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COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jan 27, 2003

Corporations cast a shadow on education

NEW YORK -- Did you know that Stanford University has a Yahoo! Chair of Information Management Systems?
EDITORIALS
Jan 27, 2003

Drug benefits vs. risks

New drugs often loom as a last hope for terminal-cancer patients who have exhausted without success all forms of conventional treatment available. Sometimes, though, drugs cause serious side effects and completely betray patients' expectations. Two such incidents have occurred recently, giving us reason...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 26, 2003

Watery worlds on show without a snorkel

Although the Kaiyukan Aquarium is located right on Osaka Bay, it is truly a case of "water, water everywhere, ne'er any drop to drink" for the 39,000 fish and 580 species of other sea creatures kept there in 15 large tanks.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 26, 2003

Stories about the storytellers

FIVE MODERN JAPANESE NOVELISTS, by Donald Keene. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003, 144 pp., $24.50 (cloth) In this new book, the doyen of Western scholars of Japanese literature introduces the writing of five novelists with whom he has worked and reminisces about his relationships with them....
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / BEST BAR NONE
Jan 26, 2003

One trip to Never Never Land, and you're hooked

Hiroshi Matsusaki is not a big Disney-film fan. His imagination was captured, however, when he read a Japanese translation of "Peter Pan" -- understandable for a child whose life's adventures began in the lush natural reaches of Kyushu, before his family moved on to Saitama.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 26, 2003

First, dump the zombie debtors

JAPANESE PHOENIX: The Long Road to Economic Revival, by Richard Katz. M.E. Sharpe: Armonk, NY, 2003, 351 pp., $24.95 (paper) As Japan limps further into a second decade of recession, optimists about its future economic prospects are thin on the ground. In this provocative and thoughtful study, Richard...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Jan 26, 2003

A rare chance to tap into Cat Power

Chan Marshall sits in her record company's office toying with a partially eaten apple. It is a fitting symbol. In Tokyo to promote her new album under the Cat Power moniker, "You Are Free," Marshall (first name pronounced Shawn) is dealing with her own peculiar fall from grace: the publicity tour.
Japan Times
JAPAN / PREFECTURAL FARE
Jan 25, 2003

Sake, sweets part of Shimane's spell

Once upon a time, there was a violent god named Susanoo-no-mikoto who challenged a giant serpent that had demanded the life of a young woman every year. The god killed the eight-headed Yamata-no-crochi, a dragonlike creature with eight tails, when it became drunk on the local Yashiori-no-sake.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jan 25, 2003

Mariko Asano

Americans Millard and Linda Fuller began Habitat for Humanity International in 1976. Appalled to know that more than one-fifth of the world's people were living without decent shelter, this couple set out to do something about poor housing and homelessness. They called on volunteers to help build simple,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 25, 2003

Festival celebrates 400 years atop Atago-yama

Meet the Matsuoka family: Mineo (that's Dad), Yuriko (Mum), older sister Rie and younger sister Iku. Oh, and let's not forget Vino, the Mexican Chihuahua, who wears a hand-knit coat against the cold and makes pretense to be as fierce as a Rottweiler.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jan 25, 2003

Joy for the standing man: Densha Don's seat secrets

In riding the iron ponies hither and thither across the urban plains of Japan, I'm one railroad cowboy who would just love to experience the singular pain of a real-life horsemen.
JAPAN
Jan 24, 2003

Parents demand death over school massacre

OSAKA -- The parents of three 7-year-old girls fatally stabbed in a killing spree in June 2001 at an elementary school in Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture, called Thursday for the defendant to be sentenced to death.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jan 24, 2003

Shilingol: From the Mongol steppes to Sugamo

A chill gale of change is gusting through the sumo world, all the way from Central Asia. The demise of the Takanohana era does not, of course, mean we will stop eating chanko nabe. However, in honor of the incipient arrival of the Asashoryu dynasty, we felt impelled to set off in search of Shilingol,...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jan 23, 2003

