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COMMENTARY / World
Jan 13, 2001

In Thailand, good losers teach a key lesson

SISAKET, Thailand -- "If the counting is fair, losers must accept the results," said Thai Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, trying to calm down an anxious nation as rioting spread to over a dozen provinces in the wake of national elections Jan. 6. Having just lost the premiership as his party was trounced...
JAPAN
Jan 10, 2001

Civil servants upbeat on reorganized bureaucracy

Bureaucrats in their 20s and 30s were apprehensive but upbeat Tuesday when work started in earnest following the biggest administrative shakeup since the end of World War II.
BUSINESS
Jan 9, 2001

Curb in emissions to cut economic growth: panel

A U.N. panel on climate change predicts industrialized countries' economic growth will be cut 0.2 to 2 percentage points if they reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases to the levels agreed to under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, according to a study obtained by Kyodo News.
CULTURE / Music / MUSIC NOMAD
Jan 9, 2001

Hitting the high notes of jazz

At the age of 5 or 6, Cassandra Wilson recalls hearing the music of Miles Davis for the first time. "Sketches of Spain" was part of her father's record collection, himself a jazz musician and was one of the records he would often play in their home in Jackson, Mississippi.
BUSINESS
Jan 8, 2001

Microsoft shows off the Xbox

LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- Attendees at the 2001 Consumer Electronics Show on Saturday were given the first public viewing of Xbox, the new 128-bit video game console being developed by computer software giant Microsoft.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 8, 2001

Tomorrow today in Tokyo

TOKYO X. Photographs by Shunji Ohkura. Afterword translated by Ralph McCarthy, captions translated by Shii Ichiba, envoi by Giles Murray. Tokyo: Kodansha Intl., 2000, 216 pp., 251 plates with endpapers, 3,800 yen. In the afterword to this remarkable collection of pictures, the photographer says that...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 8, 2001

Signs of hope emerge in South Asia

ISLAMABAD -- When representatives of some of the most prominent groups in Indian-administered Kashmir visit Pakistan toward the middle of this month, many South Asia watchers will be looking for signs of progress in South Asia's latest peace process.
JAPAN
Jan 8, 2001

Deaths at sea up fifth year in a row

The number of people who died or went missing at sea in 2000 was 1,620, up from 1,601 in 1999, the fifth consecutive year of increase, according to information released by the Japan Coast Guard.
COMMENTARY
Jan 8, 2001

A simple test for leaders

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. last month announced a decision to abolish its long-standing system by which individual product divisions handled the integrated development, production and marketing operations for their products. The system, praised as the secret of the consumer electronics giant's...
JAPAN
Jan 7, 2001

Primatologist fears for future of greedy, destructive mankind

Over the course of the coming year, The Japan Times will publish on the front page of Sunday editions interviews with people who have unique stories to tell, in the hope that their experiences will provide food for thought on the many facets of Japan.
JAPAN
Jan 6, 2001

Hashimoto prospering in new Cabinet

Former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, who joined Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's Cabinet in the December reshuffle, is showing great zeal and is even outshining Mori, according to political pundits.
BUSINESS
Jan 6, 2001

Young information technology execs join social revolution

The role played by young people in promoting information technology in society was highlighted in early December when a teenage company executive was recognized and won an award for being the person most representative of the IT revolution.
BUSINESS
Jan 5, 2001

Cooperative-style condos let owners realize dreams

New condo owner Emiko Kaji says her brand new color-coordinated kitchen keeps her happy while she slaves over the stove cooking for her family.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 5, 2001

Have Japanese novelists lost touch with readers?

The fading interest in reading among younger Japanese first caused alarm several years ago in Japan, but I was recently startled to see a full page devoted to the topic in The New York Times' Book Review section (Dec. 10).
BUSINESS
Jan 4, 2001

Redevelopment hits Tokyo's heart

For the moment, it remains an enormous no man's land in the heart of Tokyo, with the only signs of life the numerous cranes, prefab huts and foundations that indicate construction projects are under way.
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Jan 3, 2001

Walking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu

Approaching Machu Picchu on foot along Peru's 32-km Inca Trail might sound the stuff of legend. Or, better still, the stuff of Tin Tin. In all honesty, however, it can be more trial than trail.
JAPAN
Jan 1, 2001

Foreign workforce movin' on up

For a long time, workers coming to Japan from the Third World have been associated with the cheap blue-collar labor that supports industrial societies at the lower strata.
JAPAN / STAGING A COMEBACK
Jan 1, 2001

Carrying out reform is only the beginning for politicians

The final 10 years of the 20th century have been called a "lost decade" for Japan, which continues to suffer woes from the burst of the late-1980s bubble-economy. Japan's comeback as a globally competitive economic powerhouse will require fundamental reforms not only in the industrial and financial sectors...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Jan 1, 2001

Much ado about nothing

In a fierce fit of free-market commercialism, ads in Moscow subway insist that the real new millennium will start today. With the economy weakened by crisis, revenues from the advent of Y2K were not as impressive as in the West, and now Russian boutiques, travel agencies and software stores are trying...
COMMUNITY
Dec 31, 2000

Michinoku Ginko chief banks on Japanese-Russian relations

Talk about a profitable end to the year. Invited to meet a Taisho man -- that is, someone born in the last year of what many consider to be Japan's most liberal period of the 20th century -- I was met in one location to be maneuvered into a taxi and delivered outside another: a nondescript utility block...
JAPAN
Dec 31, 2000

Currency scam puts police on alert

Police said they are on the lookout for criminals swindling cash from people with a scam involving old German currency notes and bonds that are now worthless.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Dec 31, 2000

Slithering on through the year of the snake

It's almost 2001, the year of the snake. I've done a little research using the Chinese "koyomi" calendar for the 13th year of Heisei, the year of the snake, in order to let you know what kind of year you're about to have.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 30, 2000

An era of U.S. superficiality

The year 2000 was marked with flamboyant, highly symbolic peace accords. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited North Korea; U.S. President Bill Clinton visited Vietnam. Most symbolically of all, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak visited Washington, D.C.,...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 29, 2000

Arms sales exacerbating global poverty

At the U.N. Millennium Summit held in September, world leaders pledged both to "free our peoples from the scourge of war, whether within or between states" and to halve global poverty by 2015.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 29, 2000

Rare rumblings of dissent ruffle Dalai Lama's agenda

NEW DELHI -- Even as the Dalai Lama has softened his attitude toward China -- which annexed Tibet in 1950 and drove him to an Indian exile nine years later -- the spiritual leader of his people, who was honored with a Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, now finds himself facing dissent within his own community....
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 29, 2000

Popular challenger lets down many Thais

BANGKOK -- Thai voters dissatisfied with Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai's ruling Democrat Party will have a hard time turning to the alternative Thai Rak Thai Party of telecom tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra since public trust in the businessman has eroded.

Longform

A mushroom cloud from the atomic bombing on Hiroshima taken from a U.S. military aircraft on Aug. 6, 1945. Copying the photo without permission is prohibited.
80 years on, a Japanese American hibakusha recalls the day the bomb dropped