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JAPAN
Jun 9, 1999

Maki, others awarded Praemium Imperiale

The Japan Art Association on Wednesday announced this year's winners of its Praemium Imperiale awards, including Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki, who is widely known for his innovative and modern style.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Jun 9, 1999

High praise

A woman writes that last year she saw several subway advertisements for Hunter-Douglas window blinds and asks if I can find the company's phone number. She complains that local services are extremely expensive and leave a lot to be desired. Recently, for example, she contracted for similar work but as...
LIFE / Travel
Jun 9, 1999

The business of international adoption

At home in rural Connecticut, with his 3-year-old son Vlad playing beside him, Jim Altman is checking to see how many hits he's gotten on his Web site. Two years after adopting Vlad from a Russian orphanage, Altman is using the Internet to wage a propaganda war against the agency he claims used his money...
JAPAN
Jun 9, 1999

Adviser sees extra budget around summer's end

The government should decide on a supplementary budget within a month or two, a veteran politician and economic adviser to Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi said Wednesday.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 8, 1999

The darkest shores of the soul

SHIPWRECKS, by Akira Yoshimura, translated by Mark Ealey. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1996, 180 pp., $21. Though Akira Yoshimura, born in 1927, is the author of some 20 novels, this is the first to be translated into English. Perhaps the reason for the delay is that he is better known as a historian...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 8, 1999

The 'nobody' who changed Japan

RYOMA: Life of a Renaissance Samurai, by Romulus Hillsborough. Ridgeback Press, San Francisco, 1999, 614 pages, $40 (cloth). Every country needs its heroes. Unfortunately, the great Japanese hero seems to have been a casualty of World War II. To this day, Japan tends to look all the way back to the Edo...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 8, 1999

Recovery hinges on fast action

Following U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's comments suggesting a change in U.S. monetary policy, the surging U.S. stock market has apparently entered an adjustment phase. To prevent the booming U.S. economy from overheating, it is necessary to fine-tune monetary policy.
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 5, 1999

No heart of gold in Brecht's cold vision

Bertolt Brecht started considering the qualities of a good person in 1939 just before the outbreak of World War II. In all, it took him the best part of three years to come up with his finished product dealing with thistheme: "The Good Person of Setzuan," a play in which he deals with the idea that in...
EDITORIALS
Jun 3, 1999

A new world for Japanese business

The latest earnings reports from Japanese corporations listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange provide a running commentary on their predicament. Reflecting a drawn-out recession, both sales and profits plunged in the year to March 1999 (fiscal 1998). On average, sales in all industries except financial services...
JAPAN
Jun 3, 1999

Immigrants: Foreign laborers attempt to organize

First of two parts
EDITORIALS
Jun 2, 1999

Cautious optimism on Pyongyang

U.S. presidential envoy William J. Perry returned from his visit to North Korea last week with the assessment that the North Koreans will "maintain and respect" their 1994 agreement not to develop nuclear weapons. The top government and military officials he met in Pyongyang reportedly pledged to continue...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 2, 1999

France's Corsican question

PARIS -- "France," according to one of its best-known poets and political thinkers, Paul Valery, "is the most heterogeneous country that ever existed." The present tragedy in Kosovo makes this sound hyperbolic, yet there is an element of truth in it. The French who live on the shores of the Mediterranean,...
JAPAN
Jun 2, 1999

Cost, doubts mean rousing reception unlikely for pill

and MAYUMI NEGISHI Staff writers
LIFE / Travel
Jun 2, 1999

Learning through landscapes

ARBORFIELD CROSS, England -- When Susan Humphries was appointed head of the Coombes Infant School in Arborfield Cross, Surrey, an hour's drive from London, it was doubtless a satisfying moment in career terms. A school of her own at last. What she did not realize, and is likely to dismiss modestly today,...
JAPAN
May 31, 1999

