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EDITORIALS
Oct 6, 2000

China's war on faith

Faith may be a private matter, but the Chinese government takes no chances. The Chinese Constitution guarantees every citizen the freedom to practice whatever religion he or she chooses. In practice, however, every religion has to subordinate itself to the Chinese Communist Party. The power holders in...
COMMUNITY
Oct 5, 2000

Vanity, thy name is . . . Vince?

SAN FRANCISCO -- Clairol, the staid manufacturer of women's hair dyes, tried something new this year: It went after kids.
JAPAN
Oct 5, 2000

Cancer linked to cigarettes, drinks, inertia

Heavy smokers and heavy drinkers who do little exercise are five to six times more likely to develop cancer than healthy people who exercise every day, according to a recent study.
COMMENTARY
Oct 5, 2000

No rush to grant foreigners voting rights

A major domestic political debate is brewing over whether non-Japanese permanent residents should be granted the right to vote in local elections of prefectural governors, prefectural legislators, and chiefs and council members of lower local administrative entities. Those foreigners will still be ineligible...
JAPAN
Oct 5, 2000

Food aid to North Korea gains approval

A key Liberal Democratic Party panel approved a plan Wednesday to send 500,000 tons of rice as food aid to North Korea, effectively paving the way for an aid program the government hopes will add impetus to normalization talks.
JAPAN
Oct 5, 2000

Support rate for Mori up marginally to 33.4%

The public approval rate for Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's administration is up 1 percent to 33.4 percent but remains far below his disapproval rate of 58.2 percent, according to a Kyodo News poll released Wednesday.
MORE SPORTS
Oct 5, 2000

Seles, Serena pass first tests at Toyota Princess Cup tennis

Monica Seles and Serena Williams, the first and second seeds, respectively, who both had byes in the first round, cruised through their first tests at the Toyota Princess Cup on Wednesday to advance to the quarterfinals.
OLYMPICS
Oct 3, 2000

Time for Japan to look forward

SYDNEY -- Nippon, Nippon, Nippon! Banzai!
JAPAN
Oct 3, 2000

Crime victims to gain access to records

The government said Monday it will legally guarantee the rights of people victimized by crimes to view court records and voice their feelings during hearings starting on Nov. 1, officials said.
JAPAN
Oct 3, 2000

Museum buffs image of newspapers

YOKOHAMA -- A museum visit is not likely to raise the pulse rates of children these days, and a museum dedicated to newspapers seems certain to draw only yawns.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 3, 2000

Diners, look before you eat

AT THE JAPANESE TABLE, by Richard Hosking. Images of Asia. Oxford University Press, 2000, 70 pp., 22 color plates, 19 b/w, unpriced. THE ESSENCE OF JAPANESE CUISINE: An Essay on Food and Culture, by Michael Ashkenazi and Jeanne Jacob. Richmond/Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000, 252 pp., 11 b/w photos, 45 British...
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Oct 3, 2000

We've got a personality crisis

If you go to a live event you don't just want to listen to music, you want to witness a show, right? You want the people on stage to be rock stars for the night. And you want to be swept away on a flood of shared adrenalin.
OLYMPICS
Oct 2, 2000

Olympics end -- the party begins

SYDNEY -- The world's premier sporting carnival drew to a close in an extravaganza of sight and sound Sunday as the Olympic host city prepared to party the night away to bid farewell to the last Summer Games of the 20th Century.
COMMENTARY
Oct 2, 2000

Is drug-price cure worse than the disease?

