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COMMENTARY / World
Jun 29, 2001

Musharraf feathers military's power nest

NEW DELHI -- Everybody had expected Pakistan's chief executive, Pervez Musharraf, to appoint himself president. When that happened on June 20, most of the world -- barring the United States, which made a big noise -- accepted Musharraf's new title without batting an eyelid.
BASEBALL / MLB
Jun 29, 2001

Nagashima wins 1,000th game

The Yomiuri Giants erupted for four runs in the first inning and Koji Uehara made it stand with a five-hitter as Yomiuri rolled to a 6-0 win over the Chunichi Dragons on Thursday at the Sapporo Dome, giving manager Shigeo Nagashima win No. 1,000 as the Giants skipper.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Jun 28, 2001

Tuffy enjoying a hair-raising season

It's Opening Day 1994 at venerable Wrigley Field in Chicago. You're playing for the hometown Cubs and facing Dwight Gooden of the New York Mets, one of the premier power pitchers in Major League Baseball. By the end of the day, you'll have have homered in your first three at-bats of the season and added...
JAPAN
Jun 28, 2001

Female 'rakugo' narrator packs bags to spread mirth on Korean Peninsula

"Rakugo" comic storyteller Kikuchiyo Kokontei hopes to spend this summer breaking down cultural barriers on both sides of the Korean Peninsula.
JAPAN
Jun 27, 2001

Green drive may boost economy

More efficient use of resources and better waste policies could boost the economy as well as reaping manifold environmental benefits, according to an inaugural white paper on waste-reduction approved by the Cabinet on Tuesday.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 27, 2001

Number Girl

When a band regularly starts its shows with Television's "Marquee Moon," you know what kind of standards it holds itself up to. In light of the progress Number Girl has made in its brief history, this doesn't seem too ambitious. Since forming in 1995, the band has gone from the indies to the Japanese...
Events
Jun 26, 2001

Guide pens temple-viewing booklet

OSAKA — Paul Satoh, a 70-year-old veteran tour guide and interpreter, is keen to introduce his English-speaking clients to traditional Japanese culture.
Events
Jun 26, 2001

Kyoto ceilings bear footprints of 1600 samurai mass suicide

KYOTO — Stepping onto the outer corridor of Shodenji Temple in Kyoto on a recent afternoon, I marveled at the view from the neatly laid out garden. Perfectly framed between the surrounding trees stood a spectacular view of Mount Hiei.
LIFE / Travel
Jun 26, 2001

The temples of the Nile

To float down the Nile, stopping at the temples, sleeping on my ship -- this was my desire and now I am in a stateroom on the Cheops I, a floating hotel rather than a mere boat, looking at the wharf at Aswan and reading Flaubert's journal of a similar voyage he made in 1849. I notice many of the same...
LIFE / Travel
Jun 26, 2001

Down the Devil's Washboard

When evening falls on Miyazaki, a scarlet and indigo sky drops behind the phoenix palms that line many of the city's roads. You might think you were strolling through a middle-class quarter of Cairo or Marbella.
EDITORIALS
Jun 25, 2001

Supporting the nation's scientists

Professor Shuji Nakamura, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, is known as the inventor of a semiconductor diode, an electronic element that emits a bluish purple color. Of course, he is one of the most noted Japanese scientists in the world. He is also the hero of the scientific equivalent...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jun 24, 2001

Condiment of champions

To celebrate its 50th anniversary, TBS will broadcast a 24-hour special, "Fight TV 24," starting at 8 p.m. Saturday.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 24, 2001

Japan's endless search for identity

HEGEMONY OF HOMOGENEITY: An Anthropological Analysis of Nihonjinron, by Harumi Befu. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2001, 181 pp., A$44.95 (US$29.95) Nihonjinron, the discourse on "Japaneseness," has been with us for quite some time.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 24, 2001

Nagashima provides balm for the caregiver's soul

THE GIRL WHO TURNED INTO TEA, by Minako Nagashima, translated by Hiroaki Sato. P.S., A Press, 2000, 56 pp., $12. The frailties and failings of the human body and mind are not usually the stuff of poetry, but Minako Nagashima, a longtime social worker and aid to the physically and mentally handicapped,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 24, 2001

