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CULTURE / Music
May 14, 1999

Australian pop-rock trio Even battles 'tyranny of distance'

Few Australian bands have managed to gain large audiences and commercial success outside their homeland in the 1990s. Critics down under claim it's the "tyranny of distance," that Australia is simply too far away from the rest of the record-buying world, which keeps many Aussie acts from making it overseas....
JAPAN
May 13, 1999

Kobe volunteers launch activity fund

KOBE -- A fund to support volunteer activities in and around this port city was set up Thursday by a group of volunteers helping to reconstruct the lives of survivors of the Great Hanshin Earthquake.
JAPAN
May 13, 1999

The Asahara Trial: Hearings enter fourth year

A key figure in the Aum Shinrikyo saga on Thursday insisted on the witness stand that she was never a cult follower but only joined Aum's religious activities because she believed doing so would enable her to contact her late husband.
JAPAN
May 13, 1999

Doctors remove donor's skin

The family of a brain-dead man who donated his heart and kidneys earlier this week also allowed doctors to remove his skin for future surgical needs, officials at the Tokyo Skin Bank Network said Thursday.
JAPAN
May 13, 1999

Bill could enlarge temp workforce, magnify woes

Staff writer
JAPAN
May 13, 1999

Rubin's departure won't affect policy, relations: Miyazawa

Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa said Thursday he does not think the resignation of U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin will change U.S. economic policy or U.S.-Japan relations.
JAPAN
May 13, 1999

U.S. to urge elimination of farm tariffs at WTO

In the new round of global trade negotiations starting in 2000 under the auspices of the World Trade Organization, the United States will call for total elimination of agricultural tariffs and subsidies on farm products and exports, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said Thursday.
LIFE / Travel
May 13, 1999

Nishi-Ogikubo -- waist-high in green

Tokyoites complain about Tokyo: its chaotic haphazardness, its sprawling largeness, its adamant refusal to be beautiful. Like the room of a teenage boy, it keeps accumulating things, things, things. Then everything is kicked under the bed and the boy goes out for a cheeseburger. Tokyoites can only shrug...
JAPAN
May 13, 1999

Sanwa units to merge with Taiheiyo Securities

In a bid to increase its presence in securities businesses, Sanwa Bank announced Thursday it will let midsize brokerage house Taiheiyo Securities Co. merge with Sanwa's two securities affiliates in April 2000.
ENVIRONMENT / GARDENING FOR ALL
May 13, 1999

A miniature blending of landscapes

In Tokyo, there are quite a number of historic gardens that were built by the daimyo during the long Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1867). The designers of many of these gardens were greatly influenced by the Chinese style of landscaping, and by the eagerness of the owners to have famous scenic sights from...
CULTURE / Art
May 13, 1999

Smithsonian celebrates culture, history of Ainu

WASHINGTON -- An unprecedented, in-depth look at the culture of the Ainu is being offered in the U.S. capital.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
May 13, 1999

Here and there

Some time ago I wrote about visiting Boeing's Everett factory near Seattle. Now a reader, planning to make his first trip to Seattle, wants to see where the plane he will be flying on was made and asks how he can see the factory.
JAPAN
May 13, 1999

Trust main issue at Kyoto power talks

Staff writer
LIFE / Travel
May 13, 1999

The 'red, green and white lines': rubies, jade and heroin

Like most things connected to money and profit in Myanmar, there is a sinister side to the north's resurgent economy, a subtext that generally eludes visitors' attention. Still, at least one travel book, Nicholas Greenwood's original and often very funny "Bradt Guide to Burma," has picked up on it. Not...
EDITORIALS
May 12, 1999

A sudden reversal in Kosovo

Last week, it looked as if the West had the upper hand in the ongoing military and diplomatic campaigns against Yugoslavia. Meetings with Russian officials had yielded agreement on terms for an international peacekeeping force in Kosovo. Mr. Ibrahim Rugova, the moderate Albanian Kosovar leader, had been...
JAPAN
May 12, 1999

Soka Gakkai warms to coalition plan

Soka Gakkai, the nation's largest lay Buddhist organization and supporter of New Komeito, appeared to welcome on Wednesday New Komeito's move to form a coalition with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, sources said.
JAPAN
May 12, 1999

Is Japan ready for World Cup fans?

Staff writer
JAPAN
May 12, 1999

PC shipments up 10% in '98

Domestic shipments of personal computers hit a record-high 7.54 million units in fiscal 1998, up 10 percent from the previous year, an industry association said Wednesday.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
May 12, 1999

What's in store

Everyone in my family is in retail, except me -- unless you consider this journalism gig equivalent to selling snake oil. My mother and sisters have run wearable-art galleries and design-centered shops for a couple of decades, and they seem to be pretty good at it. They travel around the United States...
EDITORIALS
May 11, 1999

First breach in the government wall

After two decades of on-and-off arguments, the Diet finally passed a freedom of information bill into law last Friday. For the first time in Japan's history, a law stipulates that the government "has the duty to explain to the nation" the way government ministries and agencies run their affairs. To be...
JAPAN
May 11, 1999

Matsushita ups retirement age to 65

OSAKA -- Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. on Tuesday said it will ostensibly extend its de facto mandatory retirement age from 60 to 65 by re-employing some of its retirees.
JAPAN
May 11, 1999

Smithsonian celebrates culture, history of Ainu

Staff writer
CULTURE / Books
May 11, 1999

Dazzling portrait of the Occupation

EMBRACING DEFEAT: Japan in the Wake of World War II, By John W. Dower. New York: WW Norton, 1999. 676 pp. $29.95 History does not get any better than this. The award-winning author of "War Without Mercy," (1986) an exploration of racism and the Pacific War, is in peak form in this sparkling evocation...
JAPAN
May 11, 1999

Philippine activists protest dam project

Three activists from the Philippines called on the Export-Import Bank of Japan and a group of Japanese banks to withdraw support for a controversial dam project that the activists say will destroy the lives of riverside residents.
CULTURE / Books
May 11, 1999

Coming of age, piece by piece

NAMAKO: Sea Cucumber, by Linda Watanabe McFerrin. Coffee House Press, 1998, 256 pp., $14.95 (paper). Like the sea cucumber, Ellen, the multicultural 9-year-old narrator of Linda Watanabe McFerrin's delightful first novel, cannot be easily classified. Animal or vegetable? Living and feeling, or merely...
JAPAN
May 11, 1999

Non-Japanese ring tied to Osaka house robbery

OSAKA -- The president of a private university in Toyonaka, Osaka Prefecture, was robbed of some 700,000 yen early Tuesday by three knife-wielding intruders, and police suspect the same non-Japanese Asians linked to 17 other break-ins in Osaka and Hyogo prefectures since March 1998 perpetrated the crime....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 11, 1999

Cartoon eroticism, for real

EROTIC ANIME MOVIE GUIDE, by Helen McCarthy and Jonathan Clements. London: Titan Books, 1998, 192 pp., b/w photos, 12.99 British pounds. Japanese animated films, familiarly called "anime," have become well-known worldwide. With the success of the 1988 "Akira," the genre became a sound commercial export...
JAPAN
May 10, 1999

New publishers tackle demand for individual book orders

Staff writer
JAPAN
May 10, 1999

Survivor of child sex abuse, quake recovering in new life

Staff writer
JAPAN
May 10, 1999

Kofuku Bank to seek 60 billion yen replenishment

OSAKA -- Kofuku Bank, a second-tier regional bank, said Monday that it will request about 60 billion yen in public funds under the government recapitalization program as its capital-to-asset ratio was about 0.5 percent as of the end of March.

Longform

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.
The second life of Japan's net cafes