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JAPAN
Jun 30, 2001

More elderly than there are young

The number of people aged 65 or older in Japan has topped those in the youngest age bracket for the first time since the national census was launched in 1920, the government said Friday in a preliminary report.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 26, 2001

Is Japan moving to the right?

Recently, I had the opportunity to participate in a discussion with U.S. experts on Asian problems. Several of the U.S. participants stated that the new junior high-school history textbook issued by Fuso Publishing Co. was a "swing to the right." Since Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka has said publicly...
JAPAN / OF SOUND MIND
Jun 23, 2001

Crime suspects' mental state rarely checked deeply

Whenever people with psychological problems are arrested for brutal crimes, public attention focuses on whether they can be held criminally liable.
JAPAN / OF SOUND MIND
Jun 22, 2001

Ikeda massacre puts judicial psychiatry in spotlight

The June 8 killing of eight children by a knife-wielding man at an Osaka elementary school has inevitably rekindled the old debate about whether — and how much — judicial authorities should be able to intervene when dealing with mental patients accused of committing serious crimes.
CULTURE / Music / MUSIC NOMAD
Jun 10, 2001

A daughter of Madagascar traces a path home to Asia

"I feel at home in Asia," said Hanitra, leader of the group Tarika, during a recent visit to Tokyo. "Africa is more foreign to me."
SOCCER / World cup
Jun 7, 2001

Kamamoto learns to live with cohosting

Kunishige Kamamoto was the Hidetoshi Nakata or the Kazu Miura of his day.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jun 3, 2001

Lessons in crisis mismanagement

All my life I have been behind the times. I wore my bell-bottoms for years after the fashion had died, and in fact only abandoned them after they had shrunk up and become sort of bell-knickers.
CULTURE / Books
May 13, 2001

When the nightmare broke through: "Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche"

UNDERGROUND: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche, by Haruki Murakami. Translated by Alfred Birnbaum and Philip Gabriel. Random House, Vintage International; 366 pp., $14.
BUSINESS
May 4, 2001

Disabled drivers call for more specialized options

With the nation's population aging rapidly and disabled people leading more active lives, Japanese automakers have turned much of their attention to introducing specially designed "welfare vehicles" in recent years.
JAPAN
May 4, 2001

Humanitarian groups yet to hit their stride

Staff Writer When the Diet was immersed in heated debate in 1992 over whether to send Self-Defense Forces troops to Cambodia for U.N. peacekeeping operations, Toshihiro Shimizu thought that something very important was missing from the discussions.
LIFE / Travel
May 1, 2001

The end of a British institution?

LONDON -- The sleekly dressed man brandishing the Koran and standing on an upturned crate is getting very worked up. He points at a man in the crowd and shouts a retort, furious.
EDITORIALS
Apr 29, 2001

Going somewhere in Golden Week?

If it's Golden Week, it must be time to dust off those travel statistics again. Every year, government and tourist-industry number-crunchers tell us the score on the number of Japanese traveling abroad in the madcap first week of May, as opposed to those who travel inside Japan or, most sensibly of all,...
JAPAN
Apr 29, 2001

Technology obscuring Japan's culture, calligrapher believes

For many contemporary Japanese -- both children and adults alike -- everyday life is becoming unthinkable without personal computers and cellular phones.
COMMUNITY
Apr 29, 2001

Gimme shelter: animals in need

Picking out an adorable puppy from a pet-shop window, plunking one's money down and carrying the furry bundle home is fun. It's easy. It's gratifying. Literally warm and fuzzy, it's a feel-good situation.
CULTURE / Art
Apr 22, 2001

You will read this -- now

Tokyo recently witnessed the latest stage of an arresting visual campaign -- the sudden appearance around town of black, white and red posters and stickers featuring the iconographic face of pro-wrestler Andre the Giant and the ominous message "Obey" printed below.
EDITORIALS
Apr 15, 2001

