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JAPAN
Nov 20, 2000

Further doubts dug up on archaeologist's 'finds'

Doubts have surfaced over the excavation in the 1980s of ancient ruins in Taiwa, Miyagi Prefecture, by a disgraced archaeologist who earlier this month admitted fabricating his "discoveries" at another site in the prefecture, sources close to the case said.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 20, 2000

Dusting off Russo-Indian ties

Indians share with Americans a fondness for litigation and with Russians a sense of black humor. India is the world's most populous democracy, the United States is the most powerful and one of the oldest, and Russia is one of the newest. A joke making the rounds in India is that the services of the Russian...
CULTURE / Art
Nov 18, 2000

Hara celebrates new facelift with show of Zhou Teihai

Two developments this autumn serve to illustrate both what is good and what is bad about the current condition of the Japanese contemporary art scene.
JAPAN / COP6 AGENDA
Nov 15, 2000

NGO submits greenhouse gas solution

Citizens left disillusioned by the government's attempts to curb greenhouse gas emissions have come up with an alternative plan.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Nov 15, 2000

A democratic farce

www.infoplease.com/spot/closerace1.html Infoplease goes all the way back to the 1876 election to explain what happened the last time the U.S. Constitution overruled U.S. voters. As in last week's presidential race, the voters elected the Democratic candidate only to see their government overturn their...
LIFE / Travel
Nov 15, 2000

Hidden fiefdom of Obi in Kyushu

NICHINAN, Miyazaki Pref. -- There can be very few places of historical or cultural interest in Japan that remain positively underexploited for their tourist potential.
LIFE / Travel
Nov 15, 2000

Russia's Baltic outpost

Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin was not one of Russian history's shining stars. An unpleasant figure, he found favor with dictator Josef Stalin and rose to become Soviet president before dying in 1946. Nonetheless, in the fashion of those times, his surname was given to two major Russian cities and their accompanying...
JAPAN
Nov 12, 2000

Osaka man's barber shop is his castle

HIGASHI-OSAKA, Osaka Pref. -- It's the usual shopping arcade stretching from a train station, a sight seen anywhere in Japan, except that a castle comes into view between arcade ceilings. Kosaka Castle.
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 12, 2000

Evening of Marlovian erotica celebrates English literary great

English literature flowered magnificently during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The various writers of the time represent a phase in the development and flexibility of poetry, prose and drama that achieved a beauty and exuberance unmatched in invention and style.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Nov 10, 2000

Alomar keeping eye on the future

Picture this: It's the year 2010 and the Yomiuri Giants are gunning for their first title in 10 years. It's late in the season and they desperately need a win. With two out in the bottom of the ninth, an aging batsman strolls to the plate. You've seen him a million times before on both sides of the Pacific....
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Nov 9, 2000

Now is the season of our great content

It's all too easy to take for granted a restaurant of the caliber of Les Saisons. Ensconced within the venerable portals of the Imperial Hotel, it is plush, self-assured and runs with the same effortless reliability as a well-tuned Bentley sports car. You just know that an evening at table is going to...
LIFE / Travel
Nov 8, 2000

Wreck and return of the Mary Rose

The man o' war, moving gracefully under billowing canvas sheeting, moved purposefully through the water. The pride of King Henry VIII of England's navy, HMS Mary Rose was a state-of-the-art warship tasked with repelling a French invasion across the Channel.
LIFE / Travel
Nov 8, 2000

Cracked earth: A journey through Thailand's arid and impoverished Northeast

"In a bad year, it is not only the plows that break, but the hearts too." -- Pira Sudham, "People of Isan"
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 8, 2000

The outlook after 100 days

The June summit in Pyongyang kicked off a summer of symbolic and historic "firsts" on the Korean Peninsula, marked by the dramatic symbolism of inter-Korean reconciliation after more than five decades of stalemate. Sufficient time has now passed to evaluate what might be called the "honeymoon period"...
BASEBALL / MLB
Nov 7, 2000

Hawks fined for scheduling gaffe

The Daiei Hawks have been fined 30 million yen following the Pacific League champions' failure to guarantee the availability of their Fukuoka Dome stadium for the recently concluded Japan Series, Japanese baseball officials said Monday.
CULTURE / Books
Nov 7, 2000

From great fiction, more fiction still

THE TALE OF MURASAKI: A Novel, by Liza Dalby. Doubleday, 2000, 424 pp., $25.95. What if the author of "The Tale of Genji" had written an autobiography and it had remained undiscovered until now? What would it be like?
COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE
Nov 7, 2000

U.S. vote goes all the way to the wire

I used to say, "The only thing certain in our elections are that they will end on time." Well, the election of 2000 tops them all. Not only is it still "too close to call," this election is unlikely to end on time. Let me explain why. It all centers on Washington state and a new election law it initiates...
EDITORIALS
Nov 6, 2000

Neighbors, yet strangers

The latest round of normalization talks held in Beijing last week between Japan and North Korea failed to reach any specific agreement. Although no statement was issued, it seems clear that the two sides largely agreed to disagree, at least for the moment. The two nations remained divided over the pivotal...
EDITORIALS
Nov 5, 2000

The ETA wages war against reason

The terror campaign waged by Basque separatists continues. Last week, a car bomb in Madrid killed three people, including a supreme court judge, and wounded 70 others. A few days later, another bomb went off in Barcelona; fortunately, no one was killed when it exploded, although several people were injured....
COMMUNITY
Nov 5, 2000

Missing piece of puzzle in story of 'Ms.'

It was the American futurologist Larry Taub who rang to ask whether I was interested in writing about Sheila Michaels. So began a three-way conversation by e-mail between Japan, New York and wherever Larry was landing to promote his latest book.
CULTURE / Art
Nov 5, 2000

Redefining to rescue Kyoto

KYOTO -- When people talk about traditional Kyoto culture, all the "a" verbs come out -- everyone appreciates it, everyone admires it, many adore it. So why is it disappearing so rapidly?
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 5, 2000

Do the Japanese have a sense of humor?

A Jewish peddler boldly visits the house of a rich nobleman. The place is Rome and the time, well, about 2,000 years ago, plus or minus a few decades here or there.
JAPAN
Nov 4, 2000

Six receive honor from Emperor

Nobel laureate Hideki Shirakawa and five others were awarded this year's Order of Culture by the Emperor at the Imperial Palace on Culture Day on Friday.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 4, 2000

Tax evasion vs. official misbehavior

Globalization is widely seen as contributing to clear increases in economic growth. Yet many governments view this development as a poisoned chalice. Politicians and bureaucrats fear that eliminating exchange controls and removing barriers to capital flows will lead to extensive revenue losses from tax...
COMMENTARY
Nov 4, 2000

Mori fumbles, Japan drifts

The government of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori faces another political crisis after a furor over a controversial electoral-reform bill died down with the Diet passage of the legislation. The law introduces a new voting system in the proportional-representation section of Upper House polls.

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