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BUSINESS
Feb 20, 2001

Firms develop chip interface allowing cellphone video transmission

Toshiba Corp. and Infineon Technologies AG, a leading German semiconductor and system solution company, have jointly developed an interface between their microchips that enables the transmission, decoding and encoding of video to next-generation dual-mode cellular phones, Toshiba said Monday.
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Feb 20, 2001

Tap in to Rammstein

There are Germans everywhere. You can spot them a mile off. The guys are tall with crap haircuts and the girls are blonde with long necks, and both sexes have finely chiseled features like they've just been cut out of marble. And I suddenly think of Hitler, who for all his love of Aryan perfection was...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 20, 2001

Charting the landscape of Japan's foreign affairs

JAPANESE FOREIGN POLICY TODAY, edited by Inoguchi Takashi and Purnendra Jain. New York: Palgrave, 2000, 316 pp. $59.95 (cloth). This collection of studies on Japan's foreign policy is edited by Takashi Inoguchi, professor of political science at the Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo,...
CULTURE / Art
Feb 17, 2001

Ukiyo-e treasures make brief return

The Baur Collection of ukiyo-e woodcuts by several of Japan's top masters is this country's own version of the Elgin Marbles. Perhaps this is why the 200 works are only on display so briefly. If you want to see these excellent examples of print art in their homeland, you have only a short time.
JAPAN
Feb 16, 2001

Court upholds ban on publishing novel

The Tokyo High Court on Thursday upheld a lower court ruling ordering prizewinning novelist Miri Yuu and publisher Shinchosha Co. to halt publication of a short novel and pay 1.3 million yen to a former friend of Yuu's for violating her privacy.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 15, 2001

NTT's still calling all the shots

As is apparent to anyone who owns a computer in Japan, the government's stated aim of making the nation an IT powerhouse will come to nothing until telecommunications connection fees become more rational.
BUSINESS
Feb 14, 2001

LDP panel approves bill on pensions

A panel of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party gave the go-ahead Tuesday to a government bill designed to drastically reform Japan's corporate pension system with an eye to protecting employees' rights to receive pension benefits.
JAPAN
Feb 11, 2001

Cartoon-inspired spinning tops enjoy boom

OSAKA -- A game of spinning tops called beyblade inspired by a television cartoon series launched earlier this year is enjoying huge popularity among Japanese children, according to the tops' maker.
JAPAN
Feb 11, 2001

Cartoon-inspired spinning tops enjoy boom

OSAKA -- A game of spinning tops called beyblade inspired by a television cartoon series launched earlier this year is enjoying huge popularity among Japanese children, according to the tops' maker.
JAPAN / STAGING A COMEBACK
Feb 7, 2001

LDP still kowtows to vested interests at the economy's expense

Pop into a convenience store and you may still find inconvenience: They don't sell medicine and you may not find cigarettes or alcohol at some shops.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Feb 7, 2001

Top 10 alternative reasons to go ADSL

www.icebox.com Like most of the Net's other starving-artist showcases, there's an overwhelming choice here, but the favorite appears to be Queer Duck. The episodes, about a gay mallard, are sharp social satire in which it's difficult, at least at first, to determine whether the author is preaching discrimination...
COMMUNITY
Feb 4, 2001

Heaven to Earth without explanation or apology

Anyone who thinks the art of painting is dead should head for the Towa Building on Tokyo's Meiji-dori and take the lift to Galerie Le Deco on the fifth floor. It is here that German artist David Garde is showing work created since last September: objects, installations and paintings that disturb and...
CULTURE / Art
Feb 4, 2001

The elephants walk

Peter Pommerer likes to think big. Like, elephant big. His drawings, paintings and installations almost always revolve around depictions of the herbivorous mammal. Actually, there is a rumor floating around the art world that the Stuttgart artist actually believes he is an elephant.
JAPAN
Feb 3, 2001

Pricey Rinku trash system to be dumped

OSAKA -- An advanced underground waste disposal and collection system developed for Rinku Town, the coastal business center adjacent to the offshore Kansai International Airport, is facing closure less than five years after it first came into operation, it was learned Friday.
JAPAN
Feb 2, 2001

