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BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jul 30, 2000

How many all-star games are enough?

Is one all-star game enough? Are three games too many? Whatever happened to two? Those questions were being bantered about as Japan pro baseball took its weeklong, midsummer regular-season break July 21-27, during which a trio of all-star contests were played, from Tokyo to Nagasaki, with a stop in Kobe....
EDITORIALS
Jul 29, 2000

Fujimori's last chance

Peru's president, Mr. Alberto Fujimori, was sworn in to begin his third term Friday. It was a bittersweet occasion for the president. The festivities were marred by massive protests against an election tainted by charges of fraud. Mr. Fujimori, a combative man who never backs down from a challenge, has...
BUSINESS
Jul 29, 2000

FRC chief defends payments, benefits from Mitsubishi Trust

A scandal involving the chairman of the Financial Reconstruction Commission erupted Friday when it was reported that he had received millions of yen in advisory fees as well as money to cover the rental of offices and staff from Mitsubishi Trust & Banking Corp. over a seven-year period.
BUSINESS
Jul 27, 2000

AOL, DoCoMo eye phone tieup

Japan's top mobile phone operator, NTT DoCoMo Inc., is negotiating with the world's largest Internet service provider, America Online Inc., to tie up in online business for cellular phones, it was learned Wednesday.
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jul 27, 2000

Obana: Heat got you down? Eel thyself

Obana is certainly not the most illustrious of Tokyo's unagi restaurants. How could it be when most of the flash money lies west of the Ginza, not up in blue-collar Arakawa-ku? But there are plenty of people, especially those of humbler birth, who will go to the grave swearing by the name of their ancestors...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 20, 2000

Summit holds key to vision for Okinawa in the 21st century

Okinawa was placed under U.S. rule for 27 years after the end of World War II. During this time, the Japanese mainland succeeded in rebuilding its economy, in particular securing high economic growth through the development of heavy industries, and thus joined the ranks of industrialized countries.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Jul 15, 2000

President Putin's 100 days

It is hard to say what counts as the beginning of Vladimir Putin's presidency. When Boris Yeltsin stepped down Dec. 31 and Putin assumed his regency over Russia? The presidential election in March, when he won a landslide victory? May, when he was inaugurated? It is probably best to pick some date in...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 15, 2000

China and Pakistan forge stronger links

NEW DELHI -- In recent days, new evidence has surfaced that China and Pakistan have stepped up their clandestine nuclear and missile collaboration as part of their joint rivalry with India. It is clear that the Sino-Pakistani nexus is getting stronger, putting India's security under increased pressure....
EDITORIALS
Jul 14, 2000

Japan, by the numbers

Japan's economic statistics are, by and large, rated highly for their diversity and accuracy. So it comes as no surprise that Japanese experts are helping developing countries improve their own statistical systems. Recently, however, that reputation seems to have been somewhat tarnished because of media...
JAPAN
Jul 12, 2000

Okinawans grew up with U.S. military, differ on acceptance

Staff writer
SOCCER / World cup
Jul 4, 2000

Japanese, Koreans study cohosting at Euro 2000

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands -- Senior officials from both the Japanese and Korean World Cup organizing committees said Saturday they expected to learn many things from the cohosted Euro 2000 Soccer Championship, but emphasized that the 2002 World Cup was a different kettle of fish with its own attendant problems....
COMMENTARY
Jul 4, 2000

Japan is financially and morally bankrupt

Japan faces the danger of moral bankruptcy. It is difficult to rebuild a morally bankrupt nation, although it is possible to save a financially bankrupt nation with a package of drastic policy measures that could impose economic hardship on the public.
JAPAN
Jul 3, 2000

Public urges state to help battered wives

A government panel on equal rights has received 308 opinions and found that most favor reinforcing support for battered women, panel sources said Sunday.
JAPAN
Jun 26, 2000

Rain-aided coalition cruises toward victory

Amid lower-than-expected voter turnout, the Liberal Democratic Party-led ruling triumvirate appeared to have secured at least a simple majority in the Lower House in the general election held Sunday, exit polls show.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 25, 2000

Is elitism such a bad thing?

