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CULTURE / Books
Jul 15, 2001

Dismantling stereotypes surrounding Japan's sacred entities

SHINTO IN HISTORY: Ways of the Kami, edited by John Breen and Mark Teeuwen. Richmond, Surrey, U.K.: Curzon Press, 1999, 368 pp., 45 British pounds (cloth); 15 pounds (paper). "Shinto in History: Ways of the Kami" is the first attempt in any Western language (and possibly even in Japanese) to offer...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 15, 2001

Inking the moment

A sheet of white washi paper, a brush, an ink stone, a black ink stick and a good mood -- these are the ingredients for a work of shodo (calligraphy).
EDITORIALS
Jul 15, 2001

What's in a domain name?

As children, we were told that names could not affect us. Words were not instruments of power; sticks and stones were. "What's in a name?" Shakespeare scoffed. "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." As we grew up, though, we learned better. The act of naming, or controlling the assignation...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 15, 2001

A spoonful of Koizumi helps the medicine go down

The continuance of Junichiro Koizumi's administration beyond the summer seems like a sure bet: Support for his Cabinet is over 80 percent, his e-mail magazine is being read by hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and every time the opposition questions one of his pronouncements, they are deluged with...
CULTURE / Music / JAZZNICITY
Jul 15, 2001

In praise of the honest approach

Huddled over a back table at the Roppongi jazz club Alfie, out of earshot of her manager and new record company reps, Akiko confessed.
COMMUNITY
Jul 15, 2001

For the sake of sake

Every winter and spring for the last 10 years, Philip Harper reckons he has had no more than a few nights of uninterrupted sleep, but he's more than willing to sacrifice some shut-eye in pursuit of the perfect glass of sake.
LIFE / Food & Drink / BEST BAR NONE
Jul 15, 2001

A new watering hole for the downtown set

When John Coyle, Ivy Neo and Gary Hier first teamed up to create What the Dickens!, the massively popular English pub in Ebisu, neither they -- the publicans -- nor us -- their patrons -- could have guessed what would come from such humble beginnings.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 15, 2001

Hunting for justice in the Tokyo war tribunal

JUDGMENT AT TOKYO: The Japanese War Crimes Trials, by Tim Maga. University Press of Kentucky, 2001, 200 pp., $25 (cloth). Fifty-six years since Japan's surrender, World War II's legacy continues to make headlines: Compensation sought by sex slaves; Controversy rages over history textbooks; Prime minister's...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 15, 2001

Comic ambassadors

A rather naive man decides to nip off to Hokkaido to enjoy the Sapporo Snow Festival without booking a place to stay. Wandering the snowy streets, he eventually comes across a solution to his problem -- a love hotel.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jul 15, 2001

It takes two to tangle

Hong Kong pop idol Faye Wong already has quite a few fans in Japan, but she's sure to add more on a weekly basis thanks to her costarring role in the summer comedy series "Usokoi (False Love)" (Fuji TV, Tuesday, 10 p.m.). Wong plays a young Chinese woman appropriately named Faye, who is studying to be...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 14, 2001

Red Army daughter seeks to set record straight

"My parents named me after the month of a certain political action," explains May Shigenobu. "But in Japanese I am known as Mei, which means 'life.' " The specific political operation to which she is referring? The bombing by Japanese leftwing radicals of Lod Airport in Tel Aviv on May 30, 1972.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jul 14, 2001

Patrick Carey

Patrick Carey thinks he may be the only non-Japanese to have walked the entire distance of the Old Tokaido, from Tokyo to Kyoto, and to have written about it.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 14, 2001

Turning talk of free trade into policy

LONDON — Japan's trade sanctions joust with China is small beer in world terms — or even in the context of the overall commerce between the two nations. But it sounds a warning bell — all the more so since it is just one of a series of challenges to free and open trade that could throw into doubt...
COMMENTARY
Jul 14, 2001

Now it's North Korea's turn

It was with some trepidation that Koreans on both sides of the demilitarized zone watched the Bush administration come to power, given the more "hardline" position many Congressional Republicans had taken over the years regarding North Korea. However, the outcome of the administration's finally completed...
EDITORIALS
Jul 14, 2001

The U.N. fails to get smart

The United Nations Security Council failed last week in its attempt to impose "smart sanctions" against Iraq. Fourteen of the 15 Security Council members agreed on a new scheme to monitor imports to Iraq. Unfortunately, the holdout was Russia, and Moscow used its threat of a veto to torpedo the new program....
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jul 14, 2001

