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JAPAN
Jul 23, 2000

G8 leaders try out 'e-voting'

NAGO, Okinawa Pref. — A few hours after adopting the IT Charter here Saturday, leaders of the Group of Eight nations had some hands-on experience with Japan's "e-voting" technology to vote for one another in such categories as "most witty" and "most stylish."
JAPAN
Jul 19, 2000

Wildcat threatened as projects encroach on last wilderness

Staff writer
CULTURE / Books
Jul 18, 2000

Personal relationships are everything

STAKEHOLDING: The Japanese Bottom Line, by Robert J. Ballon and Keikichi Honda. Tokyo: The Japan Times, 2000, 240 pp., 38 tables, 6 figures. 3,000 yen (cloth). One year, an acquaintance recalls, her family started getting an unusually large number of "oseibo" (yearend presents) and "ochuugen" (midyear...
LIFE / Travel
Jul 12, 2000

Time travel in downtown Seoul

As a resident of Japan, one might be forgiven for assuming that the South Korean film industry is nearly nonexistent, considering the scarcity of offerings here. In fact, South Korean media production is prolific, but it sometimes takes an unexpected circumstance to bring this into clear focus.
CULTURE / Art
Jul 8, 2000

Quest for Huangshan of the heart

To the south of the Yangtse River in China's Anhui Province, near the medieval city of Wuhu, rise the Huangshan mountains: a series of jagged peaks and crags, not very high, as mountains go, but intensely dramatic. The clouds and mist that swirl around their pine-crested heights, the mysterious grottoes...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jul 5, 2000

The tyranny of the square

When talking to Ted Nelson, strap in tight. It's quite a ride. Trained as a philosopher and film director, he is equal parts visionary and crank. Many consider him to be one of the fathers of the World Wide Web. He coined the word "hypertext" in 1965, but he has become a scathing critic of the Web and...
JAPAN
Jul 4, 2000

Japanese photographer documents lives of Korean A-bomb survivors

Images of Korean survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima who later returned to live in South Korea will be displayed in Japan this summer.
LIFE / Digital
Jun 28, 2000

A thinker's journey back to the future

Paul Saffo spends a lot of his time thinking about the past. That might seem a bit odd for a man who makes his living as a futurist, but perspective is critical, argues Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future, a Silicon Valley think tank that contemplates the way things will be.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jun 26, 2000

Is there free speech in Japan? Greenpeace activists arrested

"For the sake of good environmental policy, it is necessary to have freedom of expression which forms public opinion." These are the words of Sweden's environment minister, part of a press release issued in March 1999, following the arrest of several Greenpeace activists who were in Tokyo protesting...
LIFE / Travel
Jun 25, 2000

A humbling experience in the Himalayas

"We have to focus. This is going to suck. We're going to hate it. It's going to be 12 hours of misery worse than we ever imagined."
JAPAN
Jun 21, 2000

Close digital divide: ministry

An environment better suited to the Internet and cellular phones is urgently needed for the development of the rapidly growing "new economy" in Japan, the Posts and Telecommunications Ministry said in a report released Tuesday.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Jun 18, 2000

The end for Kim Jong Il?

My trip to North Korea 11 years ago was one of the most depressing times in my whole life. I have never seen a sadder country. It was not simply an issue of appalling poverty: In 1989, the shelves of stores in Moscow were also barren, and Beijing still sported a maze of miniature slums -- the notorious...
JAPAN
Jun 15, 2000

Mini body probe is no sci-fi fantasy

At just a couple of centimeters long, the future of medical technology is the size of a grain of rice.
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Jun 10, 2000

The pure and silent voices of Shino

Shino pottery, so pure and calm, has since its birth in the late 16th century tugged at the heartstrings of the Japanese. A Shino chawan (tea bowl) figured prominently in Yasunari Kawabata's masterpiece novel, "A Thousand Cranes." There is a divine presence in the best of Shino wares. When one gazes...
JAPAN
Jun 9, 2000

Ainu law fails to address grievances

ASAHIKAWA, Hokkaido — For thousands of years, Kenichi Kawamura's ancestors owned nothing but had access to everything.
CULTURE / Art
Jun 4, 2000

