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COMMUNITY
Aug 27, 2000

SHARE and help the world

SHARE is Japan's version of Medecins Sans Frontieres, a small nongovernment aid organization that sends volunteer doctors, nurses and health workers to assist in stricken areas abroad. It also helps those in need on the domestic front -- women involved in the sex industry and people who have overstayed...
JAPAN
Aug 27, 2000

Mejiro gets a long-overdue facelift

For the first time in 70 years, Mejiro Station is finally getting a facelift.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Aug 27, 2000

Yoko Ishii

LONDON -- "I am very proud that I really did find a wonderful job. I can travel the world with my scissors and comb, and wherever I go not only can I find work, but by making people beautiful I can also give them hopes and dreams," said Yoko Ishii.
COMMUNITY / How-tos
Aug 27, 2000

Home sweet home

WASHINGTON -- As a born-again nonsmoker (when I was three a great aunt tied a white ribbon around my wrist signifying a commitment never to smoke, a promise on my behalf that for years I chose not to honor), it is a joy to be in a country where smoking is all but prohibited. Here there are neither smoking...
CULTURE / Art
Aug 27, 2000

Dogs at Saatchi and Saatchi Gallery

The philosophy that primes Jun Fukukawa's work, a combination of painting and sculpture, is a blast from the recent past. Fukukawa is inspired by the writings of Carlos Castaneda, particularly the book "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge" whose hallucinatory Indian mystical experiences...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Aug 27, 2000

Visitors from the dark side of the Inland Sea

I'm dead. Not only that, but my spirit is now floating around the Seto Inland Sea. But before I explain to you how I died, I have to explain about Obon.
JAPAN
Aug 26, 2000

Students to be evacuated from rumbling Miyake

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government began preparations Friday to evacuate hundreds of students from Miyake Island and temporarily relocate them at facilities in Tokyo due to the continuing threat of eruptions from Mount Oyama and the health risks posed by ash from the volcano, officials said.
BUSINESS
Aug 26, 2000

NEC reorganizes group companies

NEC Corp. will transfer its business of office telephones and point-of-sale devices to affiliated Nitsuko Corp. next April as part of efforts to reorganize NEC group companies, top officials of the two firms announced on Friday.
JAPAN
Aug 26, 2000

MMC may face charges over defect coverup

The Transport Ministry is considering filing a criminal complaint against Mitsubishi Motors Corp. for violating the Road Vehicle Law by concealing information on defective vehicles, a Transport Minister Hajime Morita said Friday.
JAPAN
Aug 26, 2000

Pyongyang offered economic help instead of redress

Foreign Minister Yohei Kono confirmed Friday that Japan has offered to extend economic cooperation to North Korea instead of monetary compensation for its 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
JAPAN
Aug 26, 2000

Kansai business adviser gains fame for book on Hiroshima bombing

OSAKA -- While Yoshikuni Inoue's is a familiar face in Kansai business circles, he is better known for his efforts to boost the region's economy as joint chairman of the Kansai Association of Corporate Executives in the early 1990s than as a survivor of the 1945 Hiroshima atomic bombing.
BUSINESS
Aug 26, 2000

Japan to push WTO dialogue with China

Japan will propose to China that the two nations establish a high-level regular forum for dialogue on matters related to the World Trade Organization, government sources said Friday.
BUSINESS
Aug 26, 2000

New combined ministry seeks 20 trillion yen budget

The General Affairs Ministry, to be created in January, will seek a budget for fiscal 2001 that is 18.3 percent larger than the combined initial budget of its three predecessor organizations for fiscal 2000, government officials said Friday.
JAPAN
Aug 26, 2000

Coalition scraps 250 public works projects

Senior officials of the ruling coalition agreed Friday to abandon plans for about 250 public works projects nationwide, including a plan to build a dam with flood gates across the Yoshino River, Tokushima Prefecture, coalition sources said.
EDITORIALS
Aug 26, 2000

Making peace the hard way

Next month, the United Nations convenes its Millennium Summit. One of the key issues the world body must face in the next century is its role in peacekeeping operations. The magnitude of the challenges were made plain this week when a special commission released its final report. It makes for grim reading....
SUMO
Aug 26, 2000

Akebono, Taka skip workout

Yokozuna Akebono and fellow-grand champion Takanohana missed the public practice session Thursday before the Yokozuna Deliberation Council, raising questions about their readiness for the upcoming Autumn Grand Sumo Tournament.
BUSINESS
Aug 26, 2000

Mexico, Japan discuss trade pact

Hermino Blanco, Mexican secretary for commerce and industrial development, said Friday that he expects Mexico and Japan to sign an investment promotion accord in the near future.
JAPAN
Aug 26, 2000

Report calls for retired cops to field public complaints

The National Police Agency released a draft report Friday on reforming Japan's police force that calls for the creation of a center to handle public complaints in a bid to foster trust in the scandal-tainted force, NPA officials said.
JAPAN
Aug 26, 2000

Tokyo Internet costs almost double N.Y. charges

The cost of continuously using the Internet in Tokyo for 24 hours is nearly twice as high as that in New York, according to a survey released Friday by the Posts and Telecommunications Ministry.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 26, 2000

Language questions reflect changing times

In times of transition, when the need for reform is felt more keenly than usual, there is heightened openness to bold suggestions. Japan is in the middle of such a period. Public debt exceeds 100 percent of GDP. The social-welfare system needs a drastic overhaul. Unemployment is at an all-time high....
COMMENTARY
Aug 26, 2000

Is the Bank of Japan right?

LONDON -- The governor of the Bank of Japan, Masaru Hayami, and the majority of the BOJ's policy council have drawn criticism from the Japanese government and leaders of Japanese industry for the decision to end the BOJ's zero-interest-rate policy. These criticisms have been echoed in the British press....
BUSINESS
Aug 26, 2000

Capital gains tax system should stay: FRC chief

Hideyuki Aizawa, chairman of the Financial Reconstruction Commission, said Friday that he will call on the Finance Ministry to maintain the current capital gains tax system in order to prevent the ministry's proposed reforms from negatively affecting the domestic stock market.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 26, 2000

The case against Japan's whaling program

While U.S. President Bill Clinton was signing legislation to protect the oceans, Japan expanded its whale hunt in the North Pacific. In defiance of international pleas from Clinton, Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair and other leaders, Japan has gone beyond hunting smaller minke whales to include the...
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Aug 26, 2000

Magic of Momoyama Mino still shines across the years

Let's take a walk back in time, say to the 1570s. Not just any ol' hike through the woods, but a pilgrimage to the birthplace of some of Japan's greatest ceramic wares.
CULTURE / Art
Aug 26, 2000

Hair ornament exhibitions

The Sawanoi Museum of Traditional Japanese Hair Ornaments in the western suburbs of Tokyo will hold a three-day event Sept. 8-10 commemorating Kushi no Hi (Comb Day). Stores and institutions with connections to combs and hair ornaments usually organize a variety of events on Sept. 4, as the numerals...
EDITORIALS
Aug 25, 2000

Listen to the market

The market is the judge in the market-driven economy. For instance, the stock market tells -- through prices formed by the collective will of investors -- where the real economy stands. Although this fact is self-evident, it is often forgotten or misunderstood. The current slump in the Tokyo stock market,...
JAPAN
Aug 25, 2000

Digital technology casts doubt on photo evidence used in court

Courts in the future will give less credibility to photos as evidence, due to the growing quality of computer-enhanced images, the president of the world's third-largest producer of image-editing computer software said.

Longform

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.