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COMMENTARY
Sep 28, 2002

U.S. report surprises few, worries many

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia -- I spent a week earlier this month in Vladivostok, Russia, lecturing to university students. Focusing on U.S. foreign policy, I was trying -- honestly, I can say -- to convince them that American foreign policy was less unilateralist than it seemed, and that the U.S. didn't deserve...
BUSINESS
Sep 28, 2002

NKK, Kawasaki Steel set up holding company

NKK Corp. and Kawasaki Steel Corp. on Friday set up JFE Holdings Inc., a joint holding company, as the first step toward forming the JFE Group and becoming the world's fourth largest integrated steelmaker.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Sep 27, 2002

"Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident," "Jake's Tower"

"Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident," Eoin Colfer, Puffin Books; 2002; 288 pp. The risk with sequels is that they don't always live up to the expectations generated by the first book. But this story is clearly an exception.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CLOSE NEIGHBORS
Sep 26, 2002

Ailing tourism sector seeking to lure more Asians

ATAMI, Shizuoka Pref. -- Ryuichiro Mori, sales manager at Hotel New Akao, sees one emerging ray of hope for this hot-spring city mired in a long-term slump: a group tourism boom in Taiwan, South Korea and China.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 26, 2002

It's not the economy, stupid!

Gerhard Schroeder will remain the German Chancellor after Germany's recent elections, but his majority in Parliament has become extremely narrow. His Social Democrats (SPD) got 38.5 percent of the vote, and so did the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) of his rival, Edmund Stoiber. The main reason Schroeder...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 26, 2002

A sustainable recovery for developing Asia?

The strong global recovery that was widely expected to take place in the latter half of 2002 has not materialized. On the contrary, increasing uncertainties are undermining the confidence of consumers and investors worldwide, and the speed of economic recovery in the industrialized world is likely to...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Sep 26, 2002

Neither here nor there: recipe for mayhem

Swimming against the current in Japan has never been a good idea, even if you are armed to the teeth with logic and common sense.
EDITORIALS
Sep 24, 2002

Corporate ethics remain in peril

Safety should be the highest priority of any nuclear power-generating program. Japan, the world's only victim of atomic bombings, has every reason to be particularly sensitive about nuclear safety. However, some of the nation's electric power companies have been found wanting in the safety management...
EDITORIALS
Sep 23, 2002

The great fire wall of China

Google was gagged. The Chinese government recently blocked access to the popular Internet search engine for several days -- before suddenly reversing course for reasons still unclear -- in an attempt to promote a "healthy atmosphere" in the runup to the November meeting of the Chinese leadership. While...
COMMENTARY
Sep 21, 2002

Past returns to haunt Taiwan's Kuomintang

HONG KONG -- The Kuomintang's chickens have come home to roost. The KMT, which was swept off the China mainland in 1949 by Communist forces, ruled Taiwan from then until two years ago, when it was defeated in the presidential elections by Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party.
JAPAN / ENERGY EQUATION
Sep 20, 2002

Energy goals, needs, realities not in sync

OSAKA -- It was another sweltering summer day in Den Den Town here, with the temperature expected to climb above 30 and humidity at nearly 80 percent.
LIFE / Digital / NAME OF THE GAME
Sep 19, 2002

Shine on you crazy plumber

Mario, Nintendo's world-famous plumber/mascot, may be the oldest active character in video games, but he's certainly not washed up. Neither is "Super Mario Sunshine," Mario's latest adventure.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Sep 18, 2002

Juan Jose Mosalini and Buenos Aires Tango Quintet

Tango has been variously described as a duel, a surrender, a labyrinth -- and the truest manifestation of the Argentine soul. It is so uninhibited and passionate that it was considered corrupting and sinful, which of course is why it's so wonderful. The image of a couple in skin-tight clothes twirling...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 18, 2002

Winner loses all in the games people play

Two eagerly anticipated German-directed productions of Shakespeare arrived in Tokyo last week, each the product of its director's extensive experience and deep deliberation on the play's contemporary relevance, and each given a polished reinterpretation as a result.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 16, 2002

A step forward for Japanese diplomacy

Frustrated with attempts to re-engage with the Bush administration, North Korea has reached out to alternative sources of support, sidestepping the United States for the moment by turning to Tokyo. Like a good boxer who knows how to bob and weave to elude his opponents and then land a telling blow, Pyongyang's...
BUSINESS
Sep 16, 2002

Mortgage-lending confab aims to fire up European market

The movers and shakers of Europe's mortgage-lending industry are to attend an unprecedented conference that starts in Madrid on Sept. 22 in an effort to find solutions in light of globalization and ensuing difficulties they currently face -- including dilution within the financial services industry and...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 15, 2002

A river of ill repute

THE MEKONG: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future, by Milton Osborn. Allen & Unwin, 2001, 295 pp., b/w & color photos, $25 (cloth) The waters of the Mekong, the world's 12th-longest and Southeast Asia's foremost river, do not, like the Thames, run sweetly. Nor have they inspired poets to dream on the river's...
COMMUNITY
Sep 15, 2002

Love in a lovelorn land

Once upon a time, at a temple where homeless families were sheltering after a fire, a girl and a boy fell in love. Months passed. The burned-out neighborhood was rebuilt. The lovers were separated. Oh, misery! Oh, fleeting, unreal world!
EDITORIALS
Sep 14, 2002

China's about-face on AIDS

After denying for years that it had a problem, China last week acknowledged the HIV-AIDS epidemic that is sweeping that country. But the relief that greeted this long-overdue candor was tempered by Beijing's admission that it has also detained the country's most outspoken AIDS advocate -- for exposing...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 14, 2002

Silver, socks make Afghan refugees independent

Shahnaz Akhtar arrived in Tokyo from Pakistan on Sept. 3, a guest of Global Village's Fair Trade Co. in Jiyugaoka, which distributes and sells leather and silver work and embroidered, woven and knitted goods crafted by Afghan refugees under her guidance. The purpose in being here? "To gather information...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 12, 2002

Kashmir polls could be step to dialogue

Elections to the Kashmir Assembly will be held from Sept. 16 to Oct. 8. The million-dollar question is, will they be meaningful and bring about peace in a state that has been a bone of contention since 1947, when the British colonial masters divided the subcontinent into India and Pakistan before leaving?...
BUSINESS
Sep 11, 2002

Japan must boost growth: IMF director

Horst Koehler, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, on Tuesday urged Japan to promote structural reforms to turn a fragile economic recovery into stronger, self-sustained growth.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 11, 2002

Once again at ground zero

LOS ANGELES -- Japan is once again at a historical tipping point, what could be called a political ground zero. Japan has been at ground zero two other times in its modern history and both times the outcome was not pretty.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / FOR KIDS
Sep 6, 2002

The bittersweet business of chocolate

Rich, creamy chocolate . . . Can you resist it? If you can, you're one in a million. Most people's appetite for chocolate seems to know no bounds. Consumers can already choose from thousands of chocolate products, and yet new variants -- such as organic chocolate bars and chocolate-flavored soya milk...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / NAME OF THE GAME
Sep 5, 2002

Blinx gives Xbox style

Nintendo is all about platform games. Since Mario, Luigi, Banjo-Kazooie, and Donkey Kong specialize in platform adventures, GameCube owners have plenty of this ever-popular genre.
EDITORIALS
Sep 4, 2002

Safeguarding nuclear materials

The successful extraction of nearly one ton of nuclear material from Serbia last month is a prime example of the type of international cooperation that is needed in the post-Cold War world. The U.S.-Russian program responsible for performing the operation is vital to prevent terrorists from procuring...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 4, 2002

Let there be light in the urban darkness

Naoya Hatakeyama's stunning photographs use finely tuned modern techniques to discover harmonious beauty in places where we often perceive only competing layers of chaos. They filter our all-too-familiar environment, revealing its underlying complexity and, in the process, leading us to question the...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 2, 2002

Historic Tsumago: a time capsule of Edo living

Build a good tourist trap, and the world will beat a path to your door. This seems to have been the thinking in the small town of Tsumago in southwestern Nagano Prefecture. Facing rural decay in the late '60s, the townspeople decided to do something about it. They reached for their one real asset the...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Sep 1, 2002

How can we be No. 3?

In a revelation no less stunning than if Mount Everest was suddenly surpassed as the world's tallest mountain or the Nile outstretched as the world's longest river, a July news report announced that Tokyo is no longer the world's most expensive city.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past