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COMMUNITY
Dec 30, 1999

Le Nozze de video

Toss away your Love Getty and forget the formal o-miai (arranged meeting) -- matchmaking has gone hi-tech.
JAPAN / Media
Dec 30, 1999

A recap of 1999's top media: mavens, meddlers, madmen

By Philip Brasor
JAPAN
Dec 30, 1999

Credit card firms prepared for Y2K

Staff writer Despite reports from Britain detailing Y2K problems with credit cards, Japan's credit card companies, now in the midst of last-minute preparations, claim their customers have no need to worry. Even before the clock ticks over to the new year, when Y2K problems are most likely to occur,...
CULTURE / Books
Dec 30, 1999

Explore high-tech versions of Japanese classics

GENJI MONOGATARI (THE TALE OF GENJI). Nihon Koten Bungaku Series 1. Released by Fujitsu Social Science Laboratory Ltd. Windows/Macintosh Hybrid CD-ROMs. Kawasaki, Japan and San Jose, CA: Fujitsu Software Corp., 1996. Bilingual Japanese-English. Two disks boxed separately. 6,000 yen or $68 each. HEIKE...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 30, 1999

Russia's Jewish homeland: a Stalinist experiment in social engineering lingers on

BIROBIDZHAN, RUSSIA -- Mikhail Kul was a soldier in the Soviet Army that helped defeat Germany in 1945, but he returned home to find that the Holocaust had emptied his Ukrainian village of most of its inhabitants.
CULTURE / Art
Dec 30, 1999

There's just no place like Chrome

Richard Stark is the antidesigner.
JAPAN
Dec 30, 1999

Japan urged to consider free-trade pacts

Staff writer Japan should keep its commitment to trade liberalization under the World Trade Organization, but this must not prevent it from seeking free-trade agreements with its trading partners, according to Noboru Hatakeyama, chairman of the Japan External Trade Organization. Earlier this month,...
CULTURE / Books
Dec 30, 1999

Japanese politics, a model democracy

JAPANESE DEMOCRACY: Power, Coordination and Performance, by Bradley Richardson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. 325 pp.. $17. Do the revisionists have any clothes? Bradley Richardson argues that the interpretations of Japan popularized by the revisionist school do not bear scrutiny and that...
JAPAN
Dec 29, 1999

Writer, artist unite to portray Okinawa's problems

Staff writer OSAKA -- When artist Seitaro Kuroda was videotaping a series of war stories for children written by prize-winning author Akiyuki Nosaka, he noticed something was missing. The stories, which first appeared in a magazine in 1971, described the hardship brought upon children and animals by...
JAPAN
Dec 29, 1999

Rengo Osaka backs bureaucrat for poll

OSAKA -- Rengo Osaka, the local political arm of the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo), plans to back Fusae Ota, councilor of the minister's secretariat at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, in the upcoming gubernatorial election, it was learned Wednesday. The governorship of...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Dec 29, 1999

An open ethOS

The latest tale of cyber-riches involves the Linux crowd. A recent string of IPOs earned shareholders obscene amounts of money. Red Hat, a distributor of the Linux operating system, is worth about $15 billion. VA Linux, a company that sells computers that use Linux, made history: Its shares leaped 700...
JAPAN
Dec 29, 1999

Aum trials tail off as Asahara's day nears

While the trial of Aum Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara has proceeded at a snail's pace, with prosecutors examining only nine out of the 17 counts that he faces to date, his disciples' trials have entered their final stages before the district court.
JAPAN
Dec 29, 1999

Japan to make proposals for WTO transparency

Japan will propose early next month that the World Trade Organization reform its decision-making process to make it more transparent and legitimate to all the 135-member economies, a government official said Tuesday. The mechanism in question is known as "Green Room," a private meeting of about 30 unspecified...
JAPAN
Dec 29, 1999

Aum mouthpiece Joyu freed from prison, returns to cult

Aum Shinrikyo's charismatic ex-spokesman, Fumihiro Joyu, 37, was released Wednesday from Hiroshima Prison after finishing a three-year sentence for forgery and perjury. Upon his release, four years and two months after his arrest in October 1995, he announced his intention to rejoin the cult and flew...
JAPAN
Dec 29, 1999

Chronology of cultists' legal battles

The following is a 1999 chronology of trial proceedings and other developments involving key Aum Shinrikyo defendants: Feb. 16: The Tokyo District Court sentences Hisako Ishii, 39, a close aide of cult founder Shoko Asahara, to 44 months in prison for abetting the flight of three cult fugitives wanted...
EDITORIALS
Dec 28, 1999

