Search - 2000

 
 
JAPAN
Nov 7, 2000

Foreign-brand cigarettes account for 25% of market

Foreign-brand cigarettes accounted for a record-high market share of 25 percent in the first half of fiscal 2000, according to an industry association.
BASEBALL / MLB
Nov 7, 2000

Revenge - and then some!

Things weren't going well for Livan Hernandez even before he set foot in Japan. On Sunday evening at the Tokyo Dome, they got even worse.
CULTURE / Books
Nov 7, 2000

From great fiction, more fiction still

THE TALE OF MURASAKI: A Novel, by Liza Dalby. Doubleday, 2000, 424 pp., $25.95. What if the author of "The Tale of Genji" had written an autobiography and it had remained undiscovered until now? What would it be like?
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 7, 2000

No chippie off the old block

WOODBLOCK KUCHI-E PRINTS: Reflections of Meiji Culture, by Helen Merrit and Nanako Yamada. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000, 284 pp., profusely illustrated, $65. That category of woodblock print called the "kuchi-e" has not been widely investigated. In the large bibliography that concludes...
COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE
Nov 7, 2000

U.S. vote goes all the way to the wire

I used to say, "The only thing certain in our elections are that they will end on time." Well, the election of 2000 tops them all. Not only is it still "too close to call," this election is unlikely to end on time. Let me explain why. It all centers on Washington state and a new election law it initiates...
JAPAN
Nov 5, 2000

Panel seeks new legislation on diesel exhaust emissions

An Environment Agency advisory panel wants the government to revise legislation controlling nitrogen oxide emissions to include diesel exhaust particulate matter, according to a copy of a report obtained by Kyodo News on Saturday.
EDITORIALS
Nov 4, 2000

Babes in Gizmoland

It's almost that time of year again. The cold is closing in, the lights are coming on earlier, the leaves are turning and everywhere there are intimations of jingling. Even as early as November you can hear it: the jingle of bells, the jingle of cash registers, and the real or metaphoric jingle of coins...
BASEBALL / MLB
Nov 4, 2000

MLBers draw first blood

Hisanori Takahashi found major league hitters tougher to get out than Fukuoka Daiei Hawks.
JAPAN
Nov 4, 2000

Six receive honor from Emperor

Nobel laureate Hideki Shirakawa and five others were awarded this year's Order of Culture by the Emperor at the Imperial Palace on Culture Day on Friday.
MORE SPORTS
Nov 3, 2000

Lomu happy for chance to play in Japan

New Zealand winger Jonah Lomu is looking forward to making his first appearance in front of Japanese fans in Friday's warmup against the Pacific Barbarians at Tokyo's Chichibunomiya Stadium before the All Blacks head to Europe for several tests. But the world-famous speedy winger said his side is aware...
COMMUNITY
Nov 2, 2000

Bank dealer trades finances for fiction

NIIHAMA, Ehime Pref. -- For most writers, the road to publication is paved with rejection slips. Not so for British expatriate Marisa Ishikawa, 35, who lives in Niihama-shi, Ehime Prefecture, with her Japanese carpenter husband and their two small children. Ishikawa dashed off her first novel in between...
COMMENTARY
Nov 2, 2000

The changing face of nuclear deterrence

MOSCOW -- The role of nuclear weapons is undergoing subtle but important changes in deterrence strategy. Although this transformation is a consequence of the collapse of bipolarity in international relations and the shift in military threats from the global to the regional context, the trend is becoming...
COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE
Nov 2, 2000

The closest U.S. presidential election in 40 years

WASHINGTON --The latest polls show that the U.S. presidential candidates are very close, with a slight edge for Texas Gov. George W. Bush. The Electoral College is also evenly divided, although Vice President Al Gore had maintained a small advantage for weeks. Now it is also within the statistical margins...
OLYMPICS
Nov 1, 2000

Ruling made on controversial judo final

The International Judo Federation on Monday confirmed that France's David Douillet should not have won a controversial point that gave him a decisive win over Japan's Shinichi Shinohara in the heavyweight final at the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 31, 2000

