Search - 2000

 
 
CULTURE / Books
Oct 9, 2000

Limp prose from an angel of mercy

TOTTO-CHAN'S CHILDREN: A Goodwill Journey to the Children of the World, by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi; translated by Dorothy Britton. Kodansha International, 2000, 222 pp., with photographs, 2,500 yen (cloth). Tetsuko Kuroyanagi is a familiar figure on Japanese television quiz shows. She's the one decked out...
CULTURE / Books
Oct 9, 2000

From nothingness, a celebration of life

A DREAM LIKE THIS WORLD: One Hundred Haiku, by Nagata Koi, translated by Naruto Nana and Margaret Mitsutani. Tokyo: Todosha Publishers, 2000, 147 pp., 2,381 yen (cloth). Dream and waking life. Reality and illusion. Where does one begin and the other end? This question radiates at the heart of Nagata...
CULTURE / Books
Oct 9, 2000

Confronting a legacy of shame

WHAT DID THE INTERNMENT OF JAPANESE AMERICANS MEAN?, edited by Alice Yang Murray. Boston, Mass.: Bedford/St. Martins, 2000, 163 pp., $13.50 (paper). This book is part of a series called "Historians At Work." Aimed at the undergraduate student, the series is designed to introduce students to a historical...
COMMENTARY
Oct 9, 2000

A chicken in every pot, TVs in every home

WASHINGTON -- With a tough election looming in the United States, congressional Republicans have opened the Treasury to every interest group with a letterhead. Budget analysts Stephen Moore and Stephen Slivinski figure this Congress may end up as the biggest social spender since the 1970s.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Oct 7, 2000

Catching up on Japanese baseball

With the Sydney Olympics now history, let's take a look at what happened in Japanese pro baseball while most of the sports world focused its attention on Australia and the Summer Games.
MORE SPORTS
Oct 7, 2000

Purple princess outdukes Dokic

Serena Williams might aspire to be the queen of women's tennis, but for now she's merely aiming to be a Toyota Princess.
JAPAN
Oct 5, 2000

Ex-JICA chief volunteers for the trenches

Upon retiring after a 38-year career with the Foreign Ministry followed by six years as head of the Japan International Cooperation Agency, Kimio Fujita was naturally expected to accept an honorary post, such as on a government panel.
OLYMPICS
Oct 4, 2000

Highs and lows of Sydney 2000

Citius, Altius, Fortius -- faster, higher, stronger.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 3, 2000

U.S. alliances build peace in Asia

AMERICA'S ASIAN ALLIANCES, edited by Robert Blackwill and Paul Dibb. The MIT Press, BCSIA Studies in International Security, 2000, 143 pp., (paper). Asia is -- potentially -- a very dangerous place. Paul Dibb, one of Australia's leading security thinkers and co-editor of this valuable new book, explains...
OLYMPICS
Oct 2, 2000

Olympics end -- the party begins

SYDNEY -- The world's premier sporting carnival drew to a close in an extravaganza of sight and sound Sunday as the Olympic host city prepared to party the night away to bid farewell to the last Summer Games of the 20th Century.
JAPAN
Oct 2, 2000

Japan open to return of two disputed isles

The government is leaning closer to accepting a two-stage accord over four disputed islands off Hokkaido in which Russia would hand over two of them with assurances that the remaining two will also eventually be returned, government sources said Sunday.
COMMENTARY
Oct 2, 2000

Japan's ills threaten the world

Japan's Naoko Takahashi won the gold medal in the women's marathon in the Sydney Olympics Sept. 24. In winning the tough race on a difficult, up-and-down course, she established an Olympic record and became the first Japanese woman to win an Olympic marathon gold medal. She also gave Japan its first...
EDITORIALS
Oct 1, 2000

Life after the Olympics

What do we do now with our evenings and weekends? For two happy, mindless weeks, we have flopped down in front of the TV any spare minute we had, just to get our daily fix of the big show going on in Sydney. Cynicism, the pre-Games attitude du jour, went out the window the second the teams entered the...
OLYMPICS
Oct 1, 2000

Takahashi still gracious after win

SYDNEY -- The strong performance of Japanese women to claim 13 of the 18 medals that the nation has won at the Sydney Olympics reflects women's growing independence in society, women's marathon gold medalist Naoko Takahashi said Saturday.
JAPAN
Oct 1, 2000

Unsold land leaves cities in debt

As many as 31 municipalities in Tokyo and neighboring prefectures are suffering from the fiscal burden of long-unsold plots of land owned by public-sector developers to which they have provided loan guarantees, according to the latest survey by Kyodo News.
CULTURE / Art
Oct 1, 2000

African artists hold display, classes to boost awareness

OSAKA -- Anthony Monda has been living here for six years and he cannot help but wonder at how little Japanese people know about Africa.
BUSINESS
Sep 30, 2000

KDDI aims to stay solid No. 2

A new stage of competition will begin Sunday in the telecom industry when three major firms merge into KDDI, a long-awaited rival to the behemoth telecom group led by NTT Corp.
BUSINESS
Sep 30, 2000

Mizuho executives express confidence in future

Chief executives of the Mizuho Financial Group expressed confidence Friday that their company is destined to lead the Japanese banking industry and become one of the world's top banks.
CULTURE / Books
Sep 30, 2000

Thomas Wolfe: 20th-century America's warped looking glass

"No one has ever written any books about America -- I mean the real America," he wrote to a friend in 1931.
COMMENTARY
Sep 30, 2000

Russian contempt for Japan nothing new

I have never been able to feel any sense of affinity with the political leaders of Russia, let alone those of the former Soviet Union. The reason why may be illustrated by the following incident, which occurred when Nikita Khrushchev was the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and head of...
JAPAN
Sep 29, 2000

Government takes steps to stop the drop in rice prices

The government adopted a package of measures Thursday that are designed to put a halt to declining prices of rice.
JAPAN
Sep 29, 2000

New Komeito failing to make mark

New Komeito, a junior member of the ruling coalition, continues to struggle as it strives to score points and impress the public before Upper House elections next summer.
OLYMPICS
Sep 29, 2000

Welcome to Sydney's juiced-up Games

SYDNEY -- It was easier to follow at the start.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Sep 29, 2000

'Those Parisian guys' way out west

Japanese music aficionados have a knack of tuning into the musical zeitgeist. Post-rock, Brit-pop and grunge all had substantial audiences in Japan before the rest of the world caught up.
BUSINESS
Sep 28, 2000

Banks agree to forgive Hazama debt

Hazama Corp. said Wednesday that its four main creditor banks have agreed to forgive a combined 105 billion yen in loans to the debt-saddled construction company.
JAPAN
Sep 27, 2000

Yokohama mayor denies 'sin tax' plan aimed at politically weak

Yokohama Mayor Hidenobu Takahide has denied claims that the city's controversial "entertainment tax" plan unfairly punishes the politically weak by singling out unpopular businesses.
BUSINESS
Sep 26, 2000

Share prices give up most of recent gains

Although the Tokyo stock market is still in a bit of a corrective phase, a light is beginning to flicker at the end of the tunnel.
BUSINESS
Sep 26, 2000

'IT cards' dropped from supplementary budget

The government decided Monday that the supplementary budget for fiscal 2000 will not cover "IT cards" that would have subsidized tuition for Internet-related courses, government officials said.

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