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COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Mar 4, 2001

Lydia Gomersall

Each year for 11 years now, Refugees International-Japan has been sponsoring its Art of Dining Exhibition. In this display, participants present highly individual, beautiful and imaginative tabletop settings for viewers' admiration and inspiration. Proceeds from the event go to RIJ's programs for the...
COMMUNITY
Mar 4, 2001

Japanese estate agent right at home in London

"I'll have the agreement drafted by Monday, then fax it over," Kazuyuki Nakamura was saying to a client over the phone last week in northwest London. "It's not your property? So who is the landlord? Well, he can appoint you to collect (rents) on his behalf. Otherwise we can, but then that will cost you;...
CULTURE / Film
Mar 3, 2001

Gwyneth and Ben's last tango in L.A.

My friend Mari has a dilemma -- she just split up with her boyfriend of three years. They work in the same company, on the same floor, and Mari had hoped it was leading to a church wedding in Tuscany. Instead, it ended after a screaming, 10-hour argument, and with the boyfriend owing Mari a total of...
COMMENTARY
Mar 3, 2001

No quick fixes for Japan's ills

TOKYO and LONDON -- The 17th annual meeting of the U.K.-Japan 21st Century Group -- the bilateral think tank set up by Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher way back in the '80s -- took place this year on Awaji Island in Kobe Bay, island of gods and puppets and,...
CULTURE / Art
Mar 3, 2001

The critical mass

The current exhibition of 127 sculptures at the Yokohama Museum of Art is not only interesting from an artistic point of view, but also provides a fascinating insight into much of the intellectual Sturm und Drang of the 20th century.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 1, 2001

The spy game: high stakes, low payoffs

LONDON -- It's an impressive list: CIA official Aldrich Ames jailed for life in 1994 for spying for Moscow; CIA agent Harold Nicholson jailed for 23 years in 1997 for the same offense; FBI employee Earl Pitts sentenced to 27 years later the same year for passing information to Moscow; U.S. Army Col....
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 1, 2001

NHK's hollow take on easy-money bubble era

What's impressive about the new Steven Soderbergh film, "Traffic," which opens here in April, is how thoroughly it presents all the ramifications of America's drug war by exclusively dramatic means: no charts, no explanations of cause and effect, no polemics. The movie's three separate plot vectors intersect...
BUSINESS
Mar 1, 2001

JVC touts smallest video in world

Victor Co. of Japan said Wednesday that it will launch the lightest and smallest digital video camera in the world in the next couple of weeks.
LIFE / Travel
Feb 28, 2001

Asia's heritage boom

Call it nostalgia or call it a self-awakening, but Asians are rediscovering the value of their architectural heritage. From ancient police courts in Shanxi, China to forest temples in Thailand, from colonial quays in Singapore to the brick kilns and iron smithies of Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, the...
JAPAN / BENCH REFORM
Feb 27, 2001

Battle to change closed-shop legal system hits poignant note

Had it not been for the death of her newborn baby, Fukumi Kushige would have shared the apathy of most Japanese toward the nation's legal system.
JAPAN / BENCH REFORM
Feb 27, 2001

Battle to change closed-shop legal system hits poignant note

Had it not been for the death of her newborn baby, Fukumi Kushige would have shared the apathy of most Japanese toward the nation's legal system.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 27, 2001

Soar with Madame Butterfly

MADAME BUTTERFLY: Japonisme, Puccini, and the Search for the Real Cho-Cho-San, by Jan van Rij. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2001, 192 pp., 24 b/w photos, drawings, map, $24.95 (casebound). Giacomo Puccini's "Madame Butterfly" has become more than just a pretty piece of music. It has turned into something...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 27, 2001

Fairy tales for modern Japan

GHOST OF A SMILE: Stories, by Deborah Boliver Boehm. Kodansha International, 2000, 288 pp., 2,900 yen (cloth). Imagine Lafcadio Hearn venturing to 21st-century Tokyo reincarnated as a single American woman with a penchant for the exotic and erotic, and you will have a sense of the stories in "Ghost of...
CULTURE / Film
Feb 27, 2001

Unearthly entertainment

Kiyoshi Kurosawa is God's gift to film journalists. He speaks slowly and distinctly, in a rumbling baritone, weighing each word -- and giving even the most fumble-fingered reporter time to get everything down. He is also patient with questions that, after the 20th media interview, he has heard 20 times...
JAPAN
Feb 25, 2001

Freeze on beltway complicates lives of residents

Shozaburo Kon did not expect to face the ordeal he eventually had to endure when he took the plan of his new house to a local office of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government 10 years ago.
COMMENTARY
Feb 25, 2001

Breaking the yakuza's grip

LONDON -- The sad case of the murder of Lucy Blackman, the young British woman who was a hostess in a Roppongi bar, inevitably attracted the attention of the British media.
JAPAN
Feb 24, 2001

Diet group to fight domestic violence

A supra-partisan group of Upper House members has compiled a draft bill to fight domestic violence that would allow court restraining orders against perpetrators based on police and notary reports, group members said Friday.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 24, 2001

'Learned societies' still have a key role

CHIANG MAI, Thailand-- The complex cultures of Asia have always attracted the interest of Western scholars. This is the origin of what came to be later known as "Learned Societies," institutions based on intellectual curiosity and a deep-rooted volunteer spirit.
CULTURE / Film
Feb 24, 2001

Space . . . the funny frontier

Think of it as a "Seven Samurai" in outer space. OK, well there are only six warriors in "Galaxy Quest" but the comparison kinda works. They are a group of has-been actors whose sole claim to fame is a TV series called "Galaxy Quest" that went off the air 18 years ago. But American human beings weren't...
COMMENTARY
Feb 24, 2001

Mori's lame-duck maneuvers

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori is coming under increasing pressure to resign. One likely scenario, according to sources in the ruling coalition, goes something like this: In early March, after the fiscal 2001 government budget clears the Lower House, he announces his intention to step down, and later that...
JAPAN
Feb 23, 2001

Missing U.S. kids' safety bemoaned

It was a routine visit for Tokyo metropolitan child-care officials when they checked on five American children early this month. Only this time, the Kasukabe, Saitama Prefecture, apartment where they had been living since November was empty.
JAPAN
Feb 23, 2001

Symposium seeks solutions to Africa's persistent turmoil

The end of the Cold War has brought about a fundamental change in the international order based on the two major ideological blocs, and it has led to an increase, rather than a decrease, in regional conflicts around the globe.
JAPAN
Feb 23, 2001

Symposium seeks solutions to Africa's persistent turmoil

The end of the Cold War has brought about a fundamental change in the international order based on the two major ideological blocs, and it has led to an increase, rather than a decrease, in regional conflicts around the globe.
COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE
Feb 22, 2001

Selling tax cuts to Congress

U.S. President George W. Bush continues his attempt to make friends and influence important constituencies. He has spent more time with the Congressional Black Caucus than with the Republican leadership. He has traveled to schools to promote his education priorities. He has been to small businesses explaining...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 21, 2001

India's barbaric idea of school discipline

Corporal punishment has no place in a civilized society. Yet a recent High Court judgment in the southern Indian state of Kerala recently upheld the legitimacy of this method of punishing a child.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Feb 21, 2001

Spud the magic surfer

www.geocities.com/Baja/4954/ This is how Spudster entertained himself this past weekend, trawling through sites like Internet Magic and challenging the online wizard to do things like figure out what Pokemon character he was thinking about. The wizard can also tell you who you were in a past life and...

Longform

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.
What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji