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COMMENTARY
Nov 27, 2000

Japan reconsiders the free trade agreement

Next January, Japan and Singapore will kick off a round of government-to-government negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement. The plans in the works reportedly call for signing the pact by the end of 2001 so that it will take effect in 2002.
CULTURE / Music
Nov 26, 2000

Looking up so tears won't fall

Tragedy crushes some people, twists and mangles them in ways from which they never recover. Others emerge stronger, as if all the pressure had fused to produce a diamond. Violin prodigy Diana Yukawa shows such sparkle.
SOCCER / J. League
Nov 20, 2000

Urawa Reds promoted back to J1

URAWA -- The Urawa Reds fought back after having a man sent off to beat Sagan Tosu 2-1 in extra time Sunday thanks to a cracking 25-meter volley from substitute Masaki Tsuchihashi that earned the Urawa team a return to the J. League's first division.
CULTURE / Music
Nov 14, 2000

Dub mix-meister Sherwood back on a musical roll

Thanks and praise for some of the most challenging and innovative dub music of the '80s and '90s should go to Adrian Sherwood. From his label, On-U Sound, spring the likes of Tackhead, African Head Charge, Bim Sherman and a host of other dub renegades.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Nov 10, 2000

Kobe's FBI investigates improvisation

Improvisation is a tricky business. In mediocre hands, it is interminable at best, masturbatory at worst. But with skilled practitioners, improvisation becomes the haute couture of the music world, each piece tailored on the spot to a particular confluence of musicians, audience, time and place.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Nov 9, 2000

Mets' Payton feels right at home in Japan

"Japan's been very, very good to me," New York Mets center fielder Jay Payton says with a laugh, doing his best impression of Chico Esquela of Saturday Night Live fame. "It's nice because I started the season here and I'm finishing up here."
CULTURE / Art
Nov 5, 2000

Making no bones about corporeality

Jeanne Dunning has made an object called the "blob" -- an amorphous, skin-colored sack filled with a viscous substance that: crushes, oozes out, takes a bath with or sleeps with the subject. She uses it in a wide body of work to investigate the nature of corporeality.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Nov 2, 2000

Essential oils for happiness

In addition to St. John's wort and Bach Flower Remedies, there are other natural means of lifting the spirits.
BASEBALL / MLB
Oct 28, 2000

Takahashi steers Giants to 6-0 win

FUKUOKA -- This is supposed to be the "O-N" Series between the two megastars of yesteryear -- Daiei Hawks manager Sadaharu Oh and Shigeo Nagashima, the Yomiuri Giants' skipper -- but the hero of Game 5 on Friday was a 25-year-old rookie who wasn't even born when the two managers were in their heyday...
LIFE / Food & Drink / NIHONSHU
Oct 27, 2000

'Tis fall, and the brewers gather around their vats

In sync with the new colors and cooler weather of fall, the brewing season begins. Except for a few dozen brewing factories operated by the largest sake-brewing companies, sake is brewed in the colder months, generally from the end of October to the beginning of April. Larger brewers' facilities keep...
JAPAN
Oct 25, 2000

It's a matter of life and death

Staff writer Brain death: It's a phrase we hear every day. In Japan, the public has been exposed to it to the point of numbness through nationwide campaigns for more organ donors. "Brain death is human death, and organ donation saves lives," we are exhorted. In the United States, the world's leading...
CULTURE / Art
Oct 22, 2000

Young talent surfaces at Tokyo Designers Week

If you happened to be in the Aoyama, Shibuya or Daikanyama districts of Tokyo over the last week you may have noticed a brightly patterned bus zooming around. It was transporting whoever was interested in going to the many spots in this area that were exhibiting the work of Japanese and international...
JAPAN
Oct 18, 2000

How dead is dead enough?

The line between life and death has grown increasingly obscure in the United States, the world's most active organ-transplant community, as surgeons grapple with a delicate problem: Organs available for transplant may become less viable if pronouncement of a donor's death is delayed until death is beyond...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Oct 18, 2000

Rootless, wandering nomads on the shifting sands of time

Of all the things I have given my children (bicycles, braces and bald chromosomes) and of all the things I would like to give them (resilience, compassion and an early introduction to Rogaine) nothing seems farther beyond my meager means than the one gift I care to bestow the most:
CULTURE / Music
Oct 17, 2000

