reason that has so far confounded me, October and November usually herald a spate of Okinawan concerts and releases on the mainland, leading to unfortunate clashes of dates. This year is no exception: The Ryukyu Festival in Tokyo (previewed in this column) in early October unfortunately fell on...

Longform

The students at Mitaka Municipal No. 7 Junior High School have access to various cooling devices for when they play sports.
Japan's extreme heat is causing a rethink of school sports