Confusion, as usual, in 1999

This has been a year of extremes. It began with the sad spectacle of the U.S. president's sexual escapades and verbal gymnastics exposed to international ridicule, and draws to a close under the shadow of millennial terrorism and computer-induced chaos. There were long-anticipated moments of peace, and...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 28, 1999

Happy in the Gucci nation

What kind of country will Japan be in the 21st century? The millennial forecast is in and it looks like this: Japan's cultural elite is quickly converging around the notion that Japan should be the first boutique state of the 21st century -- distinctive, well designed and expensive.
JAPAN
Dec 28, 1999

50-year-old art exchange emerges from Montana

Staff writer Koichi Ogawa encountered a surprise during a two-month tour across the United States with two other Japanese earlier this year. Ogawa, 61, was visiting a friend in California who told him that an acquaintance from Montana would come down with some artwork. Ogawa was expecting to meet someone...
JAPAN
Dec 28, 1999

Taiwan opts for Japan's bullet trains

TAIPEI -- A Japanese consortium has been awarded priority negotiation rights for contracts involving the construction of a high-speed railway between Taipei and Kaohsiung, the Taiwanese builder of the rail system announced Tuesday. The announcement by Taiwan High-Speed Rail Corp. could pave the way...
JAPAN
Dec 28, 1999

Police preparing for release of Aum No. 2 leader Joyu

Hiroshima Prison officials announced Tuesday that a prisoner -- assumed to be Fumihiro Joyu, the second-in-command of Aum Shinrikyo -- was to be released at 6 a.m. this morning. Hiroshima Prefectural Police will deploy about 150 officers in the area around the prison and Hiroshima Airport to prevent...
JAPAN
Dec 28, 1999

Bungling bureaucrats just another day at work for Ishihara

Staff writer The harried city official sighs as he looks at a poster designed to promote the Year 2000 countdown celebrations in Tokyo's Odaiba district. "He didn't like it," the Port and Harbor Bureau official says, bewildered. "He said we should think it out more, be more creative." A little while...
JAPAN
Dec 27, 1999

Nikko unifies, sweetens starting salaries

Nikko Securities Co. will introduce a new fixed salary system next spring to offer a unified monthly wage of 300,000 yen to all nonmanagement workers, company sources said. At the same time, the brokerage will determine bonuses based strictly on individual workers' performance, the sources said Sunday....
JAPAN
Dec 27, 1999

Quality of Japanese testes unchanged, agency finds

There has been no significant decrease in the quality of sperm nor the weight of Japanese men's testes over the last two decades, according to the nation's most comprehensive survey on dioxin levels in humans and wildlife. The survey, conducted by the Environment agency and released Monday, was conducted...
JAPAN
Dec 27, 1999

Agency requests Aum be put under its watch

The Public Security Investigation Agency requested Monday that the Public Security Examination Commission consider whether religious cult Aum Shinrikyo can be placed under the agency's surveillance. The request came on the same day that new legislation enabling the agency to regularly supervise or restrict...
JAPAN
Dec 27, 1999

Nuclear plant jobs lure unwitting day laborers

Staff writer The death last week of a JCO Co. employee who on Sept. 30 was working at the scene of Japan's worst nuclear accident, reminded the nation of the health consequences of an atomic accident. According to Yuko Fujita, associate professor of physics at Keio University, accidents like the one...
EDITORIALS
Dec 26, 1999

Justice on the ropes

If crimes against humanity are to be deterred, those that contemplate committing them must know that they will be punished for their misdeeds. The establishment of the International Criminal Court is an important step toward that end, but its effectiveness depends on governments having the political...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 26, 1999

Upbeat ending to 20th century

PARIS -- A number of problems continue to darken the world as it prepares for a new century and a new millennium: chronic warfare in Afghanistan, Africa and Columbia; widespread terrorism; a stalemate in Kosovo; fear over the plans of "rogue states" such as North Korea, Iraq and Iran; the refusal of...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Dec 26, 1999

Point of view

Here is a count-your-blessings column for the yearend, reminders of what we may miss but also of what we gain by international exposure. First, a list of what Japanese like best about the West, and then, Western views of living in Japan.
COMMUNITY / JAPAN LITE
Dec 26, 1999

Forget this year, and the last 999 as well

At the end of the year now, Japan is in the throes of "bonenkai," or "forget the year" parties. I wonder, though -- shouldn't we be having "forget the millennium" parties?
JAPAN
Dec 24, 1999

Ajisaka backed again for Osaka governor

OSAKA -- The Association to Reform the Osaka Prefectural Government, which consists of the Japanese Communist Party's local chapter, citizens' groups and labor unions, announced Friday it will again back Makoto Ajisaka, a former philosophy professor, in the gubernatorial election to be held Feb. 6....

Longform

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.
What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji