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ENVIRONMENT
Mar 23, 2000

Housing for human beings: Let natural harmony prevail

Akinori Sagane is a man with a mission, an architect with an idealistic vision of how humans can live in greater harmony with the natural environment.
JAPAN
Mar 21, 2000

Central government officials occupying local posts

At least 742 bureaucrats on loan from central government institutions occupied senior posts in local governments as of Jan. 1, according to ministry and agency reports compiled by Kyodo News on Monday.
BUSINESS
Mar 20, 2000

Competition spurs flurry of mergers

The world's second largest telecommunications market is undergoing a rapid and radical transformation as deregulation, the Internet and mobile phones alter the way that Japanese people work and communicate.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 20, 2000

Troubling truths about India's bomb

INDIA'S NUCLEAR BOMB: The Impact on Global Proliferation, by George Perkovich. University of California Press, 1999, 597 pp., $39.95 (cloth). In many ways, the remarkable thing about India's nuclear bomb test on May 11, 1998 is not that it occurred, but that it didn't happen sooner. Ever since India...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 19, 2000

Found language and fragmented identity

Yuriya Julia Kumagai's first volume of poetry, "Her Space-Time Continuum," originally written in English and published in 1994, used text layout, language "found" in everyday life, as well as literary theory and language poetry techniques to shape her own idiom. This hybrid approach reflected the speaker's...
JAPAN
Mar 18, 2000

Cohen dismisses 15-year limitation on U.S. military use of new heliport

U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen on Friday rejected the 15-year time limit proposed by the mayor of Nago, Okinawa Prefecture, for a new heliport to relocate the helicopter operations at Futenma Air Station.
BUSINESS
Mar 18, 2000

Economic recovery on the horizon, EPA says

The economy is showing signs of nearing a sustainable recovery course for the first time since the recession began in April 1997, the Economic Planning Agency said Friday in its monthly report for March.
JAPAN
Mar 17, 2000

GSDF crime coverup alleged

The Ground Self-Defense Force is suspected of systematically covering up a criminal case involving a colonel in 1994, the Defense Agency said Thursday.
BUSINESS
Mar 17, 2000

JAMA targets 60% cut in diesel emissions by '05

The Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association announced Thursday that it will implement a scheme to reduce by 60 percent harmful emissions from diesel-powered vehicles in 2005, two years ahead of its original schedule of 2007.
BUSINESS
Mar 17, 2000

NTT, gas firms eye power retail business

Tokyo Gas Co., Osaka Gas Co. and a power facility under Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. may jointly enter the electric power retailing business, industry sources said Thursday.
JAPAN
Mar 17, 2000

Reformer calls for overhaul of scandal-hit police system

The scandal-tainted police system must be overhauled, believes Kohei Nakabo, a lawyer who has just been appointed to a new government panel established to advise on police reform.
BUSINESS
Mar 17, 2000

Sliding market belies budding recovery

As far as the Tokyo stock market is concerned, things have gone steadily downhill since early this month.
JAPAN
Mar 16, 2000

Olympic gold medalist to aid education reform

Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi will appoint Olympic gold medalist Yasuhiro Yamashita and 25 others to his advisory panel on education reform to be launched this month, Obuchi's adviser on education issues said Wednesday.
JAPAN
Mar 16, 2000

Miyazawa miffed Japan ignored in IMF decision

Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa on Wednesday indirectly criticized the United States and European countries for taking it for granted that the managing director of the International Monetary Fund must be a European.
BUSINESS
Mar 16, 2000

Record-low pay raises offered in 'shunto' talks

Major corporations' ongoing restructuring measures dealt a heavy blow to workers as the auto, steel, shipbuilding and electrical appliance industries effectively ended their annual spring wage talks Wednesday offering record low pay increases.
JAPAN
Mar 15, 2000

Russian writes about postwar Japanese prisoners

At the end of World War II, Soviet troops imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers and civilians in Asia, sending them to labor camps in Siberia. Tens of thousands subsequently died in brutal conditions.
BUSINESS
Mar 15, 2000

Back in private hands, LTCB looks to expand

The Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, which has returned to private management after being under state control, is interested in taking over the operations of the failed Tokyo Sowa Bank, its top executive said Tuesday.
JAPAN
Mar 14, 2000

Leader's informal dinner meet secures Hori's future

The heads of the three ruling parties agreed Monday to keep National Public Safety Commission Chairman Kosuke Hori in office despite opposition demands that he resign over his responsibility for a Niigata Prefectural Police scandal.
JAPAN
Mar 12, 2000

Sumitomo Bank, Hosei University on Aum-related PC firms' client list

Sumitomo Bank and Hosei University were among the clients of computer software companies believed to be under the control of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, it was learned Saturday.
JAPAN
Mar 11, 2000

Reactor cutback eyed in energy policy shift

The government will overhaul the nation's energy policy and probably cut back on its plan to build 16 to 20 new nuclear plants by fiscal 2010 in the wake of mounting opposition to such facilities and a fatal atomic accident last September, trade chief Takashi Fukaya said Friday.
JAPAN
Mar 11, 2000

School reform goals outlined

Reona Esaki, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics and head of a government education reform panel to be launched later this month, says he will strive to create a "custom-made" education system to meet the needs of individual students.
JAPAN
Mar 11, 2000

Ishihara denies China influenced Falun Gong decision

Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara denied reports that political pressures from China affected the metropolitan government's recent decision to deny nonprofit organization status to the Japanese branch of China's outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement.
JAPAN
Mar 11, 2000

Japan seeks progress in alleged abduction cases

Japan will seek to make progress on the question of the alleged abductions of Japanese nationals by North Korean agents when the Red Cross societies of the two nations meet in Beijing on Monday, Foreign Minister Yohei Kono said Friday.
JAPAN
Mar 11, 2000

Teito rejects accident theory

Teito Rapid Transit Authority on Friday denied media speculation that Wednesday's fatal subway collision was caused by the sliding of locked wheels, arguing that this situation would make a derailment unlikely.
JAPAN
Mar 11, 2000

Ministers to work on Atsugi dioxin case

Three Cabinet ministers reconfirmed Friday their plan to cooperate closely to resolve an air pollution problem at a U.S. military base in Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture.

Longform

Mamoru Iwai, stationmaster of Keisei Ueno Station, says that, other than earthquake-proofing, the former Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen (Museum-Zoo) Station has remained untouched.
Inside Tokyo's 'phantom' stations — and the stories they tell