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EDITORIALS
May 14, 1999

Mr. Rubin moves on

Mr. Robert Rubin, the U.S. secretary of the Treasury, will step down from his post this summer. The move was expected. Mr. Rubin had talked to confidants about his desire to return to Wall Street. Still, the announcement surprised markets. The dollar, bond prices and the Dow Jones Industrial Average...
EDITORIALS
May 11, 1999

First breach in the government wall

After two decades of on-and-off arguments, the Diet finally passed a freedom of information bill into law last Friday. For the first time in Japan's history, a law stipulates that the government "has the duty to explain to the nation" the way government ministries and agencies run their affairs. To be...
CULTURE / Books
May 11, 1999

Coming of age, piece by piece

NAMAKO: Sea Cucumber, by Linda Watanabe McFerrin. Coffee House Press, 1998, 256 pp., $14.95 (paper). Like the sea cucumber, Ellen, the multicultural 9-year-old narrator of Linda Watanabe McFerrin's delightful first novel, cannot be easily classified. Animal or vegetable? Living and feeling, or merely...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 11, 1999

Cartoon eroticism, for real

EROTIC ANIME MOVIE GUIDE, by Helen McCarthy and Jonathan Clements. London: Titan Books, 1998, 192 pp., b/w photos, 12.99 British pounds. Japanese animated films, familiarly called "anime," have become well-known worldwide. With the success of the 1988 "Akira," the genre became a sound commercial export...
JAPAN
May 10, 1999

Seoul's objections cloud future of sex-slave redress

The government's top spokesman denied Monday that its quasi-private fund set up to compensate women who were forced into sexual slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army during the war will be shut down due to South Korean opposition, but he said Japan will have to take Seoul's wishes into consideration....
JAPAN
May 10, 1999

Asian 'understanding' sought for defense bills

An Upper House special committee began full-scale debate Monday on bills to implement the updated Japan-U.S. defense guidelines with Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi calling for renewed efforts to seek the understanding of Asian neighbors.
EDITORIALS
May 8, 1999

Blair gambles on federalism and wins

The United Kingdom remains united. In a historic vote earlier this week, the Scots and the Welsh held elections to select representatives for their own newly created Parliaments. Preliminary results indicate that the Labor Party will hold the most seats in the new legislature sitting in Edinburgh, but...
JAPAN
May 7, 1999

Dioxin: Levels high in incinerator-happy Japan

Last in a series Staff writer
JAPAN
May 6, 1999

Dioxin: Seveso disaster testament to effects of dioxin

Third in a series
COMMENTARY
May 5, 1999

A game plan for Ishihara

I was not surprised at all by Shintaro Ishihara's overwhelming victory in the April 11 Tokyo gubernatorial election. Several journalist friends of mine and I had correctly predicted the election results, including the order of all the major candidates by the number of votes. More than anything else,...
COMMENTARY / World
May 4, 1999

India rightly resists the Chinese model

India has often been advised to follow the path of China in public investment in human capital. China has done well in the last decade, but it would be a disaster if India were to follow her example. China's approach can be called "two quick steps forward, one slow step back." India's approach, in contrast,...
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.
COMMENTARY
May 1, 1999

Obuchi confounds the skeptics

The Lower House on Tuesday approved a legislative package for implementing the updated Japan-U.S. defense cooperation guidelines and sent it immediately to the Upper House. The action came after agreement among the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, the Liberal Party (the LDP's junior coalition partner)...
CULTURE / Music
May 1, 1999

Playing the oldies but goodies

Real classical Japanese music is a rare thing today. There is a wide-ranging repertoire for Japanese traditional instruments, but there are few performers who specialize in the classics of these genres, or whose musical education focused on those classics.
JAPAN
Apr 29, 1999

Nago to host G8; Fukuoka, Miyazaki get ministers

After weeks of heated debate and lobbying, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi decided Thursday that Japan will hold the 2000 summit of the Group of Eight major powers in the city of Nago, Okinawa Prefecture.
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...
EDITORIALS
Apr 27, 1999

Somber NATO turns 50

Less than a year ago, NATO's 50th-anniversary celebration was going to be a festive occasion. Alliance members were ready to toast each other for their ability to stand together against the Soviet threat and for having survived the end of the Cold War by forging a new relationship with their former rival...
JAPAN
Apr 27, 1999

Defense bills evoke worry and comfort

Overseas reactions to Tuesday's Lower House passage of bills related to updated Japan-U.S. defense cooperation guidelines ranged from the warm welcome extended by Washington to the "deep concern" aired by neighboring China.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 27, 1999

The Tokyo guide for Tokyo-lovers

A View of the City, by Donald Richie, with photographs by Joel Sackett. London: Reaktion Books, 143 pp. No one is indifferent to Tokyo. Most people dislike it. It's huge, it's ugly, it's loud, the water's metallic, and movies arrive six months late. But a few people like Tokyo.
JAPAN
Apr 26, 1999

