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JAPAN
May 21, 2000

Ishihara calls Jiang a 'Chinese Hitler'

TAIPEI -- In yet another invective directed at China, Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara on Saturday said China's Jiang Zemin would be like Adolf Hitler should he attempt to unify Taiwan and the mainland by military force.
CULTURE / Books / POETRY MIGNETTE
May 21, 2000

Japanese poets write the book of love

Stroker, a publisher of chapbooks, is the distributor and copublisher of "2000 Japanese Poems for the Year 2000," a voluminous collection of chapbooks, 15 in all, translated by Howard S. Levy.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
May 21, 2000

Dreams come true

Today I am happy to tell you about one of this column's most successful accomplishments. It began last October when I received a heartfelt letter from Chip Bozek, a teacher in Hokkaido. He wanted to find someone who could give him a "chonmage" haircut like the old-time samurai wore. He had asked his...
JAPAN
May 20, 2000

LDP proposes longer juvenile prison terms

A Liberal Democratic Party panel proposed revising the Juvenile Law to increase the minimum prison time for juveniles found guilty of crimes that would carry the death penalty for adults.
CULTURE / Music / HOGAKU TODAY
May 20, 2000

New made old, old new at Manabiya

I waited for the performance to begin, sitting amid the audience of 30 people or so, packed into the ground-floor room of a new building in the sprawling, nondescript suburbs of Yokohama.
COMMENTARY / World
May 20, 2000

The limits of peacekeeping

There is a troubling sense of deja vu in the tragedy befalling the U.N. peacekeeping effort in Sierra Leone (it is really peace enforcement, a euphemism for getting sucked into someone else's war). And more than just putting at risk future U.N. operations, recent events pose vexing questions about how...
CULTURE / Stage
May 20, 2000

Still shining after all these years

May is the month of the Dankikusai (Danjuro-Kikugoro Festival) at the Kabukiza in Tokyo's Ginza, commemorating the outstanding achievements of Danjuro Ichikawa IX and Kikugoro Onoe V, the two giants of kabuki theater in the Meiji Era.
EDITORIALS
May 18, 2000

Digital exterminators

The year rang in with the threat of a computer meltdown — the Y2K bug — but it proved to be more hype than horror. Yet having weathered that digital storm, the world has faced a succession of bugs and viruses that have done real damage to both computer systems and confidence in the network economy....
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 17, 2000

Mori's 'divine nation' remark spurs outrage

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori on Tuesday moved to contain potential political damage after saying Monday that Japan is a "divine nation centering on the Emperor," a sentiment some compared to the nationalist fervor stoked before and during World War II.
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
May 17, 2000

Wild and free, within certain restrictions

"Wildlife," "natural," "wild" and "free" are terms that are loaded with meaning, redolent with atmosphere. They are words that may transport you mentally to the tundra, patrolled by polar bears, to the acacia-dotted African savanna across which herds of buffalo, gazelle, elephant and giraffe roam, or...
COMMENTARY / World
May 17, 2000

A grim future for China's hinterlands

A sense of deja vu comes over me when I read the Chinese government's proposals for the development of China's western, or hinterland, provinces.
JAPAN
May 16, 2000

Mori hails new defense headquarters

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori said Monday that the completion of the Defense Agency's new headquarters presented a good opportunity for him as chief commander of the Self-Defense Forces to talk about the nation's defense policies.
COMMENTARY
May 16, 2000

Failing youth and the victims of crime

The whole nation was shocked by the hijacking of a bus in the middle of the "Golden Week" holiday season. And it was a 17-year-old boy who seized the bus and killed one passenger.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 16, 2000

Enchi's made-up 'monogatari'

A TALE OF FALSE FORTUNES, By Fumiko Enchi. Translated by Roger K. Thomas. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000. Unpriced. The late Fumiko Enchi was, besides being a well-known novelist, a major scholar of Japanese literature. Like her father, Kazutoshi Ueda, she was a classicist. Her 1972-3...
JAPAN
May 16, 2000

New ministry targets quality of life

The new ministry to be created in January by a merger of the Construction and Transport ministries and the National Land and Hokkaido Development agencies will strive for public safety, environmental preservation and economic health, according to a draft policy.
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.
CULTURE / Art
May 14, 2000

Triumph or disaster in Trafalgar Square

LONDON -- The jury for Trafalgar Square was still out when Prue Leith got stuck in her traffic jam. The debate had shifted elsewhere, to other public art projects that had similarly raised hackles or won praise, like Anthony Gormley's "Angel of the North." This 20-meter-high statue erected in 1997 above...
CULTURE / Music
May 14, 2000

Japan's greatest battle in song and story

Oct. 21 this year marks the 400th anniversary of the most decisive battle in Japan's history, fought at Sekigahara near the border between Shiga and Gifu prefectures, where Tokugawa Ieyasu overcame all opposition to set the course of events for the next three centuries.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
May 14, 2000

Etienne Taenaka

When he was growing up in California, Etienne Taenaka wanted to be an architect. As he watched his mother, a hairdresser, at work, he made an imaginative leap between architecture and "hair-chitecture." "Creating styles, form following function, building shapes and achieving balance," he said. "My mother...
COMMENTARY / World
May 13, 2000

Era of abundance sparks religious revival

WASHINGTON -- American history abounds with apparent contradictions, but few loom as large as this: We are a people wedded simultaneously to materialism and spirituality, mostly (though not exclusively) religious. In a recent Gallup poll, 61 percent of Americans said religion is "very important" in their...
BUSINESS
May 11, 2000

Euro slump goes unabated

Financial markets around the world are focusing their attention on the euro. With the downtrend in its value continuing unabated, the single European currency has hit life-time lows repeatedly in recent weeks.
COMMUNITY
May 11, 2000

Young women study up for the future

A high attendance in classes ranging from aromatherapy, beadwork and flower arrangement to exotic languages and cooking, offered at department stores and community centers all over Japan, is a sign of a new trend among women in their late 20s and early 30s.
LIFE / Travel
May 10, 2000

Panasonic shows off high tech for the kids

What's a kyoiku mama to do?
EDITORIALS
May 9, 2000

Crime knows no boundaries

Crime was very much on people's minds during this year's Golden Week holiday period. While the calendar made it possible for record numbers of Japanese to travel abroad, those who stayed behind for whatever reason were transfixed by news of two appalling crimes one day apart, each allegedly committed...
COMMENTARY / World
May 8, 2000

Tackling sectarian strife in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD -- A volley of gunfire that followed a grenade attack last month in a small village two hours from Islamabad shattered the myth that the government had begun to effectively contain the country's religious extremists.

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami