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JAPAN
Mar 26, 2001

Group seeks vindication of convicted Nepalese

Demanding justice for a Nepalese man convicted for a 1997 murder they believe he didn't commit, about 100 citizens on Sunday inaugurated a support group to help him win vindication through a Supreme Court ruling.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Mar 26, 2001

Never say you've apologized too much

When Ursula Smith, my publisher friend up in Vermont, wrote to say, "I can't close without offering some (futile) form of apology, as one national to another, for that unfortunate accident off Hawaii," I said there was no need to apologize to me. It was an accident, and I wasn't too clear about the meaning...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 26, 2001

Bush's crash course in global diplomacy

U.S. President George W. Bush has just concluded a crash course in Northeast Asian politics. In the past three weeks, he has hosted South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen. Now Bush has to make sense of those visits, digest the various messages...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Mar 26, 2001

Bush ignores experts on climate change

The rubber has met the road and we now know that U.S. President George W. Bush is driving under the influence, his judgment impaired by fossil fuel lobbyists.
SOCCER / World cup
Mar 26, 2001

Japan's soccer team fails to make the grade in France

PARIS -- Japan never got going during its friendly Saturday on a pitch that looked in awful condition, while the French mastered it well. The Japanese found it difficult to get to grips with the French. It's just amazing how smoothly they play together. They just stroked the ball around the soggy pitch...
EDITORIALS
Mar 25, 2001

Ghosts on the loose

You may have thought that the big story out of Hong Kong last week was the slumping Hang Seng Index or continuing pressure from Beijing to crack down on the Falun Gong. But no, something much more fascinating was going on, and it was going on right inside one of the places that break, but don't usually...
COMMENTARY
Mar 25, 2001

Campaign-finance reforms stifle free speech

WASHINGTON -- In opening the U.S. Senate debate on campaign-finance reform, Republican John McCain asked his colleagues to "take a risk for our country." But his proposals would stifle, not expand, political debate in America. Congress should instead relax election controls, thereby encouraging more...
JAPAN
Mar 25, 2001

Camera museum a testimony to postwar rise

For anyone pondering the secret behind Japan's postwar economic miracle, a visit to a small museum near Tokyo's Imperial Palace may offer some clues.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 25, 2001

Hot rod 'tribes' roar into the night

It's 2:30 a.m. on a Friday night outside the Shibaura parking area, a thin strip of concrete and pavement stuck to a pillar under the belly of Tokyo's Rainbow Bridge. There's a flash of red taillights as vehicles speed in. New arrivals are greeted by leather-clad bikers revving their engines, spitting...
JAPAN
Mar 25, 2001

Japan's prison population tops 60,000

The number of inmates at prisons and detention houses in Japan rose last year for the eighth straight year, topping 60,000 for the first time in 34 years, Justice Ministry sources said Saturday.
JAPAN
Mar 25, 2001

Attitudes toward AIDS contradictory

More than 80 percent of Japanese responding to a poll believe AIDS patients and people infected with HIV should not be discriminated against -- but many are still reluctant to even share an office with them -- according to a Cabinet Office survey released Saturday.
JAPAN
Mar 25, 2001

Two killed in west Japan quake

Two women were killed Saturday afternoon and at least 80 other people were reported injured, two of them seriously, when a powerful 6.4-magnitude earthquake jolted a large area of western Japan, the Meteorological Agency and police said.
JAPAN
Mar 25, 2001

Tokyo strives to preserve its dwindling greenery

Tokyo's final class this year on shiitake mushrooms took place earlier this month at Noyamakita Rokudoyama Park in the hills of Sayama, straddling the border between Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 25, 2001

Covering Japan on foot, for abused women, kids

In late 1999, photojournalist Mary King and IT systems analyst Etsuko Shimabukuro began to get itchy feet. Back in 1996 they had completed a two-year trip that took them through three continents. This time they decided to stay closer to home.
JAPAN
Mar 25, 2001

Tokyo sake breweries beset by winds of change

Tsuchiya Brewery in Tokyo's Komae is set to release Sakurako brand "jizake" (local sake), featuring the name of the future figurehead of the 128-year-old company.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Mar 25, 2001

Few tasks are tougher than being thoughtless

Meditation increases concentration and mindfulness. That's what this book on Zen meditation says. It instructs me to concentrate for 20 minutes on nothing. Absolutely nothing. One strategy to prevent stray thoughts from entering the mind, the book says, is to concentrate on my breathing.
JAPAN
Mar 25, 2001

Musician turns cosmopolitan ideal on its head

Hideki Togi's definition of what makes a person truly cosmopolitan might appear somewhat anachronistic in light of the "borderless world" concept that has become popular today.
COMMENTARY
Mar 24, 2001

Let the deal-making begin

Japanese politics is in a bizarre state of limbo. Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori on March 10 expressed his apparent intention to resign, when he said the governing Liberal Democratic Party's presidential election should be advanced from September, when they are originally scheduled. No date so far has been...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 24, 2001

NATO's weakness threatens Macedonia

LONDON -- Ethnic peace has withstood an entire week of shooting around the Macedonian city of Tetovo, despite the efforts of ethnic Albanian guerrillas based in neighboring Kosovo to topple the small Balkan republic into civil war. Another week of fighting would probably do the trick, however -- so it...
BUSINESS
Mar 24, 2001

S&P urges Japanese banks to tackle bad-loan issue fully

Japanese banks should base their lending decisions on sound business principles in order to solve their bad-loan problems, Standard & Poor's Corp., a U.S.-based credit rating firm, said in a report released Friday.
CULTURE / Film
Mar 24, 2001

Ritchie's rogues return

"Snatch" is more than a movie: It's a bubbling, babbling comic strip on wheels. Not fitting into the usual British movie mold -- it's neither a Merchant-Ivory rendition of upper-crust angst, nor a working-class saga passed on by Ken Loach -- "Snatch" is in a genre by itself, showcasing a crack ensemble...
COMMENTARY
Mar 24, 2001

The long view on the Kurils

Can Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori stage a political comeback via his March 25 talks in Irkutsk with Russian President Vladimir Putin? Aides have hinted that he favors the "two-island" compromise solution to Japan's long-festering dispute with Russia over ownership of the so-called Northern Territories....
JAPAN
Mar 24, 2001

Mori-Putin summit expectations low

After failing to meet the end-of-2000 target for resolving a territorial dispute and signing a peace treaty, Japan and Russia will hold their first summit this year in Russia's Irkutsk on Sunday, during which Japan hopes to set a future direction for resolving the decades-old row.
JAPAN
Mar 24, 2001

Japanese shortwave services fading out in cyberspace age

For Michiteru Takagi, 76, Sunday will signal the end of a daily ritual he has practiced for 42 years.

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’