Green product guidelines approved

Government officials approved basic guidelines Thursday regarding the selection of environmentally friendly products for use in government offices as well as the Diet and courts.
BUSINESS
Feb 1, 2001

Majority of Sogo creditors approve rehabilitation plan

More than 90 percent of some 3,300 creditor banks and suppliers to the failed Sogo department-store chain approved a rehabilitation package Wednesday aimed at reconstructing the group.
BUSINESS
Feb 1, 2001

2001 budget awaits nod from Diet

The government on Wednesday submitted an 82.65 trillion yen budget for fiscal 2001 to the Diet that features a record 48.66 trillion yen outlay meant to bolster the teetering economy.
COMMUNITY
Feb 1, 2001

Sophistication with a poignant twist

There is nothing quite like Cosmic Wonder. Since its inception in 1994, the Osaka-based fashion label has gone from being a cult name that only a few aficionados could identify to a sell-out collection at Ray Beams, the most directional of the Beams clothing stores in Tokyo. The company's clothes even...
CULTURE / Film
Jan 30, 2001

Otaku loose in a noirish world

Dark future movies are, by now, as established an SF subgenre as creature features or space operas. Their world view is usually a cross between an Orwellian nightmare and a Jean Paul Gaultier fashion show: grim, oppressive and dangerous but sexy, radical and cool. In other words, you wouldn't mind visiting,...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jan 28, 2001

American Kenneth Jones

"Walk in, you'll be in Kyoto," proclaims the brochure of Kyoto-Kan, Akasaka.
CULTURE / Art
Jan 28, 2001

Elegance in everyday sculptures

In the 19th century, ukiyo-e wood block prints and ornamental toggles for pouches -- netsuke -- were greatly prized in the West. But to most Japanese, in the whirl of modernization, they were simply old-fashioned aspects of a fading way of life.
SOCCER / J. League
Jan 24, 2001

Xerox Super Cup set

The J. League champion Kashima Antlers will play against Emperor's Cup runnerup Shimizu S-Pulse in the Xerox Super Cup, the new season's curtain raiser, on March 3 at Tokyo's National Stadium, the J. League announced Tuesday in Tokyo.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 23, 2001

Okinawa's fate through women's eyes

WOMEN OF OKINAWA: Nine Voices from a Garrison Island, by Ruth Ann Keyso. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000, 168 pp., $16.95 (cloth). Ruth Ann Keyso traveled to Okinawa in 1997 to write a history of the island's postwar past. Following conversations with various people on the island, she decided...
CULTURE / Music / MUSIC NOMAD
Jan 23, 2001

Artists with eclectic tastes dispute the 'healing' tag

Of all the nonsensical musical genres, perhaps the most irksome is one coined here in Japan: "healing" music.
CULTURE / Books / POETRY MIGNETTE
Jan 21, 2001

A little home for poetry in Shinagawa

Keiyudoh is a book store specializing in rare art books, with a small gallery in the back. Currently the gallery features an exhibition of calligraphy by Sueo Akiyama, a self-taught artist, whose works have received cultural awards in Poland and France recently. Keiyudoh also publishes the journal Le...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 16, 2001

New looks at an enduring alliance

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON U.S.-JAPAN RELATIONS, edited by Gerald Curtis. Tokyo: Japan Center for International Exchange, 2000, 302 pp., paper. JAPAN-U.S. ALLIANCE: New Challenges for the 21st Century, edited by Nishihara Masashi. Tokyo: Japan Center for International Exchange, 2000, 191 pp., paper. It's...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 16, 2001

Yoshimoto's mixed-up women

ASLEEP, by Banana Yoshimoto, translated by Michael Zimmermich. Faber & Faber, 2000, 477 pp., 9.99 British pounds (paper). In these three stories the principal female characters, all young, seem as interested in their own sex as they are in men. They are impulsive and impressionable.
CULTURE / Art
Jan 14, 2001

Pursuing Japan's great love affair with Toulouse-Lautrec

The Japanese love Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). His art is lively and interesting, and strong Japanese influences can be detected in it. The current exhibition at the Tobu Museum of Art makes much of this mutual admiration, with the French artist's work revealing his love for Japan while the...

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past