WASHINGTON -- Election years in the United States are good for political consultants but bad for everyone else. Especially the average citizen who bears the brunt of Washington-style "reform."
EDITORIALS
Oct 1, 2000

Life after the Olympics

What do we do now with our evenings and weekends? For two happy, mindless weeks, we have flopped down in front of the TV any spare minute we had, just to get our daily fix of the big show going on in Sydney. Cynicism, the pre-Games attitude du jour, went out the window the second the teams entered the...
JAPAN
Oct 1, 2000

Shelter plan for park's homeless hit

OSAKA -- A municipal government plan to build temporary shelters for homeless people living in a park that will host next year's East Asian Games has received heated criticism from area residents, who have gathered over 22,000 signatures in protest.
CULTURE / Art
Oct 1, 2000

Stringing a line through fashion and art

The 21st century in Tokyo is seeing a great migration of disciplines from one sphere into another. Fashion designers are collaborating with artists and exhibiting in galleries. Artists are collaborating with designers and exhibiting in shops.
EDITORIALS
Sep 30, 2000

Denmark says 'No, thank you'

The Danish people voted this week against adopting the euro. With nearly 90 percent of eligible voters going to the polls, Denmark rejected the European Union's single currency by a narrow 53-47 margin. The result is a bitter disappointment for the country's political and business establishment, which...
JAPAN
Sep 30, 2000

Nation remains at risk to nuclear disaster

A year after Japan's worst nuclear power disaster struck the village of Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, a nuclear safety critic said Friday that sufficient measures have yet to be taken to prevent a similar accident from occurring.
CULTURE / Books
Sep 30, 2000

Thomas Wolfe: 20th-century America's warped looking glass

"No one has ever written any books about America -- I mean the real America," he wrote to a friend in 1931.
COMMENTARY
Sep 30, 2000

Russian contempt for Japan nothing new

I have never been able to feel any sense of affinity with the political leaders of Russia, let alone those of the former Soviet Union. The reason why may be illustrated by the following incident, which occurred when Nikita Khrushchev was the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and head of...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 30, 2000

Time to reassess the nuclear-energy option

Safety and cost competitiveness: These two factors are clearly incompatible when it comes to nuclear energy. Yet these were some of the key words used by the government and the nuclear industry to promote nuclear energy.
JAPAN
Sep 28, 2000

Pollution victims protest in Tokyo at annual rally

Some 750 people who have either been physically harmed by environmental pollution or have lost relatives to pollution-related diseases, gathered for their 25th annual rally Wednesday in Tokyo's Hibiya Park.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 28, 2000

Japan's nonprofits carve out a space of their own

When the Nature Conservancy's Lori Forman addressed the College Women's Association of Japan at a luncheon earlier this year, the topic was supposed to be nongovernmental organizations in Japan. But instead of providing a nuanced description of Japan's not-for-profit movement, Forman seemed more interested...
EDITORIALS
Sep 27, 2000

Solving problems in Prague

Economic policymakers are gathered in Prague this week to make sense of the international economy. The mood is mixed, and rightly so. While the global economy has recovered from the scare of 1998 and has registered strong growth ever since, the recovery is fragile. It could be derailed by, say, high...
JAPAN
Sep 27, 2000

Snow Brand to cut 1,300 jobs, form alliance with Nestle

Snow Brand Milk Products Co., which was embroiled in a massive food-poisoning scandal this summer, unveiled a major restructuring plan Tuesday that includes cutting 1,300 jobs -- 20 percent of its workforce -- within 21/2 years and closing its Osaka plant.
JAPAN
Sep 27, 2000

Mori backs change in voting system

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori on Tuesday threw his support behind a proposal to change the electoral system for proportional representation seats in the House of Councilors before the next election.
JAPAN
Sep 26, 2000

Petition against wiretapping law submitted to Diet

A civic group aiming to abolish a new wiretapping law on Monday submitted to the House of Representatives a petition with 19,730 signatures of people opposing the law.
CULTURE / Music / MUSIC NOMAD
Sep 26, 2000

Voices of power and purity lilting out of Africa

I seem to see certain of my favorite African musicians whenever I take a trip away from Japan. I have now seen Senegal's Cheikh Lo in several European cities and in Co^te d'Ivoire, and am about to see him again at a festival in South Africa.

Longform

Ichiro Suzuki, one of the most iconic players in NPB and MLB history, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the vote.
With Hall of Fame induction, Ichiro makes himself heard loud and clear