Chips with everything makes for a hi-tech mess

If you think that your computer, being such a modern, hi-tech device, is -- or surely must be -- environmentally friendly, then think again.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / GARDEN PATHS
Jan 23, 2003

The bare essentials

This column is the first in a series of articles to take us strolling along some garden paths. Hopefully, along the way, we will come across some good ideas for our own patch of greenery, whether that is a garden, containers on a balcony, or just a few potted plants on the kitchen window.
JAPAN
Jan 23, 2003

Genome research council launched

A council tasked with promoting genome research in the Tokyo area was launched Wednesday, seeking to make the capital an international center for genome-based life sciences.
EDITORIALS
Jan 23, 2003

Forge national consensus on taxes

One year ago the government published a five-year budget projection showing how it expected to make ends meet in fiscal 2002-06. Now, the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, chaired by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, has revised the plan -- downward. The basic picture is that the budget deficit...
EDITORIALS
Jan 22, 2003

Sumo needs a clear vision

Yokozuna Takanohana has finally bowed out of the dohyo. Looking back over his active career, he certainly made spectacular achievements. There can be no objections to his being described as one of the all-time great grand champions of sumo.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jan 22, 2003

Toyota to sell cars that know they are about to have a crash

A new car safety feature from Toyota Motor Corp. doesn't wait for a crash to happen.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 22, 2003

Leading the way

In 1995 Tomomi Nishimoto was regularly sneaking into an auditorium to watch an esteemed Bolshoi maestro rehearse. Seven years later, she was appointed the first Japanese chief conductor of Russia's state-run Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra Millennium.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 20, 2003

Australian attitudes harden against illegals

SYDNEY -- Burn, baby, burn. That's how arsonists among illegal arrivals held in detention centers across Australia greeted the new year. What an inglorious way to start 2003!
COMMENTARY
Jan 19, 2003

eo 20030119hc.xml Halting the small-arms trade

LONDON -- On New Year's Eve two teenage girls seeking fresh air from a party in Birmingham were killed in a shooting incident. Over 30 shots, some by a submachine gun, were fired in what seems to have been a shootout between rival gangs. The incident has led to demands that the crime of possessing an...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jan 19, 2003

Regaining control isn't always easy

SMAP's golden boy, Takuya Kimura, may have lost some of his sexual luster since becoming a husband and a father, but he's still a viewer magnet when it comes to trendy dramas. Having been shoehorned into a number of unlikely professions in past series (architect, classical pianist, thief, prosecutor),...
COMMENTARY
Jan 19, 2003

Halting the small-arms trade

LONDON -- On New Year's Eve two teenage girls seeking fresh air from a party in Birmingham were killed in a shooting incident. Over 30 shots, some by a submachine gun, were fired in what seems to have been a shootout between rival gangs. The incident has led to demands that the crime of possessing an...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 19, 2003

Facts are first casualty in U.S. march to war

WAR PLAN IRAQ: Ten Reasons Against War on Iraq, by Milan Rai. Verso, 2002, 240 pp., $15 (paper) When Richard Butler, head of the first U.N. weapons inspections team in Iraq, said in 1997 that "Truth in some cultures is kind of what you can get away with saying," he was referring to the regime of Iraqi...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 19, 2003

Trail of tears from Deshima

TITIA: The First Western Woman in Japan, by Rene P. Bersma. Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing, 2002, 140 pp. with 37 plates, $17.50 (paper) One August afternoon in 1817, a Dutch ship entered Nagasaki and anchored in the bay. Waiting for clearance was Jan Cock Blomhoff, the new director of the Dutch trading...
COMMUNITY
Jan 19, 2003

fl 20030119a3.xml SUN YES DOJUNKAI Concrete ideals

The Great Kanto Earthquake on Sept. 1, 1923, devastated the capital and its vicinity, destroying 63 percent of homes in Tokyo and 72 percent in Yokohama. From the ashes of the fires that raged in the wake of the massive temblor, though, there arose a public-housing policy whose enlightenment was in many...

Longform

Japan's growing ranks of centenarians are redefining what it means to live in a super-aging society.
What comes after 100?