Prepare now for demographic changes

The rapid aging of Japan's population, combined with a steady decline in the birthrate, makes it certain that the productive-age population will begin to fall sharply in the not-so-distant future. As a result, the entire population will also start shrinking, making it necessary to redesign the economic...
COMMUNITY
Apr 15, 2001

A yen for thrift

There was a time when Japan prided itself on its thriftiness. Hard times after World War II produced the need to save money and cut every corner. Children were taught that each grain of rice was sacred and not to be wasted. Sardines and mackerel were standard fare, beef reserved only for special occasions....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 7, 2001

Paper and gold yield a life

PAPER SON: One Man's Story, by Tung Pok Chin, with Winifred C. Chin, with an introduction by K. Scott Wong. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000, pp. 184, 15 b/w photos, $15.96. In this account of his tribulations and triumphs in Gold Mountain (the Chinese immigrant's euphemism for the United...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 25, 2001

Hot rod 'tribes' roar into the night

It's 2:30 a.m. on a Friday night outside the Shibaura parking area, a thin strip of concrete and pavement stuck to a pillar under the belly of Tokyo's Rainbow Bridge. There's a flash of red taillights as vehicles speed in. New arrivals are greeted by leather-clad bikers revving their engines, spitting...
EDITORIALS
Mar 6, 2001

The horns of a dilemma

At first glance, it looks like humanitarianism on the cheap: Send the hundreds of tons of beef that are being discarded in Germany to North Korea, where millions of people are reportedly on the brink of starvation. But it is not that simple: Germany's cattle are being killed because they might have bovine...
JAPAN / BENCH REFORM
Feb 28, 2001

Fight gets under way to increase public's access to legal aid

Lawyer Masaki Kunihiro had never dreamed his life would be so busy in the small city of Hamada, Shimane Prefecture.
JAPAN
Feb 15, 2001

Politicians test online waters for votes

Staff writer In a country where nearly 30 million people out of the 120 million population use the Internet, about 400 out of 732 Diet members have their own Web site.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 7, 2001

Few lessons for Wahid in Estrada's fate

There are a growing number of students on the streets of Jakarta who are hoping to do to Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid what was done last month to Philippine President Joseph Estrada: depose him through the deployment of people power.
EDITORIALS
Feb 4, 2001

Ginger, the new IT girl

Among the many things for which whiz-bang American inventor Dean Kamen is famous is an automated wheelchair that can ride over uneven ground and climb stairs. That particular breakthrough device was code-named "Fred." Now, as everyone this side of the grave must have heard, there is also "Ginger." Some...
JAPAN
Feb 4, 2001

CD-ROMs aid the visually impaired

KYOTO -- Yuko Shiomi, a professional narrator with the radio station KBS Kyoto, speaks into a microphone. Her role is that of "Kakuunsai," a fictional character depicting a distinguished calligrapher.
JAPAN
Feb 4, 2001

CD-ROMs aid the visually impaired

KYOTO -- Yuko Shiomi, a professional narrator with the radio station KBS Kyoto, speaks into a microphone. Her role is that of "Kakuunsai," a fictional character depicting a distinguished calligrapher.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

Can peace be globalized in the 21st century?

The 20th century is usually referred to as a century of "war and revolution" that brought unprecedented bloodshed and misery. While this is true, the description is not sufficiently accurate. During the religious wars of the 17th century, for example, Germany, as the main battlefield, lost an estimated...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

Progress alone won't be enough

IT, shorthand for information technology, was a buzzword in Japan in 2000. Never before had computers and the Internet caused such a furor in the media. To be sure, IT had created a boom several times in the past, but its impact had been confined to the corporate sector. In contrast, the latest boom...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

Wanted: a leadership strategy

Japan has stepped into the 21st century under not-so-comfortable political circumstances. Public approval ratings for the Cabinet of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori remain extremely low, and half of the nation's voters say they have no political party to support. While the government has launched one stimulus...

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