All set ot sail -- and then the wind blew

On July 1, the sea opened in an annual event called "umibiraki" (opening of the sea). My island celebrates umibiraki with the annual Shiraishi Yacht Race. This year, I and a couple of friends decided to enter the race. Since we all had limited sailing skills, we thought this would be a lot of fun. Our...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 13, 2001

Indonesian human-rights law wide open to manipulation by military and its allies

When a law clearing the way for ad hoc courts to try human-rights violations was passed in Indonesia last November, some saw it as a sign that high-ranking military officers would finally be punished for the many abuses committed by the nation's armed forces.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 13, 2001

Injustice across borders?

The arrest and transfer of former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic to the international tribunal at The Hague is but the latest of several dramatic twists and turns in the last few years in the search for universal justice. Just as the indictment issued against him during the NATO war in Kosovo was...
EDITORIALS
Jul 13, 2001

A bandwagon election begins

Japanese voters will pass a verdict on Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's structural reforms in the July 29 Upper House election, campaigning for which officially started on Thursday. The poll comes at a critical moment for Japan's beleaguered economy, which is still struggling to recover from a decade-long...
SOCCER / J. League
Jul 13, 2001

Arsenal, Gamba reach deal on Inamoto

OSAKA -- Gamba Osaka midfielder Junichi Inamoto is set to join Arsenal after his club said Thursday that a basic agreement on a multi-year contract has been reached with the English Premier League giant.
SPORTS / TALK OF THE TIMES
Jul 13, 2001

Wakanohana takes a run at his NFL dream

Masaru Hanada, better known as former yokozuna Wakanohana, surprised many when he declared his challenge to play for a National Football League team during a TV program in May.
COMMUNITY / THE PARENT TRIP
Jul 13, 2001

Whatever can go wrong . . .

Writers of how-to articles about traveling with kids usually talk about Baby's ears popping in airplanes and keeping little Junior and Sis amused on long drives so they don't refight the Macedonian War in the back seat. Older kids, these writers seem to assume, can take care of themselves, when they...
EDITORIALS
Jul 12, 2001

Evaluating Japan's defense needs

This year's defense white paper, released last week, specifically calls for both quantitative and qualitative improvement in SDF capabilities, including weapons replacement and modernization under the midterm defense-buildup program. More significantly, it points to a need to enact contingency legislation...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 12, 2001

Is the world prepared to deal with the global economic downturn?

Economic policymakers must stand ready to take timely and decisive actions when incoming information suggests that the economy is most likely to significantly deviate from the targeted course for a sustained period. And in the uncertain world in which we live, they have to deal with both upside and downside...
MORE SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Jul 12, 2001

New dawn for Mukai and his merry men

In 1999, the year of the last Rugby World Cup, Japan won the Pacific Rim Championship, recording a 37-34 victory over Samoa along the way. At the time many thought the victory marked the re-birth of Japanese rugby, and there was talk of Japan reaching the quarterfinals of the World Cup. Sadly, that was...
ENVIRONMENT / GARDENING FOR ALL
Jul 12, 2001

Foreign plants are right at home in Japan

I have always been interested in the natural origins of plants. Where does a particular plant come from? How and when did it come to this country? Geographic botany investigates the distribution of plants around the world.
LIFE / Digital
Jul 12, 2001

Who gets to be a millionaire?

Now that more than a few dot-com companies have bitten the dust, the pressing business question of how you can make money on the Web is being taken a little more seriously.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jul 12, 2001

Jaws was born a rambling shark

A dark dorsal fin breaks the surface of a gleaming seascape. A ghost-faced killer glides silently through the water . . . the theme tune to "Jaws" automatically plays in the brain.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Jul 12, 2001

Cars, clothes, a bat and the new prozac

www.bmwfilms.com/site_layout/splash.asp Now that companies have realized the Internet, the great conduit that it is, fails as a business model unto itself, the buzz is all about lifestyle sites. BMW's is an emerging warehouse of short films. Well-polished short films. The first, "Ambush," is a near-six-minute...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jul 12, 2001

Tokai nuke incident still shows afterglow

Hisashi Ouchi died Dec. 21, 1999, less than three months after he and two colleagues set off a criticality accident at JCO Co. in the village of Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture. Masato Shinohara died seven months later, also a victim of lethal radiation exposure. The third employee, Yutaka Yokokawa, was hospitalized...

Longform

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