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EDITORIALS
Jan 26, 2000

Russia's mystery man

Far more is asserted about Russia's acting president, Mr. Vladimir Putin, than is known. He rose through the state security apparatus, where his steely eye and no-nonsense demeanor impressed President Boris Yeltsin, who named him acting prime minister in August last year. Upon Mr. Yeltsin's surprise...
JAPAN
Jan 26, 2000

Forgeries force Takashimaya to reissue 300,000 credit cards

OSAKA -- The Takashimaya department store chain has reissued about 300,000 credit cards in the wake of reports last year of forgeries, it was learned Wednesday. More than 10 cases of fraud involving forged Takashimaya credit cards had been reported every month since last spring, and the number rose...
JAPAN
Jan 26, 2000

Japan, U.S. leaders to huddle on foreign investment

Staff writer Japan and the United States will hold a conference of senior government officials and business leaders in Tokyo on March 1 to discuss ways to further accelerate direct foreign investment in Japan, government sources said Wednesday. According to the Ministry of International Trade and Industry...
COMMUNITY
Jan 26, 2000

Watching the world go by: portrait of a centenarian

When she was in her 70s, Xing Guizhen brushed aside the idea of false teeth. "There's no need," she declared. "I'm going to die in a few days."
JAPAN
Jan 26, 2000

Lower House seat reduction: cunning cut or rash slashing?

Staff writer A battle over a controversial bill to abolish 20 proportional-representation seats in the Lower House is rocking the Diet, with the opposition parties threatening to boycott all deliberations if the bill is forced through. Deadlock could even force Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi to dissolve...
JAPAN
Jan 26, 2000

U.N. drug program calls for more funds

Staff writer The head of the United Nations Drug-Control Program hopes Japan will devote more of its U.N. contribution to the program, claiming it is cost-effective in the domestic war against narcotics. Pointing out Japan's declining contribution to the Vienna-based UNDCP, Executive Director Pino Arlacchi...
JAPAN
Jan 26, 2000

Panel asked to find better ways of teaching English

To produce more Japanese who can communicate effectively in the international community in the 21st century, the Education Ministry set up an advisory panel Wednesday to map out recommendations on better ways of teaching English. At the panel's first meeting, Education Minister Hirofumi Nakasone said...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jan 26, 2000

Memories can't wait

This year's New Year's cleaning was quick: Pull out the file of Y2K clippings and dump all the doom and gloom in the trash with nary a backward glance. That got me digging through other files, and I spent a merry half hour reliving the Internet's infancy: the prospect of genuinely mobile computing (shades...
COMMUNITY
Jan 26, 2000

China's gray peril

BEIJING -- Xue Aiying, a 65-year-old retired worker from Nanjing, used to go to Bailuzhou Park every morning to practice Falun Gong before the sect was outlawed in July last year. "I didn't know what to do with myself after I retired," she explains. "I felt lonely and empty before I joined Falun Gong."...
JAPAN
Jan 26, 2000

Ruling bloc rams Diet-seat bill through committee

In the absence of the opposition camp, the ruling triumvirate on Wednesday rammed a controversial bill aimed at reducing the number of seats in the Diet through a Lower House committee. The bill, which aims to do away with 20 proportional representation seats in the 500-member Lower House, is backed...
LIFE / Travel
Jan 26, 2000

The wild daffodils of Awaji Island

Awaji Island (area 590 sq. km), administratively part of Hyogo Prefecture, is located in the Inland Sea between Kobe and Tokushima in Shikoku. It is the largest island in the Inland Sea, and was once a separate province.
JAPAN
Jan 26, 2000

Government to set up antihacker task force

The government Wednesday decided to establish a task force of specialists to prevent computer vandalism by hackers and make a manual at an early date. The decision was made at a meeting of section chiefs from all ministries and government agencies in charge of computer-related issues. Earlier in the...
SUMO
Jan 25, 2000

Musoyama captures first sumo title at Hatsu Basho

Six and a half years after his auspicious debut in the top division in September 1993, Musoyama finally won his first yusho, defeating fellow-sekiwake Kaio on senshuraku (final day) to clinch the championship of the 2000 Hatsu Basho Sunday with an outstanding 13-2 record.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 25, 2000

From 'either/or' to 'both/and'

FATHER INDIA: Westerners Under the Spell of an Ancient Culture, by Jeffrey Paine. New York, HarperCollins, 1999, 324 pp., with b/w photos, $14. Toward the middle of this detailed and thoughtful book, the author says his work is "about how different hopes for the West -- visions of another kind of West...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 25, 2000

