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CULTURE / Music
Nov 18, 2000

Loochie Brothers rock out for Amnesty

At the close of the millennium, it is a sad fact that torture continues to be carried out in over 150 countries worldwide. "Rock Against Torture," an Amnesty International benefit concert to be held Nov. 19 at What the Dickens in Ebisu, aims to raise funds for the human-rights watchdog and publicize...
EDITORIALS
Nov 17, 2000

The Austrian disaster

Tragedies and disasters happen somewhere on the planet every day. A plane crash, a train collision, an avalanche, a bombing: These are the routine stuff of headlines, so predictable an element of the news that, unless they happen in one's own back yard, like the Kobe earthquake or the 1996 Hokkaido tunnel...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 17, 2000

Deadly defoliant continues to take a toll

BOSTON -- U.S. President Bill Clinton's historic visit to Vietnam this week conjures up troubling memories from the past, but it also draws attention to a Vietnam War-related public-health disaster that continues to plague both Vietnamese and Americans: Agent Orange contamination.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 15, 2000

Timeless tales reflect the times

SANSHO DAYU, by Dudley Andrew & Carole Cavanaugh. BFI Film Classic Series. London: British Film Institute, 2000, 80 pp., with b/w illustrations, $20. Kenji Mizoguchi's 1954 film, "Sansho Dayu" (Sansho the Bailiff), is based upon the well-known 1915 Ogai Mori narrative, which was in turn taken from...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Nov 15, 2000

Developing a finer sense of pace: the evolution of a party animal

When I was younger, I used to be a party animal.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 15, 2000

New-look forum heralds peace in paradise

SYDNEY -- Nobody, least of all any of the troubled South Pacific nations, is calling last month's Pacific Islands Forum in the island country of Kiribati a decisive victory. Yet all 16 nations that attended the historic summit see the Biketawa Declaration as the best framework yet for ensuring stability...
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...
EDITORIALS
Nov 14, 2000

JRA arrest seals the end of an era

Last week's arrest of the top leader of the Japanese Red Army marked the virtual end of decades of terrorism by Japanese leftist extremists. Ms. Fusako Shigenobu, who had been on the international wanted list for a series of terrorist acts, is charged with, among other things, masterminding the occupation...
JAPAN / COP6 AGENDA
Nov 14, 2000

Negotiators face a tough time at climate talks

Beneath the blanket of obscure terms used to determine what countries will do to curb global warming lurk a few key concepts. How they are interpreted by negotiators at ongoing climate change talks in Holland will drastically alter climate change measures and the future world environment.
COMMENTARY
Nov 9, 2000

Chinese irredentism threatens Asia -- and may come back to haunt Beijing

NEW DELHI -- The 50th anniversary of China's annexation of Tibet passed unnoticed by the world, reflecting the awe and respect that a rising China inspires and helplessness over the plight of the Tibetans. China's rise in an Asia at a time when Russia has declined, Japan has lost its economic sheen,...
JAPAN
Nov 7, 2000

Fiber-optic network viewed as road to economic revival

Japan should create one of the world's most advanced information technology infrastructures in the next five years so that far more than 60 percent of the public will have Internet access by then, a government advisory panel 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 / World
Nov 7, 2000

China refuses to let history be

The recent visit to Japan by Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji has certainly created a favorable impression among the Japanese -- a contrast with Chinese President Jiang Zemin's visit two years ago -- but it has had no significant politi cal impact on public opinion in this country.
CULTURE / Art
Nov 5, 2000

Making no bones about corporeality

Jeanne Dunning has made an object called the "blob" -- an amorphous, skin-colored sack filled with a viscous substance that: crushes, oozes out, takes a bath with or sleeps with the subject. She uses it in a wide body of work to investigate the nature of corporeality.
JAPAN
Nov 3, 2000

OECD seeks more Japan input

Visibility is the key for both Japan and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in their efforts to enhance mutual cooperation, according to senior officials at the world's largest policy think tank.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 2, 2000

Cooperation is key to ending Northern Territories impasse

Russia and Japan appear to be creeping toward an interim solution to the Northern Territories imbroglio. There are two possibilities being discussed -- joint administration and control of some or all four islands, and a two-stage agreement in which Russia gives up or shares Shikotan and the Habomai group...
JAPAN
Nov 1, 2000

Kono hopes for passage of nuclear ban proposal

Foreign Minister Yohei Kono expressed hope Tuesday that a nuclear elimination draft resolution Japan submitted to the U.N. Millennium General Assembly's committee on disarmament will be adopted in the upcoming vote.
JAPAN
Nov 1, 2000

'I never worry about getting lost. I can feel the roads.'

Idid not start my education until I was 17. There are simply too few chances for blind kids to get an education in China, let alone a poor country boy like me. Only about 5 percent of blind Chinese have any schooling. Still, my childhood was a happy one. I did almost all the things a country boy does,...
JAPAN
Oct 30, 2000

Western Pacific declared free of polio

KYOTO -- The World Health Organization on Sunday declared the western Pacific region free of the virus that causes polio, an important step in international efforts to eradicate the crippling childhood disease from the world.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 30, 2000

West Papua: Indonesia's next East Timor?

LONDON -- The biggest single taxpayer in Indonesia is the U.S. firm Freeport McMoran. The money comes mostly from its Grasberg mine in the mountains of West Papua, which sits on the largest gold deposit in the world. That is why Jakarta, which used every dirty trick in the book to hang onto East Timor...
JAPAN
Oct 29, 2000

Methods to cut emissions said already available

OSAKA -- With a United Nations conference on global warming just around the corner, a citizen's group is calling for existing energy-saving technologies to be more widely used to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
MORE SPORTS
Oct 29, 2000

Wallabies romp past President's XV squad

The Australian Wallabies rugby union team ended a credible effort by the President's XV -- a selection of Japanese and international players -- at Chichibunomiya Stadium in Tokyo on Saturday, with the world champions running out winners 64-13.
EDITORIALS
Oct 26, 2000

Time for a reality check

The courtship of Pyongyang continues. After Britain and Germany expressed interest in opening diplomatic relations with North Korea last weekend, the United States upped the ante with the two-day visit of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. If there is progress in the relationship, Ms. Albright held...
MULTIMEDIA / SPORTS SCOPE
Oct 26, 2000

Who decides on who decides?

When I interviewed Terry Venables in June, I asked him the obvious questions about his future: "Do you want to manage again?" and "Would you manage England again?"
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 26, 2000

ASEM fails to live up to hype

The third Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) held in Seoul last weekend was long on ceremony and performance, but short on substance. While impeccably hosted by South Korea and held in a glittering new conference center in southern Seoul, the conference lacked "soul." For all the talk of Partnership for Shared...
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...
CULTURE / Art
Oct 22, 2000

Young talent surfaces at Tokyo Designers Week

If you happened to be in the Aoyama, Shibuya or Daikanyama districts of Tokyo over the last week you may have noticed a brightly patterned bus zooming around. It was transporting whoever was interested in going to the many spots in this area that were exhibiting the work of Japanese and international...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 19, 2000

A prize for all South Koreans

This century's last Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to South Korean President Kim Dae Jung. The honor caps a checkered career that includes adduction from Japan by intelligence agents, years of imprisonment under the threat of execution and, most recently, a historic summit meeting in June with North...

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