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JAPAN
Feb 14, 2001

Mori, Putin plan March treaty talks

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet in the Russian city of Irkutsk on March 25 for peace treaty talks, the two leaders agreed during a phone conversation Tuesday.
JAPAN
Feb 14, 2001

Mori, Putin plan March treaty talks

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet in the Russian city of Irkutsk on March 25 for peace treaty talks, the two leaders agreed during a phone conversation Tuesday.
ENVIRONMENT
Feb 14, 2001

Sakhalin oil sparks hopes and fears

YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK, Russia -- Sakhalin Island is a remote former penal colony where the sea freezes for up to six months a year and villagers have been known to sleep in tents pitched in their bedrooms when the central heating fails.
JAPAN
Feb 14, 2001

Surviving students arrive at Kansai airport

Nine Uwajima Fisheries High School students who survived a collision Friday between their training ship and a surfacing U.S. submarine off Hawaii arrived Tuesday afternoon at Kansai International Airport in Osaka aboard a Japan Airlines flight.
JAPAN
Feb 14, 2001

Politicians rethinking reliance on vote-gathering machinery

Staff writer It is election year in Japan again. About half of the seats in the Upper House will be up for grabs in the triennial election in July, while the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election -- often seen as an indicator of voting trends in national polls -- is expected in June.
JAPAN
Feb 14, 2001

Politicians rethinking reliance on vote-gathering machinery

Staff writer It is election year in Japan again. About half of the seats in the Upper House will be up for grabs in the triennial election in July, while the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election -- often seen as an indicator of voting trends in national polls -- is expected in June.
CULTURE / Film
Feb 12, 2001

Into the heart of darkness

What is it about deeply rural places and deeply strange religion and sex? In the United States, one has the stereotype of the hills of Appalachia as refuges for snake-handling preachers and cousin-marrying hillbillies. In Japan, one has the mountains of Shikoku in Masato Harada's "Inugami," where ancient...
JAPAN
Feb 12, 2001

4.4-magnitude quake rocks west

An earthquake measuring 4.4 in magnitude jolted a wide area of western Japan on Sunday morning, the Meteorological Agency said. No damage or injuries were reported immediately.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 12, 2001

Hints of thaw in Indo-Pakistani relations

ISLAMABAD -- When Pakistani military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee spoke on the phone for a few minutes after the devastating earthquake that hit parts of India recently, many observers were relieved.
JAPAN
Feb 12, 2001

LDP should return 'fees' from KSD affiliate: Kanzaki

The Liberal Democratic Party should return the money provided to it under the guise of party membership fees by an affiliate of the scandal-tainted industrial mutual aid organization KSD, the leader of the LDP's key coalition partner said Sunday.
JAPAN
Feb 12, 2001

Police determine body found in cave to be Blackman's

Police have confirmed that the remains discovered Friday in a cave in Kanagawa Prefecture are those of Lucie Blackman, the 21-year-old British hostess who went missing last July.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 12, 2001

Give power to the people

The newly reorganized government ministries and agencies began operating Jan. 6. The administration of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, however, seems to be oblivious to the purpose of the reform.
EDITORIALS
Feb 12, 2001

A nation without a road map

The primary task of the ongoing ordinary Diet session is to present a credible picture of future Japan, a blueprint for the structural reforms needed to rebuild the nation. Plenary debates were held in both houses of the Diet earlier last week, followed by committee-level debates during the rest of the...
COMMENTARY
Feb 12, 2001

Destroying a fragile trust

In the semirural area near Tokyo where I and some others spend weekends, we have just suffered our first break-ins. Nothing serious. Someone, probably delinquent kids, going through unlocked parked cars looking for loose items. Far more interesting is why we have been able to leave our houses and cars...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 12, 2001

U.S. needs allies, not deputy sheriffs

Comments by new U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell have stirred some controversy in Australia. During his confirmation hearings, Powell said that the United States would let Australia take the lead in Indonesia, "as they have done so well in that troubled country." Critics saw this as evidence that...
JAPAN
Feb 12, 2001

Mori urges U.S. to raise Ehime Maru

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori urged the United States on Sunday to salvage the Japanese ship that sank after being hit by a U.S. nuclear submarine off Hawaii on Friday.
JAPAN
Feb 12, 2001

Mori urges U.S. to raise Ehime Maru

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori urged the United States on Sunday to salvage the Japanese ship that sank after being hit by a U.S. nuclear submarine off Hawaii on Friday.
ENVIRONMENT
Feb 12, 2001

Rescuing baby ibises at Sanchahe

A crested ibis was presented to the Japanese people Oct. 13 by Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji. As an ornithologist, I was excited by the news, and it recalled my visits to the nesting area in Sanchahe Valley, a nature reserve for the crested ibis in Yang County, Shanxi Province.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 12, 2001

Forget Big Brother -- it's little brothers that count

ORDER BY ACCIDENT: The origins and consequences of conformity in contemporary Japan, by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2000, 156 pp., $25/17.99 pounds(cloth). The title of this book is misleading, although it captures the main idea of the authors, two social...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 12, 2001

How to profit from a nation's tragedy

THE TIANANMEN PAPERS: The Chinese Leadership's Decision to Use Force against their Own People -- in their Own Words, compiled by Zhang Liang, edited by Andrew Nathan and Perry Link, with an afterword by Orville Schell. Public Affairs, 2001, 560 pp., $30 (cloth). "The Tiananmen Papers" surfaced with...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Feb 12, 2001

U.S. sues Atsugi incinerator operator

A landmark pollution case now before the Yokohama District Court is exposing the dirty underbelly of incineration practices in Japan, and highlighting what some would call the willingness of officials to turn a blind eye to dangerous waste burning.

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years