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JAPAN
Jan 19, 2000

Mazda to make Net its new sales outlet

OSAKA -- In an effort to increase sales opportunities, Mazda Motor Corp. plans to make all its passenger cars available over the Internet beginning this summer, company president Mark Fields said Wednesday. The move will follow last month's initial foray onto the Net in which Mazda offered only the...
JAPAN
Jan 19, 2000

Washington not ready to swallow Kyoto Protocol

Staff writer The United States is determined to realize a workable international agreement to fight global warming, but serious sticking points remain before Washington can ratify the Kyoto Protocol, U.S. Climate Change negotiator Mark Hambley said on Wednesday. Hambley, who has headed climate change...
COMMUNITY / How-tos
Jan 19, 2000

New opportunities

I have a letter from a 15-year-old girl in Germany. She has blue-gray eyes and dark blond hair. She speaks English, French and German. She tells me of her school and her hobbies. She has a cat called Blacky. She is looking for pen-friends in Japan.
EDITORIALS
Jan 18, 2000

Furor over 'Frankenfoods'

Worries about genetically modified foods are on the rise. Consumers around the world are increasingly concerned about the effects such organisms have on human health and the environment. Just as troubling is their suspicion of the companies and regulatory authorities who assure the public that those...
JAPAN
Jan 18, 2000

Pilots' diaries show human side

It may only bring a wary smile to the face of 72-year-old Midori Yamanouchi when she sees young revelers at drinking bashes toast the legendary kamikaze missions.
JAPAN
Jan 18, 2000

Nanking Massacre biggest lie, unverifiable: group

Staff writer OSAKA -- Claims by Chinese and Western historians that hundreds of thousands of people were raped and murdered by the Imperial Japanese Army in Nanjing are undocumented and exaggerated, participants in symposium here Sunday claimed as protesters rallied outside. "There is no proof of large-scale...
JAPAN
Jan 18, 2000

90% in plebiscite say no, but dam project stands

The government will proceed with plans to build a dam across the Yoshino River in Shikoku even though a local plebiscite Sunday found over 90 percent of those who voted oppose the project, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi said Monday. In Tokushima, Gov. Toshio Endo also said the prefecture will continue...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 18, 2000

Here comes Japan's e-boom

Let me make some predictions about Japan's economic performance in and after 2000. I believe that recovery in the next 12 to 18 months will be slow but robust expansion will take place after that. The boom will not benefit everyone, as did the past expansion, however. It will be accompanied by the polarization...
JAPAN
Jan 18, 2000

Dam vote clouds future of toothless plebiscites

Staff writer Sunday's plebiscite over a controversial dam project in Tokushima Prefecture may have triggered more questions and issues to be tackled than it has solved, as both government and citizens grapple to find a middle ground on incorporating residents' voices over public works projects. The...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 18, 2000

Feminist and dutiful daughter

MIRROR: The Fiction and Essays of Koda Aya, by Ann Sherif. Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 1999, 224 pp., $42 (cloth), $16.95 (paper). Koda Aya (1904-1990), the youngest daughter of the Meiji novelist Koda Rohan, began her writing career late, after the death of her famous father. Her first works,...
JAPAN
Jan 18, 2000

Regional Special: Okinawa

Isle's airport between reef and a hard place> Staff writer ISHIGAKI ISLAND, Okinawa Pref. -- Passengers stare dreamily from the plane. Some crane their necks for a glimpse of the cobalt coastline and Ishigaki's famed coral reefs. But all are jerked back to reality when the plane touches down and suddenly...
JAPAN
Jan 18, 2000

Nations must cooperate to stop illegal drugs, Azuma says

Drug abuse is not a problem that can be solved by just one nation, Shozo Azuma, parliamentary vice minister for foreign affairs, said at the opening ceremony of "Anti-Drug Conference, Tokyo 2000" on Monday. Law enforcement and financial officials as well as researchers from about 20 Asia- Pacific nations...
JAPAN
Jan 18, 2000

War dead kin's book pushes peace

A bilingual book published recently by relatives of Japanese who died in the war aims to share their peace quest with others who lost people in conflict.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 18, 2000

A life between East and West

THE MASK CARVER'S SON, A Novel by Alyson Richman. Bloomsbury Pub Plc USA, 371 pp., $23.95. This is an imagined autobiography of a Japanese artist who studied in Paris around the year 1900.
CULTURE / Music
Jan 18, 2000

Call it garage punk, if you insist

"I was in a band called the Titties," says Cat Scratch, squeezing her breasts.
JAPAN
Jan 18, 2000