Badly drawn but beautifully sketched

Until I saw Damon Gough, the singer-songwriter better known as Badly Drawn Boy, in concert, it never occurred to me that the audience might be there for the performer's amusement rather than the other way around. At one point, Gough started handing out roses to women in the front row while he serenaded...
CULTURE / Art
Oct 15, 2000

Dry, irreverent, Dutch design booms

The Dutch have been irreverent for years, but now the world is catching on to their specific kind of creative daring -- Rem Koolhaas has a stranglehold on architecture, Droog design leads in product design and nothing could be cooler than Victor and Rolf in fashion or the man who nurtured the scene,...
COMMUNITY
Oct 12, 2000

Nagano microbrewer takes eco-friendly path

Remember that book, "100 Simple Things You Can Do To Save The Earth?" Here is the 101st: Head out to Kurohime in Nagano Prefecture. At the foot of Mount Kurohime you'll find Shinano Brewery. Walk into the woody Chestnuts Pub, order one of their English-style beers and you'll be partaking in a unique...
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Oct 12, 2000

Bunny thrives in Predators' den

Yujiro Nakajimaya, captain of the Kokudo Bunnies and a member of Japan's national team, is not your average Japanese professional hockey player. In four teenage years spent at Notre Dame College, a high school in Wilcox, Saskatchewan, the Hokkaido native gained more than just a fluent command of English....
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 6, 2000

Strange thing happened while crossing the bridge

Strange things, collaborations. Much admired by the devout acolytes of grant-dispensing foundations in the interests of "crossing cultures" and "mutual understanding," these unfortunate buzz phrases have thrown together more than a few unwieldy alliances in the fields of dance and theater.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Oct 5, 2000

Japan must build on Takahashi's golden moment

She arrived in Sydney an athlete and returned to Japan an icon.
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Oct 4, 2000

The parochial charm of Carmel

Rough Guide guidebooks are some of the best on the store shelf: thorough, entertaining and with excellent briefings on things historical, political and environmental. By and large we, and the Rough Guides, think alike.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 30, 2000

Vietnam proves a reluctant reformer

CAMBRIDGE, England -- Foreign investors have not been showing any confidence in Vietnam's Doi Moi (liberalization) program recently. Socialist market economics, Vietnamese-style, have not proved as attractive as the Chinese version. After the initial euphoria of the early 1990s, when foreign companies...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 30, 2000

A final act for Milosevic?

LONDON -- "We are talking about political fraud and blatant stealing of votes," said Yugoslav opposition leader Vojislav Kostunica Sept. 26, after it was announced that he had not defeated Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic in the first round of the presidential election on Sunday. "The victory is...
COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE
Sep 23, 2000

The tide turns and Gore seizes the moment

In political campaigns, when things go well, they really roll. When things sour, nothing seems to work.
CULTURE / Books
Sep 19, 2000

Poetry that brings countries together

THE WEATHER IN JAPAN, by Michael Longley. Jonathan Cape, 2000, 70 pp., 8 British pounds. HAY, by Paul MULDOON. Faber & Faber, 140 pp., 7.99 British pounds. A SMELL OF FISH, by Matthew Sweeney. Jonathan Cape, 2000, 64 pp., 8 British pounds. Irland and Japan: two countries at the far extremities of the...
JAPAN
Sep 16, 2000

OECD calls for life-long learning

Academic achievement was the goal of Japan's exam-oriented education system when life-time employment was intact.
EDITORIALS
Sep 14, 2000

What did Russia want?

The arrest last Friday of a Maritime Self-Defense Force officer on suspicion of spying for Russia raises the puzzling question: How is it that Moscow needed, or seemed to need, military secrets from Japan in the post-Cold War period, particularly at a time when relations between the two nations are improving?...
LIFE / Food & Drink / NIHONSHU
Sep 14, 2000

Hatsu-nomikiri still a summer ritual for brewers

Sake breweries are usually fairly quiet in the summer. Except for the few large breweries where brewing continues all year, most places are dark and quiet and empty, as the brewers themselves have gone home for the summer. Traditionally, the kurabito (brewers) traveled great distances from their rural...
JAPAN
Sep 12, 2000

Smiling seen as key to economy

Make people laugh -- that should make the economy better and lead to a bright future for Japan, according to Masao Kimura, board director of the Osaka-based major entertainment firm Yoshimoto Kogyo Co.

Longform

A sinkhole in Yashio, which emerged in January, was triggered by a ruptured, aging sewer pipe. Authorities worry that similar sections of infrastructure across the country are also at risk of corrosion.
That sinking feeling: Japan’s aging sewers are an infrastructure time bomb