Women pay for Asia's successes

WOMEN IN THE NEW ASIA, by Yayori Matsui. London: Zed Books, 1999, 194 pp., $19.95 (paper). THE SEX SECTOR: The Economic and Social Bases of Prostitution in Southeast Asia, edited by Linda Lean Lim. Geneva: International Labor Office, 1998, 232 pp., SFR35. Yayori Matsui, author of "Women in the New...
BUSINESS
Jan 25, 2000

Think before giving nonbankers licenses, JBA chief urges

The relationship banks will have with nonfinanciers trying to enter the industry should be clarified before authorities decide to grant them banking licenses, Katsuyuki Sugita, chairman of the Japanese Bankers Association, said Tuesday.
BUSINESS
Jan 25, 2000

Info-tech boom to stay hot

The Tokyo stock market is maintaining its upward trend amid expectations of a global economic recovery led by information technology-related investment and a favor- able supply-and-demand balance of stocks.
JAPAN
Jan 25, 2000

'20s Industry Club faces wrecking ball

The 80-year-old Industry Club of Japan building in Tokyo's Marunouchi district, which has served as a hub for Japan's business circles, will next month undergo reconstruction.
JAPAN
Jan 25, 2000

Kobe Steel exec admits paying 'sokaiya' 30 million yen

OSAKA -- A former managing director of Kobe Steel Ltd. admitted during his first court hearing Tuesday that the firm paid 30 million yen in cash to a "sokaiya" corporate extortionist in violation of the Commercial Code. Hiroshi Kajiwara, 58, acknowledged the facts outlined by prosecutors and said he...
EDITORIALS
Jan 24, 2000

Saddam Hussein unrepentant

Last week marked the 10th anniversary of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, a move that launched the Persian Gulf War. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein lost the war, but he seems to be winning the peace. He has successfully blocked international efforts to enforce compliance of the treaty he signed and the United...
COMMENTARY
Jan 24, 2000

Common sense up in flames

Shizuka Kamei, policy chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, recently proposed a raise in the tobacco tax in the fiscal 2000 government budget. The proposal, however, was quickly quashed due to opposition in the LDP and by Japan Tobacco Inc., the nation's only cigarette manufacturer. Smokers and...
BUSINESS
Jan 24, 2000

A new economic theory for a new millennium

The arrival of the new millennium offers us an opportunity to consider matters from a longer term point of view. While it is impossible to predict the events of the coming 1,000 years -- pause to consider that of today's seven leading industrialized coun- tries, only Japan, France and Britain existed...
COMMENTARY
Jan 24, 2000

Homage to a mass murderer

I was shocked to see a photograph in The Japan Times last month of former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama and former Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiromu Nonaka laying a wreath at the statue of the late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang. They looked rather sheepish. They should, in fact, have looked...
ENVIRONMENT
Jan 24, 2000

U.S. Greens Abroad get organized for wiser, more principled politics

Once, green was just a color. Now the word evokes numerous shades of fear, anger and optimism, and pops up in discussions of politics, economics, trade and environment.
EDITORIALS
Jan 23, 2000

Aum by any other name...

Desperate people -- and groups -- can be expected to take desperate steps. The carefully orchestrated public relations campaign in which the Aum Shinrikyo cult is now engaged, including changing the cult name to Aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, for a "fresh start," seems like little more...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 23, 2000

Japan's 'railway diplomacy' rolls forward

Plans for a Japanese consortium to construct a shinkansen link between Taiwan's two biggest cities will showcase Tokyo's technology and "railway diplomacy." Both have been running virtually nonstop and on schedule since 1872, when the first line connecting Tokyo's Shimbashi station to Yokohama opened....
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 23, 2000

Missile defense opens a Pandora's silo

Ever since 1983, when U.S. President Ronald Reagan broached the project, the idea of a missile defense program that would protect the United States from nuclear attack has burned bright in the breasts of many Americans. The image of a nation protected from threat and insulated from nuclear blackmail...
CULTURE / Music
Jan 23, 2000

Ensembles produce refined nuances in lasting, expressive performances

Ensemble. Now there's a word we bandy about all the time in music. A French word, it means "together." In music, it has two shades of meaning. On the one hand, we often speak of good ensemble, or poor, when we refer to the precision of playing together. A musical group is itself called an ensemble: musicians...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 23, 2000

Enhancing global security

The business of the world has changed almost beyond recognition over the course of the last 100 years. At the turn of the last century, Japan was the first country outside Europe to break into the ranks of the great powers. Yet even until World War II, international affairs were largely Eurocentric in...
COMMUNITY
Jan 23, 2000

U.S. lawyer set to solve your immigration woes

Being a quietly spoken, modest-sounding soul, immigration lawyer Mark Ivener, of the California-based law practice Ivener & Holt, may not like the following revelation. But the fact is he gives a good part of his professional time for free by giving immigration lectures and seminars.

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’