Hard lessons Japan failed to learn

JAPAN'S FINANCIAL CRISIS AND ITS PARALLELS TO U.S. EXPERIENCE, edited by Ryoichi Mikitani and Adam S. Posen. Washington: Institute for International Economics, Special Report 13, Sept. 2000, 228 pp., $20. There's an old joke about a politician's plea for a one-handed economist, one who can't say, "but...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 31, 2000

Speechless, but never silent

JAPANESE BEYOND WORDS: How to Walk and Talk like a Native Speaker, by Andrew Horvat. Foreword by Jan Walls. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2000, 176 pp., $14.95. As Jan Walls says in his foreword to this instructive and entertaining book, Andrew Horvat provides "a new way of looking at language . ....
CULTURE / Books
Oct 31, 2000

Just the facts, ma'am

FACTS AND FIGURES OF JAPAN, 2000 edition. Tokyo: Foreign Press Center, 116 pp., 1,300 yen. SOCIAL SECURITY IN JAPAN, by Go Miyatake. Tokyo: Foreign Press Center, 80 pp., 1,800 yen (paper). CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE RELIGION, by Nobutaka Inoue. Tokyo: Foreign Press Center, 73 pp., 1,000 yen (paper). For people...
JAPAN
Oct 30, 2000

Opposition camp wants summons for Nakagawa

Opposition parties said Sunday they will demand former Chief Cabinet Secretary Hidenao Nakagawa be summoned to the Diet to respond to allegations that he leaked police information to his former mistress and is closely tied with a rightwing extremist.
JAPAN
Oct 30, 2000

Western Pacific declared free of polio

KYOTO -- The World Health Organization on Sunday declared the western Pacific region free of the virus that causes polio, an important step in international efforts to eradicate the crippling childhood disease from the world.
JAPAN
Oct 30, 2000

University hospitals found padding food bills

Nineteen hospitals affiliated with state-run universities padded bills for patient meals they reported in fiscal 1999, officials with the government's Board of Audit said Sunday.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Oct 30, 2000

U.S. reporter misses the mark on Japan

"Given America's willingness to avert its eyes from the most troubling chapters of its history and to resist critical self-evaluation and discussion of the country's atrocities against native Americans and African Americans . . ."
BASEBALL / MLB
Oct 29, 2000

Giants dethrone Hawks for Japan Series title

Hideki Matsui provided much of the offense and Darrell May pitched in with a stellar performance on the mound Saturday night at the Tokyo Dome as the Yomiuri Giants claimed their 19th Japan Series title in emphatic style, blowing out the defending champion Daiei Hawks 9-3 in Game 6.
JAPAN
Oct 28, 2000

With shield gone, Mori may be next

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's decision Friday to accept Chief Cabinet Secretary Hidenao Nakagawa's resignation was apparently aimed at containing further damage to his administration, which was battered recently over his comments regarding a controversial proposal to North Korea.
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 28, 2000

'International' festival is dominated by national talent as budgets pared

Tokyo International Festival of Performing Arts 2000 kicked off Oct. 13 with the production "Melancholy Baby" at Aoyama Enkei Gekijo, one of the main venues hosting the festival. In truth, though, there is little "international" about this year's festival, through mid-December.
BASEBALL / MLB
Oct 26, 2000

BayStars find four imports

The Yokohama BayStars, who recently lost slugger Bobby Rose to retirement, said Wednesday that they reached agreements with four new North American imports.
MORE SPORTS
Oct 26, 2000

Everyman Redgrave anything but in boat

LONDON -- From across a crowded room, Steve Redgrave hardly looks like a legendary athlete. He's lanky, excessively polite and his hair is thinning at an alarmingly quick rate. He walks around wearing a sheepish grin and his laugh is loud and long. If you didn't know any better, you'd swear he's the...
MULTIMEDIA / SPORTS SCOPE
Oct 26, 2000

Who decides on who decides?

When I interviewed Terry Venables in June, I asked him the obvious questions about his future: "Do you want to manage again?" and "Would you manage England again?"

Longform

Dangami House is a 180-year-old former samurai residence of the Kato clan, who ruled over Ozu, Ehime Prefecture, until the Meiji Restoration.
A house, a legacy and the quiet work of restoration in rural Japan