LONDON -- Gordon Brown, the British chancellor of the Exchequer, has been stirring up media attention by attacking the way in which Oxford and other British universities recruit students. He launched his diatribe against the universities by condemning Magdalen College Oxford (where Prince Chichibu and...
JAPAN
Jun 21, 2000

Novice Yuko Obuchi is Gunma's heir apparent

SHIBUKAWA, Gunma Pref. — Upon entering Yuko Obuchi's election headquarters here, one notices a poster of her beaming father, the late Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, hanging at the entrance.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jun 21, 2000

Seeing red

Red has long been the color of choice for companies venturing into the digital domain; that's red as in ink, and that choice has been by necessity.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Jun 18, 2000

The end for Kim Jong Il?

My trip to North Korea 11 years ago was one of the most depressing times in my whole life. I have never seen a sadder country. It was not simply an issue of appalling poverty: In 1989, the shelves of stores in Moscow were also barren, and Beijing still sported a maze of miniature slums -- the notorious...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jun 14, 2000

Gateways to synergy

Every time I visit a particular convenience store, I wince at the repeated announcement of its Web site: "Eichi chi chi pi koron surashu surashu daburyu daburyu daburyu dotto . . . " It is supposed to be such a cutting-edge play, but it only reminds me of how clumsy the analog world can be, and of how...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 14, 2000

Asian economic ills were homegrown

ASIAN ECLIPSE: Exploring the Dark Side of Business in Asia, by Michael Backman. Singapore: John Wiley and Sons, Ltd., 1999, 379 pp., $29.95 (cloth). An insightful adage states that a best friend dispenses "tough love," meaning that if one is turning into an alcoholic, the friend will withhold strong...
COMMUNITY
Jun 8, 2000

Pageants losing face with public

Mari Nishihama, 20, a native of Oshima, an island located 100 km south of Tokyo, had always lived a peaceful, if somewhat uneventful, life in the small tourist resort town. But all that suddenly changed last fall, when town celebrities voted the local bank clerk Miss Oshima 2000.
JAPAN
Jun 2, 2000

Official or not, English a must for Japan leaders: symposium

The proposal to make English Japan's official second language has been hotly debated over the past few months, but panelists at a recent symposium say it is Japan's leaders — not necessarily the general public — who need to master the language.
ENVIRONMENT
May 29, 2000

Japan getting into some very deep water

"Deep seawater" is a magic word that seems to make consumers believe any product made with it will be healthier and of higher quality.
EDITORIALS
May 21, 2000

American moms bite the bullet

Amillion moms -- give or take a few hundred thousand -- spent a sunny Mother's Day last Sunday on the Mall in Washington, D.C. demonstrating in support of stricter gun-control laws in the United States. The event was predictably marked by equal parts media gush and public yawns. The question is, was...
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
May 18, 2000

'Sports executive' a misnomer in Japan

I don't know if it's just my imagination but in recent weeks the incompetence of Japan's alleged "sports executives" seems to have reached an all-time low.
EDITORIALS
May 9, 2000

Crime knows no boundaries

Crime was very much on people's minds during this year's Golden Week holiday period. While the calendar made it possible for record numbers of Japanese to travel abroad, those who stayed behind for whatever reason were transfixed by news of two appalling crimes one day apart, each allegedly committed...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
May 8, 2000

Orangutans smuggled in underwear

You're flying back from a week in Indonesia and the guy next to you seems unusually twitchy. Considering all he's had to drink, he ought to be adequately sedated, but he's just ordered another Scotch.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
May 4, 2000

Enough to drive a person to distraction

Is he staying or is he going? This is the question being asked ad nauseam about Japan's national soccer coach Philippe Troussier.
COMMUNITY
Apr 30, 2000

'English Patience' thickens plots

I found Yukichi Arai eating fruit sherbet in the lobby of the Tokyo Station Hotel. It was hot, I agreed, whereupon he ordered another. After four days sitting in a booth at the Tokyo Book Fair at Tokyo Big Site, promoting his book (titled in "katakana" as "English Patience"), he felt the world deserving...

Longform

Koichi Tagawa’s diary entry from Aug. 9, 1945, describes the day of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
The horrors of Nagasaki, in first person