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CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
May 2, 2000

Punkers united will never be divided

It's three in the morning at the livehouse Gig-Antic in Shibuya and as the girl band launches into the first song a skinhead leaps on stage, screams "Manchester United" into a mike and dives headfirst into the mosh pit. He's caught by a studded-leather-clad kid with a yellow mohawk, a skate-punk in baggy...
EDITORIALS
May 1, 2000

The prime minister's empty chair

Four weeks after former Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi was hospitalized with a stroke on April 2, the administration headed by new Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, former secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party, appears to be functioning in a business-as-usual manner. In the past month, however, government...
LIFE / Travel
May 1, 2000

Spotting spots at cheetah breeding center

PELINDABA, South Africa -- Grrrr . . . grrrr . . . grrr . . . I couldn't help feeling a little nervous while hoping that the deep dog-growl sound emanating from the magnificent cheetah under my sweaty palm was actually a purr. Luckily for me, it was.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 29, 2000

Containing authoritarianism in Myanmar

The answer to Myanmar's problems is obvious: The sooner the will of the majority of its people is respected, the better for all concerned in the country, the region and beyond.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 25, 2000

Salute to a life of honesty, humanity and hard work

A SUMMER FOR A LIFETIME: The Life and Times of George I. Purdy, as told to Thomas Caldwell. Foreword by Michael J. Mansfield. Lost Coast Press, 2000, 144 pp., $24.95. When I was a librarian I was assigned to inventory a business biography collection. I didn't expect to find much excitement in the stacks,...
CULTURE / Books
Apr 25, 2000

Return to Ishiguro's fog-bound world

WHEN WE WERE ORPHANS, by Kazuo Ishiguro. London: Faber & Faber, 313 pp., 16.99 British pounds. Ever since "A Pale View of Hills" (1982), Kazuo Ishiguro has been playing games with his readers' minds. Some people find this infuriating, some fascinating, as the mixed reception accorded his novels...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Apr 23, 2000

Japan as No. 1 (in being bullied by U.S.)

With a refreshing bit of journalistic acuity, the USA Today reporter James Cox has reminded me how bizarre the U.S. attitude toward Japan has become. Under the headline, "U.S. bullies Japan like no other nation," Cox noted the astonishing extent of U.S. high-handed meddlesomeness with Japan, suggesting...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 22, 2000

Breakthrough or breakdown?

Last week's dramatic announcement of an inter-Korean summit provides an opportunity to test the momentum created by North Korea's pragmatic attempt to develop new relationships with the outside world. South Korean President Kim Dae Jung's "sunshine" policy has supported Pyongyang's own apparent efforts...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Apr 19, 2000

E-nough already

Ahh, a blast of sanity from Scandinavia. The Swedish government recently announced that the Patent and Registration Office would no longer allow companies to register with the suffix .com in their names. And no se., www. or @ marks either.
ENVIRONMENT
Apr 17, 2000

Germinating a new attitude toward brown rice

A new way of eating rice may revolutionize the Japanese diet in the next century.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 14, 2000

Sharif's fate sets stage for odd political realignments

NEW DELHI -- Pakistan's ousted prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, is now perhaps both happy and unhappy. Happy that his country's military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has spared his life. Yet unhappy, because the 25-year imprisonment handed him -- for trying to prevent Musharraf's plane from landing...
COMMUNITY
Apr 13, 2000

Home is where the condo is

Mari Ishiyama, a 38-year-old secretary at a foreign bank, had been looking for an apartment for several years, but always struck out when it came to the final lottery (a standard real-estate practice to decide who can purchase a unit in a building when there are too many prospective buyers). "My friends...
MULTIMEDIA / SPORTS SCOPE
Apr 13, 2000

10 questions for the man from Slovakia

One of the pluses of hanging around the press box at soccer matches is never knowing who you're going to bump into. It might be a manager or player, a wife, a girlfriend, a TV star, an old friend, anybody really. More often than not you see a strange face and people whisper, "Who's that?" or "Isn't that...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 13, 2000

Tiny Qatar brings freedom of the press to the Arab world

QATAR -- On a recent visit to Qatar, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak wanted to satisfy his curiosity about something bothering him and most other Arab rulers. It was past midnight when he descended unannounced on the Jazeera TV station. His surprise was hardly less than that of staff still around at...
COMMUNITY
Apr 13, 2000