Victorian passion, Pre-Rafaelite dreams

In postwar Britain the reputation of high Victorian art fell to an all-time low, and a Pre-Raphaelite painting of Ophelia sold in 1950 for a paltry 20 pounds. Times have changed; this summer auctioneers will sell the same painting for around 2 million pounds.
LIFE / Travel
May 31, 2000

Unclimbable peaks in Kuala Lumpur

In pictures, the Petronas Towers looked like ornamental salt and pepper shakers, or sometimes, taking into account the skybridge halfway up, they resembled rugby goalposts.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 30, 2000

Kyoto, Basho, a mouse and you

KYOTO GARDENS: A Virtual Stroll through Zen Landscapes. CD-ROM (Apple Macintosh). Yorba Linda, Calif.: Lunaflora. Distributed by Mercury Software Japan. 4,000 yen. You stride your mouse and gallop off on a tour of two dozen of Kyoto's most famous gardens. If, that is, you have slipped this CD-ROM into...
COMMUNITY
May 28, 2000

Conductor says yes to noh style 'Don Giovanni'

Theaters in Nagoya were aghast when Yoko Matsuo came calling. Even though she was born in the city and is conductor and director of the Aichi Prefecture Symphony Orchestra, her plan to stage Mozart's opera "Don Giovanni" in the style of Japan's most revered and challenging dramatic form, noh, created...
LIFE / Travel
May 24, 2000

Echoes of Gandhara and ancient Rome

LANZHOU, China -- Four hundred kilometers from Dunhuang the Jiayuguan Pass, the "Greatest Pass Under Heaven," marks the old border between China proper and the Western Territories. The Chinese considered it the outer limit of civilization. In the 5th century B.C. the legendary Taoist master Laozi, aged...
JAPAN
May 18, 2000

First woman to conquer Everest claims May '75 feat was unintended

A Japanese housewife who made climbing history May 16, 1975 by becoming the first woman to conquer the world's tallest peak says her achievement was unintended.
JAPAN
May 18, 2000

Greenpeace complains over seizure of data

Greenpeace Japan has filed a legal complaint with the Tokyo District Court demanding that police return documents seized during an investigation into the environmentalist group's recent protest over dioxin pollution, members said.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
May 17, 2000

Flurry of fast food

www.mcspotlight.orgThe first revolution the world eagerly followed the Americans into after World War II went largely unnoticed as a revolution. But perhaps even more than the Internet, fast food has allowed hundreds of millions of people to drastically alter their lifestyles. Now when we discuss the...
JAPAN
May 16, 2000

Four cities accept East Indies war exhibit

An exhibition commemorating the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies in World War II is set to arrive in Japan later this year, but will not be held in either Tokyo or Osaka due to pressure from rightwing groups and certain bureaucrats.
MORE SPORTS
May 14, 2000

Where have all the leaders gone?

May has not been a good month for leadership in Japan. And surely I'm not the only one disappointed.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
May 8, 2000

Orangutans smuggled in underwear

You're flying back from a week in Indonesia and the guy next to you seems unusually twitchy. Considering all he's had to drink, he ought to be adequately sedated, but he's just ordered another Scotch.
COMMUNITY
May 7, 2000

Activist with gypsy soul returns to roots

Reading years ago that the majority of us end our lives within 30 km of where we were born, I remember thinking: Not me. But after meeting Margareta Weisser, who knows.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
May 7, 2000

Mari Ito

Mari Ito describes herself as "a photographer who has been taking photos of ethnic minorities and free-range pigs in Yunnan, China, for the past 10 years."
CULTURE / Art
May 7, 2000

Jewels of the printmaker's art

"I call these my jewels," said Joanna H. Schoff, as we bent to catch a gleam of silver in the softly lit museum. Treasures indeed, but instead of the brilliance of diamonds we were looking at far gentler beauties: rare gems of Japanese printmaking from the 1800s.
BUSINESS
May 3, 2000

Nicaragua to get more ODA after leader's visit

Japan and Nicaragua will agree next week to conclude a treaty aimed at facilitating Japanese technical cooperation to help the impoverished Latin American country rebuild its economy, government sources said Tuesday.

Longform

Sumadori Bar on Shibuya Ward's main Center Gai street targets young customers who prefer low-alcohol drinks or abstain altogether.
Rethinking that second drink: Japan’s Gen Z gets ‘sober curious’