Prange exhibit recalls Occupation's censorship

Staff writer
COMMENTARY / World
May 31, 1999

A de facto treaty revision

The Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, signed in 1951, is understood to be an arrangement whereby the United States, in exchange for the use of military bases in Japan, is committed to the rescue of this nation in the event of external aggression. Japan, with its "war-renouncing" Constitution, follows a policy...
COMMUNITY
May 27, 1999

Tokyo market's quiet riot of color

Beneath cascades of purple orchids, ferns uncoil like emerald snakes. Tokyo's wholesale flower market is a quiet riot of color.
LIFE / Travel
May 27, 1999

Up, up and away in clear Saipan

A Japan Airlines Boeing 747 passed in front of me as I was taxiing to the runway in my rented Cessna 172. "Saipan Tower. 230. Request takeoff clearance," I said, trying to sound as if I had been doing this all my life.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
May 27, 1999

High adventure

Have you decided where you are going to spend New Year's Eve? It should be someplace where you wouldn't mind staying if any of our normal, every day support systems should fail. One unconcerned gentleman has made reservations for a flight over Antarctica. Experts will be on board the 747 to explain about...
JAPAN
May 27, 1999

Hotline to hear gripes on smoking

OSAKA -- Prior to World No-Smoking Day on Monday, a citizens' group here will open a one-day telephone hotline Saturday for people troubled by tobacco smoke.
ENVIRONMENT / GARDENING FOR ALL
May 27, 1999

Respect for the forest's elders

The Hokkaido University Botanic Garden is situated right in the heart of Sapporo, within easy reach of Sapporo Station. I really love to see trees grown at their best, and for those of you who feel the same, a visit to this garden is essential.
LIFE / Food & Drink / KISSA KULTUR
May 27, 1999

Old and new blended perfectly at Otani

A pebble's throw away from the Akasaka Mitsuke subway station, the Hotel New Otani (which happens to be in the midst of celebrating 35 years as one of Tokyo's premier hotels) might just offer the solution to savvy travelers' "been there, done that" blues.
EDITORIALS
May 26, 1999

The IMF is called to account

The International Monetary Fund has already received a lot of flak from private experts for giving the wrong advice to troubled Asian economies. Another analysis to that effect, therefore, is nothing new. What is new -- and significant -- is that the Japanese government, in an official report, has now...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
May 26, 1999

Privacy? Get over it

In one of those snide comments that only people worth hundreds of millions of dollars are capable of making with any credibility, Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, dismissed the whole privacy controversy with: "Get over it.
JAPAN
May 25, 1999

Lower House starts tackling administrative reform

The Lower House entered substantive debate Tuesday on two sets of bills designed to reorganize the central government and decentralize state powers, underlining the need to create a new government to meet the changing needs of society.
EDITORIALS
May 24, 1999

The world's second oldest profession

W ith a U.S. congressional committee poised to release a report on alleged Chinese spying at U.S. nuclear facilities, the political furor in Washington over the theft of U.S. military secrets is certain to escalate, and could cause serious political repercussions in the United States and in its foreign...
JAPAN
May 24, 1999

Ishihara firing from hip at status quo

Staff writer
EDITORIALS
May 22, 1999

Red alert for the Loonies

There was gloomy news last week in the sphere of international politics -- so gloomy, in fact, that had it not been for Israel's spirited rejection of its most unhelpful prime minister ever, Benjamin ("Turn-the-clock-back Bibi") Netanyahu, monitors of social progress everywhere would now be inconsolable....
JAPAN
May 21, 1999

New runway to come up short; soccer deadline eyed

Staff writer
JAPAN
May 20, 1999

Chiba considers shorter runway

Chiba Prefecture showed understanding Thursday toward the Transport Ministry's tentative plan to build a shorter runway at Narita airport, an alternative to the second runway stalled by opposition from landowners.

Longform

Sumadori Bar on Shibuya Ward's main Center Gai street targets young customers who prefer low-alcohol drinks or abstain altogether.
Rethinking that second drink: Japan’s Gen Z gets ‘sober curious’