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COMMUNITY
Jul 27, 2000

A social clash of old values and new rules

The number of divorces in Japan, especially among couples who have been married for 20 years or more, has been increasing. According to a survey carried out by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, in 1999 there were a total of 250,538 divorced couples.
JAPAN
Jul 18, 2000

Okinawa weaving tradition dying out

OGIMI, Okinawa Pref. -- Until recently, visitors to this village would have seen elderly women -- many in their 90s or older -- patiently making banana-fiber thread while sitting on sunny verandas and weaving it into traditional fabric.
CULTURE / Art
Jul 16, 2000

Ode to a gentleman and a scholar

When Robert Louis Stevenson wrote that when a death occurs "there is sore havoc made in other people's lives, a pin [is] knocked out by which many subsidiary friendships hung together," perhaps he was describing a particularly Western tragedy. In Buddhism, death is viewed differently. The relationship...
LIFE / ALTERNATIVE LUXURIES
Jun 1, 2000

Our planet, our teacher

In conversation with writer Masanori Oe, one hears the word "discovery" quite often. It's no wonder. Since the days of his translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead into Japanese and his film documentaries on the psychedelic movement in New York City in the late 1960s, he has pioneered new directions...
COMMUNITY
May 19, 2000

Peace, abode of poetry, abode of peace

In this world, it remains most difficult to establish lasting peace. Aggrandizement of power continues to deface nations; blind and violent talons never cease shaking and shattering fledgling roots of peace.
COMMUNITY
May 17, 2000

A city of two tales

BEIJING Close to sunset, the Chinese national flag above Peach Garden School cast a long shadow on the muddy ground. Thirteen-year-old Li Jianrou, the daughter of migrant workers from Hebei, still lingered with friends in their ramshackle classroom. A peek into her home, just a minute away, soon reveals...
LIFE / Travel
May 10, 2000

Postcards from the flip side of Japan

Think of the antithesis of Japan. A place where there are few people, an abundance of unspoiled natural beauty, a low standard of living and, perhaps most importantly for the visitor, sparkling blue oceans teeming with fish and alive with coral reefs.
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."
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
May 7, 2000

All good things

Here is good news for all Kenny Endo fans, and if you aren't a fan you will be once you attend one of his performances. Kenny is a master of the taiko. Most of you know that taiko is drum, and then there is "odaiko," a huge drum. In general, taiko is to drum like the tea ceremony is to a tea bag. It...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 30, 2000

A literary love affair: Graham Greene's brief encounter with Shusaku Endo

LONDON -- For oddly different reasons the names of two not so long dead Catholic novelists from East and West are prominently, simultaneously, in the news. Because of two books dealing with his sexuality and the release of a quirky film based on "The End of the Affair," the ambivalent nature of Graham...
JAPAN
Mar 22, 2000

Leprosy victims demand compensation for injustices

For the past 60 years, 76-year-old Koji Suzuki's life has been contained within a sanitarium for sufferers of leprosy in Kusatsu, Gunma Prefecture.
BUSINESS
Mar 16, 2000

Companies pitch joint care service to regional banks

Nippon Life Insurance Co. and Nichii Gakkan Co. are trying to interest regional banks in their joint advisory services for health and nursing-care concerns, officials of the two companies said Wednesday.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 10, 2000

India debates killing killers

NEW DELHI -- The recent execution of serial husband-killer Betty Lou Beets in Texas has been condemned by human rights institutions in many countries. They find it strange that the United States, which calls itself a champion of human rights, should resort to something as barbaric as capital punishment....
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 5, 2000

Who's afraid of August Strindberg?

If a single metaphor could speak for the career and life of Sweden's greatest playwright and author, it would be the following taken from one of his novels: "We were dancing on the edge of the volcano."
JAPAN
Feb 4, 2000

Exhibition teaches U.S. kids there are no samurai in Ginza

Staff writer Attention American kids! There are no samurai striding down the streets of Tokyo anymore. And, you know, the "Pokemon" character you're so crazy about actually originated in Japan. Despite the long-standing partnership with Japan and the permeation of Japanese products into daily life in...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jan 30, 2000

Rihito Kimura

To answer the question what is bioethics, professor Rihito Kimura wrote a book and more than a hundred articles. "It is a huge subject," he said. "Many people think its focus is on medical issues, but it is much wider than that. It has ethical, legal and social implications too, in an environmental context....
CULTURE / Art
Jan 23, 2000

