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COMMENTARY
May 29, 2000

Mori does Japan no favors

LONDON -- When I read the brief report in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun about Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's remarks at the meeting of the Shinto Association of Diet Members, I was surprised not to see any reports of reactions to his reported statement. I wondered whether he had been correctly quoted and whether...
COMMUNITY
May 28, 2000

Conductor says yes to noh style 'Don Giovanni'

Theaters in Nagoya were aghast when Yoko Matsuo came calling. Even though she was born in the city and is conductor and director of the Aichi Prefecture Symphony Orchestra, her plan to stage Mozart's opera "Don Giovanni" in the style of Japan's most revered and challenging dramatic form, noh, created...
JAPAN
May 26, 2000

Billions in aid eyed for foreign students

HISANE MASAKI Staff writer The government and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party are considering creating a multibillion yen fund using low-interest yen loans to provide financial aid to foreign students in Japan, according to government and LDP sources.
CULTURE / Books
May 23, 2000

The new China, from hamburgers to lonely hearts

THE CONSUMER REVOLUTION IN URBAN CHINA, edited by Deborah S. Davis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000, 379 pp., 35 b/w photos, 21 tables, $22 (paper). McDonald's is the great equalizer. Wherever you go in the world it tastes exactly the same. The same beef, the same cheese, the same shredded...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
May 17, 2000

Pride and prejudices

Time to update the mental computers. Recent news bytes oblige us to abandon some long-held ideas about the Internet. Reality 2000 looks like this.
BUSINESS
May 16, 2000

Economy hit bottom in early '99: EPA

The head of a study panel of economists for the Economic Planning Agency on Monday said that the Japanese economy hit bottom in spring 1999.
JAPAN
May 8, 2000

Carbon tax is needed to cut CO2 levels: panel

A carbon tax is vital for curbing emissions of carbon dioxide, a major contributor to global warming, according to the draft of a report being compiled by an Environment Agency panel.
CULTURE / Music
Apr 30, 2000

Japanese chamber orchestras strive for musical excellence

The Berlin Philharmonic, one of the world's great orchestras, operates under an enlightened artistic philosophy. Its large roster and the redundancy of players in every section save one (tuba) allows for rotation among the players between pieces and performances. The free time in their schedules allows...
CULTURE / Art
Apr 30, 2000

Subverting reality with waste

Sporting longish brown curly hair and a skittish glance, American Tom Sachs bounded into Tokyo for his first Tokyo exhibition at Tomio Koyama Gallery, bringing with him a refreshing whiff of New York art culture.
ENVIRONMENT
Mar 29, 2000

Today amphibians, tomorrow maybe us?

Part 3 of a series
CULTURE / Books
Mar 28, 2000

Blindness tips the scales of history

THE POSTWAR CONSERVATIVE VIEW OF ASIA: How the Political Right has Delayed Japan's Coming to Terms with its History of Aggression in Asia, by Yoshibumi Wakamiya. Tokyo: LTCB International Library Foundation, 1999, 370 pp. 3,000 yen, This study of Japan's dilatory and grudging attempts to come to terms...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 23, 2000

Beijing all bark and no bite? Think again

Tensions over the Taiwan Strait are palpable after China did its best to intimidate Taiwanese voters in the runup to last weekend's election. First, the Cabinet released a white paper that drew an unmistakable line -- thickened with a new condition -- regarding the limits of acceptable Taiwanese behavior...
JAPAN
Mar 23, 2000

Monju ruling infuriates plaintiffs

OSAKA -- Antinuclear activists expressed shock and outrage Wednesday over the Fukui District Court's ruling against local residents' efforts to permanently close the Monju fast-breeder reactor, and both plaintiffs and their lawyers vowed their nearly 15-year battle was not over.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 23, 2000

Breaking down the doors of Japan's discriminatory press clubs

In May 1993, David Butts, then Tokyo bureau chief of Bloomberg Business News, was fed up. After years of unsuccessful efforts to penetrate Japan's press clubs through polite negotiation, the tall Texan chose a more direct approach. On the day annual company reports were released, Butts, with other foreign...
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 / Music
Mar 18, 2000

Distant echoes from a desert lute

"We are not reviving the original music of over 1,000 years ago," says Sukeyasu Shiba, director of the leading independent gagaku (court music) group Reigakusha, which will present a concert March 23 of music from over 1,000 years ago.
COMMUNITY
Mar 16, 2000

Beauty oases in the big city

I have a confession to make: I love to be slathered with mud. I also love to be rubbed with Dead Sea salts and mummified with seaweed. And there's nothing I find more exhilarating than knowing that I have just emerged victorious from a hair-raising bikini-wax session, ready to look my finest at the beach....
CULTURE / Books
Mar 15, 2000

Fertile soil for Japanese environmentalist groups?

ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS IN JAPAN: Networks of Power and Protest, by Jeffrey Broadbent. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 418 pp., $13.95, (paper). Given Japan's economic growth after World War II -- a period often termed "miraculous" -- it is not surprising that the worst problems of ecological...
JAPAN
Mar 12, 2000

Landfill seen dooming Edo fishing tradition

The fish that used to throng in the Edo-mae shallows of Tokyo Bay haunt fishermen today.
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.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Mar 5, 2000

Masanao Murai

"Horses are very gentle and kind to the weak," Dr. Masanao Murai said. "A child suffering from cerebral palsy can sit on a horse and feel the animal's warmth. He can see farther. The horse's movement reaches the child's brain through the spine, so that a child who cannot walk feels he has one body with...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 26, 2000

If Taro is really going to speak English

Would you hire a typewriter repairman as a systems analyst? That's sort of what the Japanese Ministry of Education is doing. It set up a committee to study English-education reform that is about as up to date in what's needed to improve English teaching in this country as the poor repairman who thinks...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 22, 2000

When paranoia is in power, prepare to be surprised

WHY VIETNAM INVADED CAMBODIA: Political Culture and the Causes of War, by Stephen J. Morris. Stanford University Press, 1999, 315 pp., $49.50/30 British pounds (cloth), $18.95/11.95 British pounds (paper). In July 1973, the Khmer Rouge launched an offensive against Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh....
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Feb 20, 2000

Roberto E. Wirth

Above the Spanish Steps, commanding an incomparable panorama of eternal Rome, stands the opulent Hotel Hassler. The Wirth family, coproprietors of the Hassler since 1916, became sole proprietors in 1964, when the hotel approached 80 years of age and fame. Roberto E. Wirth, today's president and general...
CULTURE / Music
Feb 19, 2000

Retracing Takemitsu's 'Steps'

In 1967 a performance occurred in New York City which changed hogaku forever. Under the direction of Seiji Ozawa, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra commemorated its 125th anniversary by commissioning pieces from composers around the world.

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan