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CULTURE / Music
Dec 29, 2000

Hipster Arthur H sings in his own lingua franca

The late '50s and early '60s was an interesting time for American musical tastes. Listeners who considered themselves hip embraced a wide variety of styles, from the calypso of Harry Belafonte to the bossa nova of Antonio Carlos Jobim and even the chanson of Jacques Brel. If they listened to American...
BUSINESS
Dec 28, 2000

Online brokerage sure of success despite late entry

Tokyo-Mitsubishi TD Waterhouse Securities Co. was late to establish its online discount brokerage operations in Japan. When the joint venture between Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi and discount brokerage TD Waterhouse Group of the United States began accepting accounts in July, several major players had already...
JAPAN
Dec 28, 2000

$1.36 million pledged to Eritrean refugees

Japan has pledged $1.36 million in emergency grants to support Eritreans who have suffered as a result of their country's two-year conflict with Ethiopia over a border dispute, the Foreign Ministry said.
LIFE / Travel
Dec 27, 2000

Running on Soviet time

In December 1991, Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian leaders met at a hunting lodge in western Belarus. There they signed the Belavezha Agreement, which had no small historical significance. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was being consigned to the dustbin of history -- the same contemptuous...
JAPAN
Dec 26, 2000

Teen in shop-bombing faces charge of attempted murder

Police on Monday served a fresh arrest warrant on a 17-year-old boy from Tochigi Prefecture arrested earlier this month over an explosion caused by a homemade bomb at a video shop in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward, suspecting him of attempted murder.
JAPAN
Dec 26, 2000

More redress proposed for crime victims

A National Police Agency panel on Monday recommended a steep rise in payments by the government to people victimized by crime and to the next of kin of those killed.
JAPAN
Dec 26, 2000

Foot cultists ordered to pay 150 million yen

The Tokyo District Court on Monday ordered top leaders of Honohana Sampogyo to pay 150 million yen in damages to 31 people who accused the cult of conning them into contributing huge sums of money in the name of religious training.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 25, 2000

Flexibility the key to success of alliance

Foreign policy focuses on change. New leaders, new technologies, new conditions -- all create the need for new policies. Experts are always planning for contingencies -- the crisis to come -- and when they hit it's usually because governments failed to recognize the new realities that created them. ...
JAPAN
Dec 24, 2000

Shrines to be busy over New Year's

Around 89.34 million people are likely to visit major shrines and temples throughout Japan from Jan. 1-3 to wish for a prosperous new year, up 1.2 million from this year, according to a National Police Agency estimate.
JAPAN
Dec 24, 2000

Woman battles unfair rental practices

SHINGU, Hyogo Pref. -- When Suzuko Miura learned in March she would be returned only 34,181 yen of the 98,000 yen deposit she had paid on her son's Kyoto apartment, she refused to go down without a fight.
JAPAN
Dec 24, 2000

Universal leads Kinki tourism boom

OSAKA -- With construction work on Universal Studio Japan nearing completion, expectations are running high that the Hollywood theme park will attract hordes of visitors and revitalize a hitherto drab industrial site.
EDITORIALS
Dec 23, 2000

Another round in Kashmir

It is difficult to get excited about talk of peace in Kashmir. India and Pakistan, the two main parties to the conflict in that troubled region, have tried and abandoned a series of initiatives in recent years. Indeed, India refuses to involve Islamabad in any discussions, and this is despite the fact,...
JAPAN
Dec 23, 2000

Mother's death stands out in Emperor's remembrance

The Emperor said he was greatly supported by the Empress during the "busy and heavy-hearted days" after his mother died in June.
COMMENTARY
Dec 23, 2000

Cabinet reshuffle solves little

Just a week remains until the curtain comes down on the 20th century. We are, in the true sense of the phrase, at the end of a century. Words like fin de siecle and millennium tend to be tossed about, but this year really can only be described as one of end-of-the-century blues.
JAPAN
Dec 22, 2000

Japan to give tsunami info to neighbors

Japan will start in January providing South Korea, North Korea and Russia with information on tsunamis originating in the Sea of Japan, the Meteorological Agency said.
COMMENTARY
Dec 22, 2000

The EU gets ready to grow

LONDON -- The recent European Union summit at Nice seems to have been bad tempered and acrimonious. Yet it eventually, even if only after days of wrangling, ended in an agreement of sorts and the way is now open to the admission of new members from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, leading in due...
EDITORIALS
Dec 21, 2000

Taking it easy on tax reform

A basic agreement reached earlier this month by the three ruling parties on fiscal 2001 tax code changes is a case of being unable to see the forest for the trees. Their myopia distorts an overall tax review and undermines the basic principles of taxation: fairness, neutrality and simplicity.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 21, 2000

Kim, de Gaulle: visionary but vulnerable

SEOUL -- South Korean President Kim Dae Jung returns from Norway and Sweden this week with his Nobel Prize in hand, having secured his place on the world stage. But at home, he faces a nation deeply divided over his "sunshine policy," deeply troubled over its economic prospects and enveloped in a social...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 21, 2000

Success of discount barns should come as no surprise

" 'Tis the season," and while many a crabby gaijin points out that Japan's decidedly commercial spin on Christmas excludes its religious meaning, shopping makes a lot of people happy, so why knock it?
JAPAN
Dec 20, 2000

Jazz singer's choir beats holiday blues

Like strangers, they eye each other cautiously at first -- perhaps even with a trace of suspicion. But the music begins, and instantly the room is transformed into a hall housing a choir of angels. A thunderous applause ensues, some tears fall -- and finally the smiles materialize.
EDITORIALS
Dec 20, 2000

English for the 21st century

One thing that is almost certain not to change in the new century is Japan's long love-hate relationship with the English language. What might change is the degree of interest in learning English among younger Japanese, eager to tap the wealth of information available on the Internet. In fact, much about...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 19, 2000

Wowed by the Lao and Siam

A DIPLOMAT IN SIAM, by Ernest Satow. Introduced and edited by Nigel Brailey. Bangkok: Orchid Press, 2000, 206 pp., with maps and line drawings, $23. In the spring of 1886, Ernest Satow wrote to his friend W.G. Aston in Japan that his recent journey to the Lao states had been "on the whole a pleasant...
BUSINESS
Dec 18, 2000

Popularity polls belie Mori's 'reform plans'

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori launched his new Cabinet on Dec. 5, reshuffling his team to prepare for the reorganization of government ministries and agencies in January.

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