Eye to eye with 20th-century face

When photography was born and proclaimed the "mirror of nature," the death of portrait painting was announced.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 30, 1999

Explore high-tech versions of Japanese classics

GENJI MONOGATARI (THE TALE OF GENJI). Nihon Koten Bungaku Series 1. Released by Fujitsu Social Science Laboratory Ltd. Windows/Macintosh Hybrid CD-ROMs. Kawasaki, Japan and San Jose, CA: Fujitsu Software Corp., 1996. Bilingual Japanese-English. Two disks boxed separately. 6,000 yen or $68 each. HEIKE...
JAPAN
Dec 16, 1999

GE takes Toho Mutual contracts on conditions

GE Capital Edison Life Insurance Co. has agreed to take over contracts left by the failed Toho Mutual Life Insurance Co. provided that an insurance industry group shoulder 340 billion yen of expected losses, industry sources said Thursday. The Life Insurance Association of Japan and GE Capital Edison...
JAPAN
Dec 14, 1999

LDP panel OKs expanded protection for insured

A Liberal Democratic Party panel basically endorsed a plan by financial authorities Tuesday to beef up the insurance policyholder protection fund by 500 billion yen, of which 400 billion yen would be covered by public funds. The Finance Ministry and the Financial Supervisory Agency submitted to the...
JAPAN
Oct 13, 1999

Yasuda joins Direct Line on variable-risk auto insurance

Major life insurer Yasuda Mutual Life Insurance Co. and U.K.-based Direct Line Group announced Wednesday they will form a joint venture to sell automobile insurance through direct channels.
CULTURE / Books
Sep 21, 1999

Does the American Dream beat Hong Kong custard?

PAPER DAUGHTER: A Memoir, by M. Elaine Mar. HarperFlamingo, New York, 1999, 240 pp., $23. "From Hong Kong to Harvard" proclaims the publicity cover letter accompanying M. Elaine Mar's first book. As a memoir, it is but one drop in the growing flood of reminiscences engulfing publishing houses, and Mar's...
JAPAN
Jul 29, 1999

Acquitted wife-killer Miura loses appeal in libel suit

The Tokyo High Court on Thursday dismissed an appeal by Kazuyoshi Miura, a businessman convicted of trying to murder his wife in the early 1980s for insurance money, upholding a lower court decision against his 190 million yen libel claim against a magazine company.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 8, 1999

The 'nobody' who changed Japan

RYOMA: Life of a Renaissance Samurai, by Romulus Hillsborough. Ridgeback Press, San Francisco, 1999, 614 pages, $40 (cloth). Every country needs its heroes. Unfortunately, the great Japanese hero seems to have been a casualty of World War II. To this day, Japan tends to look all the way back to the Edo...
CULTURE / Art
May 1, 1999

Chronicling Japan's modern century

Japanese-style painter Kiyokata Kaburaki's 93 years (1878-1972) spanned Japan's great modern transformation. As a popular illustrator he chronicled the changing Japanese lifestyle; as an artist he played an important part in the great wave of creativity in nihonga (Japanese-style painting) during the...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Apr 28, 1999

Tyranny of temptation

The future was supposed to be darker. Technology, in the service of some vast, all-encompassing power, was going to enslave us. Human beings would be reduced to ciphers, forced to live anonymous, interchangeable lives.
COMMUNITY
Mar 25, 1999

Nurturing the inner child within us

"Emotional intelligence" is what interests Gabriele Frohlich: the connection between the brain and the heart.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 24, 1999

One bullheaded Buddhist

LOYALTY DEMANDS DISSENT: Autobiography of an Engaged Buddhist, by Sulak Sivaraksa. Parallax Press, 1998, 450 baht. Sulak Sivaraksa, upon reaching the age of 65, decided to look backward and ponder decades of constant activity in Thai society. The book opens with a foreword by the Dalai Lama, who states...
JAPAN
Mar 15, 1999

Chiyoda, UNUM strengthen ties

Midsize insurer Chiyoda Mutual Life Insurance Co. and Maine-based disability insurance firm UNUM Corp. will strengthen business ties hoping to jointly develop and market products, the firms' officials announced Monday.

Longform

Members of the nonprofit group Japan Youth Memorial Association search for the remains of dead soldiers in a cave in Okinawa Prefecture in February.
The long search for Japan’s lost soldiers