Analysis: Defense changes dodged public debate

Staff writers
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...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Apr 25, 1999

Getting around

Last week, when I wrote a few paragraphs about the new Getty Museum in Los Angeles, I thought, How inadequate! There is so much more, and so brief a mention cannot begin to give even the concept of so huge a complex. Perhaps all I can do is make you want to go, and perhaps that is enough. Fortunately,...
EDITORIALS
Apr 23, 1999

Another senseless tragedy

Tuesday, two students in an affluent suburb of Denver, entered their high school and calmly and methodically proceeded to kill 12 classmates and a teacher. After the rampage, they exchanged gunfire with the police and then killed themselves in an apparent double suicide. Our profound sympathy goes out...
JAPAN
Apr 22, 1999

Sharp-tongued Aoshima exits Tokyo tight-lipped

Staff writer
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 20, 1999

East Timor reveals West's hypocrisy

Two places on opposite sides of the world share similar circumstances: innocent people killed and displaced by government forces and paramilitaries. The violence on one side of the world begets harsh condemnation and a series of threats from Western powers, followed by a massive bombing campaign. The...
COMMENTARY
Apr 20, 1999

Last gasp for political parties?

The raison d'etre of established parties is in serious doubt following their serious setbacks in the April 11 local elections. A case in point was Shintaro Ishihara's overwhelming victory in the Tokyo gubernatorial election. Ishihara, a former lawmaker of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, now running...
JAPAN
Apr 19, 1999

Hokuriku Special: Bone find linked to relocated Christians

KANAZAWA, Ishikawa Pref. -- When construction workers first dug human bones out of a ridge on Mount Utatsu in Ishikawa Prefecture in October, they had no idea what they had unearthed.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 17, 1999

Fourteen planes, six boats and a chopper

SYDNEY -- The boat people are landing. Although still just a trickle, the mostly Chinese illegal immigrants look set to flood through the open door named Australia. Nor is it just human cargo being offloaded on these unprotected shores. Heroin from the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia is also being...
CULTURE / Music / HOGAKU TODAY
Apr 17, 1999

New version of the old koto makes music for the future

While Japanese traditional instruments boast long histories (up to 1,200 years in some cases, since their importation from the Asian continent) most reached their present forms hundreds of years ago and have not changed since.
COMMENTARY
Apr 14, 1999

A clear victory for NATO

LONDON -- This time the critics and skeptics are turning out to be wrong. Conventional wisdom holds that one cannot halt an enemy from the air, let alone force a capitulation. Only troops on the ground can do that. This is supposed to be the overriding lesson from the disaster that was the Vietnam War....
Foreign tourists with unpaid medical bills in Japan to be denied entry
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba speaks during ministerial meeting meeting on foreign residents in Japan on Friday at the Prime Minister's Office.
Japan eyes tougher rules for foreign residents and tax hike for tourists
A tax-free shop in Kyoto in April 2024. Last week, members of a Liberal Democratic Party study group drafted a proposal seeking to scrap the country's tax-free shopping system altogether.
Accidents raise concern over how Japan vets foreign drivers
Keita Ueno (right), the owner of Kiki Driving School and an instructor who supports both foreign nationals and Japanese citizens returning from abroad in getting their foreign driver’s licenses converted, is worried about the current lax system for the process.
Japan won’t wait for G7 summit for possible U.S. trade deal
Ryosei Akazawa, Japan's top negotiator in tariff talks with the U.S. speaks to reporters at the Japanese Embassy in Washington on Friday.
What can Kenji Yanobe’s cosmic cats teach us about humanity?
Kenji Yanobe’s spacesuited cats are the main characters of “Ship’s Cat Island,” the inaugural exhibition at Hyper Museum Hanno in Saitama Prefecture.
From ridicule to redemption: Rice crisis returns Koizumi to the spotlight
Agriculture minister Shinjiro Koizumi speaks to the media as he inspects a warehouse storing stockpiled rice in Kanagawa Prefecture on May 30.
New Naoshima museum bets on Asia, not the West
Detail of Takashi Murakami, “Rakuchu-Rakugai-zu Byobu: Iwasa Matabei RIP” (2023-25)
Japan’s prison reform focuses on rehabilitation
Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki speaks to reporters in Tokyo on Friday. Suzuki said preparations for the changes that will focus more on rehabilitation are being actively made at each correctional facility.
Accidents raise concern over how Japan vets foreign drivers
Keita Ueno (right), the owner of Kiki Driving School and an instructor who supports both foreign nationals and Japanese citizens returning from abroad in getting their foreign driver’s licenses converted, is worried about the current lax system for the process.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

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
By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Smile! It’s ‘Sanrio Time,’ now and ever after
Smile! It’s ‘Sanrio Time,’ now and ever after

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