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JAPAN
May 12, 1999

Preparatory talks for 2000 G8 summit held

The government held its first preparatory meeting Wednesday for next year's Kyushu-Okinawa Summit, confirming that related ministries will cooperate closely to make the summit a success, government officials said.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
May 12, 1999

What's in store

Everyone in my family is in retail, except me -- unless you consider this journalism gig equivalent to selling snake oil. My mother and sisters have run wearable-art galleries and design-centered shops for a couple of decades, and they seem to be pretty good at it. They travel around the United States...
JAPAN
May 12, 1999

Organ donor's private info kept under wraps

Following criticism that protection of privacy was lacking when organs were donated in late February in the nation's first legal transplants involving a brain-dead patient, cautious steps have been taken to avoid an excessive release of information on the second such donor.
EDITORIALS
May 11, 1999

First breach in the government wall

After two decades of on-and-off arguments, the Diet finally passed a freedom of information bill into law last Friday. For the first time in Japan's history, a law stipulates that the government "has the duty to explain to the nation" the way government ministries and agencies run their affairs. To be...
JAPAN
May 11, 1999

Matsushita ups retirement age to 65

OSAKA -- Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. on Tuesday said it will ostensibly extend its de facto mandatory retirement age from 60 to 65 by re-employing some of its retirees.
JAPAN
May 11, 1999

Non-Japanese ring tied to Osaka house robbery

OSAKA -- The president of a private university in Toyonaka, Osaka Prefecture, was robbed of some 700,000 yen early Tuesday by three knife-wielding intruders, and police suspect the same non-Japanese Asians linked to 17 other break-ins in Osaka and Hyogo prefectures since March 1998 perpetrated the crime....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 11, 1999

Cartoon eroticism, for real

EROTIC ANIME MOVIE GUIDE, by Helen McCarthy and Jonathan Clements. London: Titan Books, 1998, 192 pp., b/w photos, 12.99 British pounds. Japanese animated films, familiarly called "anime," have become well-known worldwide. With the success of the 1988 "Akira," the genre became a sound commercial export...
JAPAN
May 10, 1999

Osaka touts guidelines for a greener Olympics

OSAKA -- As part of efforts to be named host city of the 2008 Summer Olympics, Osaka unveiled draft guidelines Monday for reducing environmental burdens from the large-scale event.
JAPAN
May 10, 1999

Reform of Diet debate questioned

Staff writer
EDITORIALS
May 8, 1999

Blair gambles on federalism and wins

The United Kingdom remains united. In a historic vote earlier this week, the Scots and the Welsh held elections to select representatives for their own newly created Parliaments. Preliminary results indicate that the Labor Party will hold the most seats in the new legislature sitting in Edinburgh, but...
COMMENTARY
May 8, 1999

Japan remains a military laughingstock

After much political wrangling, the House of Representatives has passed the bills relating to the new defense guidelines between Japan and the United States. Deliberations in the House of Councilors got under way April 28. With the full cooperation of the Liberal Party and Komeito, and with the partial...
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
May 8, 1999

Kawai exhibit shows grace under fire

The term mingei (folk art) was coined by Soetsu Yanagi in 1926 to refer to common crafts that had been brushed aside and overlooked by the industrial revolution.
EDITORIALS
May 7, 1999

A brush with history

Mallory, Hillary.... The airwaves have been buzzing this week with two of the best-known names in mountain-climbing history. Some people even reportedly got confused, thinking the body found near the summit of Mount Everest May 1 was that of Sir Edmund Hillary (who is very much alive in New Zealand)...
JAPAN
May 7, 1999

Dioxin: Levels high in incinerator-happy Japan

Last in a series Staff writer
JAPAN
May 7, 1999

Honda set to build third plant in North America

Honda Motor Co. announced Friday that it will invest $400 million to build a new manufacturing facility in Lincoln, Ala., boosting annual production capacity in North America from 960,000 to 1.13 million units by 2003.
JAPAN
May 7, 1999