Navajo fights relocation, sees coal interests at work

Staff writer An American Indian recently visited Japan to solicit support for the Dineh people, also known as the Navajo, facing relocation from their home in the Big Mountain area of northern Arizona. Lecturing in English and saying a prayer in his native tongue, Bahe Yazzie Katenay, 42, spoke about...
EDITORIALS
Jan 17, 2000

Begin the Constitutional debate

The postwar Constitution of Japan, which was put into effect in 1947, will come up for formal and continuous debate for the first time in the ordinary Diet session that opens on Friday. It is unclear, however, whether the Constitutional Review Council -- which was created last year in both houses --...
JAPAN
Jan 17, 2000

Japan begins disposing of 1 million land mines

Work began Monday to destroy the Self-Defense Forces' stockpiles of antipersonnel land mines in accordance with the international convention that took effect in March. About 100 officials, including Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, Shiga Gov. Yoshitsugu Kunimatsu and Defense Agency Chief Tsutomu Kawara,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 17, 2000

Information the key to Japan's revival

What would most strike a foreign visitor returning to Japan after a gap of several years? Most likely it would be the gloom surrounding the future of Japan, and at street level, finding how many people from a distance look Western -- because their hair is dyed brown, blond or every other color you can...
JAPAN
Jan 17, 2000

Kobe closes last quake shelter

Staff writer KOBE -- Local government officials marked the fifth anniversary of the Kobe earthquake by announcing that the last temporary shelter has been closed and that it was time to move on and take stock of the lessons learned. But while much of Kobe and the surrounding area has recovered, many...
JAPAN
Jan 17, 2000

Book written by war dead bridges gap between families

Staff writer A bilingual book published recently by relatives of Japanese who died in World War II aims to share their peace quest with others who lost people in conflict.Shigenori Nishikawa of the National Liaison Conference of the Association of War Dead for Peace (Heiwa Izoku-kai Zenkoku Renraku-kai)...
BUSINESS
Jan 17, 2000

Fukushima exits chamber on bright note

To the eyes of the former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, the Japanese business environment has changed over the last several years, thanks in part to an influx of foreign companies and capital.
JAPAN
Jan 17, 2000

Kamikaze diaries reveal pilots' human side

Staff writer It may only bring a wary smile to the face of 72-year-old Midori Yamanouchi when she sees young revelers at drinking bashes toast the legendary kamikaze missions. But the soft-spoken anthropology professor at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania gets terribly upset when she hears...
JAPAN
Jan 17, 2000

Thousands hold vigil to mark quake's fifth anniversary

KOBE -- Thousands of candles were lighted under predawn skies Monday and the eternal "Light of Hope 1.17" was set aglow to mark the fifth anniversary of the Great Hanshin Earthquake. About 1,500 people gathered at Higashi Yuenchi Park in Chuo Ward to offer a minute of silent prayer at 5:46 a.m., the...
BUSINESS
Jan 17, 2000

Will the Japanese trade surplus continue its downward ways?

Japan's trade surplus on a balance of payments basis was estimated at 14.8 trillion yen in 1999, significantly lower than the 16 trillion yen posted in 1998 after two consecutive years of sharp increase.
JAPAN
Jan 17, 2000

Five years after quake, Hanshin looks to future

Staff writers KOBE -- While reconstruction is largely complete, victims of the Great Hanshin Earthquake remain concerned about the future, officials announced Monday at a ceremony to mark the fifth anniversary of the disaster. The earthquake, which struck on January 17, 1995, killed more than 6,400...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 17, 2000

Cut U.S. military presence

Japan faces intense pressure to settle uncertainties regarding the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps heliport now at the Futenma Air Station in Okinawa before July, when it hosts a Group of Eight summit. Unless the problems are settled by then, U.S. President Bill Clinton is likely to face a firestorm...
EDITORIALS
Jan 16, 2000

Poor little rich kids

Here's a problem many of us might wish we had: being so rich that we have to start worrying about its effect on our children. It seems there are suddenly a lot more people around who fall into this category. So many, in fact, that the U.S. investment bank Merrill Lynch has reportedly begun offering psychiatric...
CULTURE / Art
Jan 16, 2000

Stitched with love by mothers' hands

Teenagers rarely go to museums by choice, but Bunka Gakuen Costume Museum in Shinjuku is a special case. On a recent lunchtime visit groups of lively students came into the galleries and fell into quiet, appreciative murmurs over the needlework of Indian villagers and Japanese grandmothers.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jan 16, 2000

Dragons getting the real thing in Nilsson

The Central League's Chunichi Dragons have signed free-agent ex-Milwaukee Brewers catcher and bona fide major-leaguer Dave Nilsson, and Dragons manager Senichi Hoshino couldn't be happier. Having lost out to the rival Tokyo Yomiuri Giants for the services of Japanese free-agents Akira Eto and Kimiyasu...

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’