Abuses overshadow Mahathir's message

Recently, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad delivered the inaugural U Thant Lecture on "Globalization, Global Community and the United Nations" to a standing room audience at the United Nations University in Tokyo. U Thant, the statesman from Myanmar who served as the secretary general of the...
JAPAN
Jun 23, 2001

Judges may get say in fate of mentally ill

Health minister Chikara Sakaguchi said Friday he is considering legislation that would require judicial authorities to determine whether institutionalization is necessary for psychiatric patients who commit crimes.
JAPAN / OF SOUND MIND
Jun 22, 2001

Ikeda massacre puts judicial psychiatry in spotlight

The June 8 killing of eight children by a knife-wielding man at an Osaka elementary school has inevitably rekindled the old debate about whether — and how much — judicial authorities should be able to intervene when dealing with mental patients accused of committing serious crimes.
SPORTS / TALK OF THE TIMES
Jun 22, 2001

Former NFL star Moon still pondering next move

Warren Moon picks up a football, drops back a few steps and throws a pass. The ball sails in a perfect spiral and with superb accuracy, which many receivers and fans love to see, and falls into the hands of his 20-year-old son Joshua, who plays wide receiver at a small college.
EDITORIALS
Jun 21, 2001

Mrs. Tanaka passes her first test

Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka's first official trip to Washington has ended with a measure of success. In a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, reportedly held in a friendly atmosphere, she reaffirmed the importance of the Japan-U.S. alliance and exchanged views on missile defense and...
BUSINESS
Jun 21, 2001

State tries to get nation online

In a desperate attempt to boost Japan's cyberspace population to numbers more closely resembling those of other industrialized nations, the government is struggling to draw attention to its online exposition, said Taichi Sakaiya, a special adviser to the prime minister and former chief of the Economic...
JAPAN
Jun 21, 2001

SDF ranks open to reservists with no military experience

Need a part-time job? Ever considered the Self-Defense Forces? Spending holidays in boot camp could earn you 7,900 yen a day.
COMMENTARY
Jun 21, 2001

The trouble with free trade

Japan, for all its talk about the virtues of free trade, has now invited Chinese retaliation by imposing emergency barriers on the import of some farm products from China. And that could be only a beginning. Made-in-China clothing is sweeping the chain stores. Japan's towel-makers are conceding defeat....
JAPAN
Jun 20, 2001

Takuma was hospitalized, but not charged, in '99

OSAKA — Mamoru Takuma, who is under arrest for the June 8 massacre of eight children at an Osaka elementary school, was forcibly hospitalized instead of indicted for a March 1999 assault, sources said Tuesday.
CULTURE / Art
Jun 20, 2001

A Chinese treasure-trove of beauty

The most astounding piece in the ongoing exhibition of Chinese ceramics, art and objects at Shibuya's Shoto Museum is the large, partially glazed ceramic camel, expressively molded, that greets visitors as they enter.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Jun 19, 2001

Putin plays the smile game

The first summit of U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin was shaped by an indigenous American principle, "Keep smiling." Bush said he had looked the man in the eye and found him to be "very straightforward and trustworthy." Putin said he was looking forward to "a constructive...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 17, 2001

China no threat to Asia just yet

CHINA AND THE PEOPLE'S LIBERATION ARMY: Great Power or Struggling Developing State? by Solomon M. Karmel. MacMillan, 2000, 229 pp., 35 UK pounds (cloth). China is a revisionist state. It wants to challenge the existing international order -- or at least the way things work in Asia. The country's history,...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 17, 2001

The bright side of bamboo

BAMBOO IN JAPAN, by Nancy Moore Bess, with Bibi Wein. Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International, 2001, 224 pp., 160 color prints and duo-tone photographs, 5,800 yen. Bamboo, the ancient, ubiquitous grass, is everywhere in Japan. Of the over 1,500 species worldwide, nearly half are found here. It...

Longform

After the asset-price bubble crash of the early 1990s, employment at a Japanese company was no longer necessarily for life. As a result, a new generation is less willing to endure a toxic work culture —life’s too short, after all.
How Japan's youth are slowly changing the country's work ethic