FSA plans guidelines for regional banks

The Financial Supervisory Agency will map out guidelines for the recapitalization of regional banks through public funds by the time they release their earnings reports in late May, FSA head Hakuo Yanagisawa said Friday.
JAPAN
May 6, 1999

C&W makes new takeover bid for IDC

Britain's Cable & Wireless PLC on Thursday upped the stakes in its war with Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. to buy International Digital Communications Inc., announcing a new bid of 107,372 yen per share.
JAPAN
May 6, 1999

Homeless man cleared in drowning

OSAKA -- The Osaka District Court found a homeless man not guilty of manslaughter Thursday in the 1995 drowning of an older homeless man, even though the defendant had at one time admitted to throwing the victim into the river.
COMMUNITY
May 5, 1999

Immune system research pays off, paves way to AIDS cure

In 1987, American molecular biologists Jack Strominger and Don Wiley shocked the scientific world with a supreme example of the adage "A picture is worth a thousand words."
COMMENTARY
May 5, 1999

A game plan for Ishihara

I was not surprised at all by Shintaro Ishihara's overwhelming victory in the April 11 Tokyo gubernatorial election. Several journalist friends of mine and I had correctly predicted the election results, including the order of all the major candidates by the number of votes. More than anything else,...
COMMENTARY / World
May 4, 1999

India rightly resists the Chinese model

India has often been advised to follow the path of China in public investment in human capital. China has done well in the last decade, but it would be a disaster if India were to follow her example. China's approach can be called "two quick steps forward, one slow step back." India's approach, in contrast,...
JAPAN
May 4, 1999

Dioxin: Proximity to Tokyo dooms Tokorozawa

Second in a seriesStaff writer
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 4, 1999

Childhood memories of Calcutta under the Raj

CHILDHOOD DAYS: A Memoir, by Satyajit Ray, translated by Bijoya Ray. New Delhi: Penguin Books (India), 174 pp., with b/w photos and pen drawings by Satyajit Ray, Rs 200. The memoirs of film directors are often confined to early memories. Ingmar Bergman writes of his childhood, Akira Kurosawa gets up...
CULTURE / Books
May 4, 1999

A dose of reality for Asia's high-flyers

TIGERS TAMED: The End of the Asian Miracle, by Robert Garran. Allen Unwin, 1998, 228 pp. (paper). "Tigers Tamed," "The Trouble with Tigers," "Asian Contagion." It's hard to miss a touch of what seems like gloating in the attempts to chronicle Asia's recent misfortunes.
JAPAN
May 3, 1999

Reforms mean more than a new name, banking leader says

Staff writer
JAPAN
May 3, 1999

Prize-winning immunologists paved way for AIDS cure

Staff writer
JAPAN
May 3, 1999

Constitution's anniversary sparks debate on revision

With last month's Lower House passage of bills covering the updated Japan-U.S. defense cooperation guidelines as a backdrop, the nation on Monday celebrated the 52nd anniversary of the postwar Constitution with heated debate over the document itself.
COMMENTARY / World
May 3, 1999

Cultural understanding holds the key

In a recent article in The Japan Times, former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa dealt with a topic rather unusual for a politician: the importance of culture and the awareness of it in post-1970s Japan. I endorse his view wholeheartedly. A few years ago I wrote similar thoughts in one of the first articles...
EDITORIALS
May 1, 1999

A promise of change for women

It sometimes seems that the government chooses vague-sounding titles and odd release times for white papers and other official documents that contain information likely to embarrass Japanese officials when dealing with their foreign counterparts. This was the case when the Prime Minister's Office issued...
COMMENTARY
May 1, 1999

Obuchi confounds the skeptics

The Lower House on Tuesday approved a legislative package for implementing the updated Japan-U.S. defense cooperation guidelines and sent it immediately to the Upper House. The action came after agreement among the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, the Liberal Party (the LDP's junior coalition partner)...

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’