Striving to fulfill a real whale of a task

FUKUOKA -- Each year during the colder months (about December to February) a variety of whales pass northern Kyushu on their way south to warmer waters and richer feeding grounds, following the Tsushima Warm Current down from Okhotsk along Japan's west coast. Larger whales tend to trail the Pacific Ocean...
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Apr 13, 2000

Bangkok's never too far away

You can't get authentic Thai food in Tokyo south of Kabukicho -- at least that's what the conventional wisdom would have us believe. Indeed, as with any such sweeping generalization, there's a kernel of truth to it -- as long as what you're after is hawker food that's rough but ever ready, gentle on...
LIFE / Food & Drink / NIHONSHU
Apr 13, 2000

Fish, sake and crowds come together at Uoshin

Like the indigenous beverages of most countries, sake developed along with its national cuisine. Indeed, there are great differences in Japanese cuisine from region to region, small country though Japan may be, and these differences are reflected in the subtle differences in the sake.
COMMENTARY
Apr 11, 2000

Hot air about the carbon tax

The debate on the carbon tax is heating up again after a lapse of two and a half years. Before the 1997 Kyoto conference on climate change, I proposed that Japan introduce this environmental tax, following Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands. However, the Ministry of International Trade...
COMMUNITY
Apr 7, 2000

'Parasite singles': problem or victims?

Recently much attention is being paid in Japan to the so-called "parasite singles," grown children in their 20s and 30s who have left school and gotten jobs but are still unmarried and living at home with their parents.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 6, 2000

Commercial success -- and cultural

In advertising, success doesn't always mean the same thing to everyone involved. For the client, it means increased sales of his product, while for the copywriter it means cultural impact, and though there's nothing that says these two successes can't coincide, there's also nothing that says they have...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Apr 5, 2000

Howai notto aborisshu katakana?

According to a survey from late last year, over 80 percent of the Japanese population has some difficulty reading katakana, the syllabary specially used for foreign terms.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 4, 2000

Rationales for new whaling weak

Whaling nations are again girding for the battle to resume industrial whaling ahead of the meeting this spring of the two bodies that could lift the international moratorium on industrial whaling -- the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and the International Whaling Commission....
COMMUNITY
Apr 4, 2000

Date club ads turn green Sendai pink with anger

SENDAI, Miyagi Pref. -- "Dial this number for beautiful office ladies." "Ring up for perky college coeds."
COMMENTARY
Apr 3, 2000

Partial reform will not work

The Japanese-language version of "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations," by David Landes, professor emeritus of history and economics at Harvard University, has been published. The translator of the book, Keio University Professor Heizo Takenaka, notes that gaps are widening between winners and losers in...
LIFE / Travel
Apr 3, 2000

Up close and personal with wildlife

HOEDSPRUIT, South Africa -- There are lots of animals inside fenced enclosures at Moholoholo Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre, but the education in wildlife one gets here is very different from what one gets at a zoo. A few hours visiting with the very knowledgeable and dedicated staff and the animals...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Apr 2, 2000

Time traveling

There have been many observations about nostalgia. Nostalgia's not what it used to be, There's no "stalgia" like nostalgia -- but nostalgia is where I am today. I have just returned from three weeks in California, and it is a nostalgia mix, what I have left behind, what I have gained, from living so...
CULTURE / Art
Apr 2, 2000

Parisian revolution in graphic art

Fashionable and pretty, a shapely young woman lifts her long skirts above the pavement, stranded by puddles of rain. In 1893 it was irresistible, and on the strength of this one print alone a hundred middle-class Parisians bought the first issue of l'Estampe originale. This was a novel project by the...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 1, 2000

Kim Dae Jung faces a crucial election

If South Korean parliamentary elections were to be held tomorrow instead of April 13, the party of President Kim Dae Jung would suffer a rude defeat, according to opinion polls.
JAPAN
Mar 31, 2000

Tokai disaster no closer to resolution

Many things have been said about last September's fatal nuclear accident at the JCO Co. uranium processing plant in Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture.
BASEBALL / MLB
Mar 30, 2000

Aaron says time is right for 'real' World Series

It's been more than a quarter of a century now since he surpassed baseball's most hallowed record, but Hank Aaron still carries a big stick when it comes to his thoughts on the future of the game.

Longform

An illustration features the Japanese signs for "ganbare" (good luck) and the Deaflympics, which will be held between Nov. 15 and 26.
A century of Deaf sport finds its moment in Tokyo