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SOCCER / J. League
Mar 9, 2001

Bad days are over, but J. League must change with the times

When the J. League was launched on May 13, 1993, it had 10 teams in a single-division format. Since then, the league has grown and now consists of 28 teams in two divisions.
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Mar 7, 2001

Climb rain forests to the clouds

If you've climbed Mount Kinabalu in Sabah Province, Malaysian Borneo, under the impression that you were heroically scaling the highest peak in Southeast Asia, I have bad news.
BUSINESS
Mar 6, 2001

Mitsubishi Chemical, Fujitsu unite on genetic drugs

Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. and Fujitsu Ltd. have agreed to form an alliance in biotechnology to focus on the research and development of pharmaceuticals using data from the human genome, the two firms said Monday.
COMMUNITY
Mar 6, 2001

Foreign manager discovers strength in the face of adverse circumstances

SHIBUKAWA, Gunma Pref. -- There are probably few foreign nationals in the country who have found themselves charged with running a traditional Japanese company.
CULTURE / Film
Mar 6, 2001

Kyon Kyon's leap in the dark

Pop idols are not only a Japanese phenomenon -- Britney Spears sells from Zurich to Zimbabwe -- but Japan produces more idols, of both sexes, than anywhere else in the world and has refined the idol aesthetic to an extreme. Japanese idols must be not only cute enough to make your teeth hurt, but everlastingly...
COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE
Mar 5, 2001

Bush works on tax cuts while Clinton dodges more controversy

WASHINGTON -- "Beauty and the Beast" was on television Monday night -- the movie, not the continuing news saga of our current president and the most recent former one. That show seems to be a never-ending saga.
CULTURE / Art
Mar 4, 2001

Japan's art for all seasons

Japan is a country with four seasons. This has long been an accepted fact, and most visitors to the country have been assured of it on numerous occasions. The progress of the seasons is a usual topic of conversation and is always mentioned at the beginning of any personal letter. Poetry, especially haiku...
LIFE / Travel
Mar 4, 2001

Shangri-La: Paradise beyond the clouds

LIJIANG, China -- The mystical land of Shangri-La, lost and found in recent years, has moved. It has also upgraded its attractions. This eastern Utopia still offers the tea shops, Tibetan lamas and snow-capped peaks of James Hilton's 1933 bestseller "Lost Horizon," but today's pilgrims can also sample...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 2, 2001

Ex-OL, self-described everyman take Naoki prize

The winners of the Naoki literary prize for the second half of 2000 have been announced. This time, both winners -- "Planaria" by Yamamoto Fumio and "Vitamin F" by Shigematsu Kiyoshi -- are short-story collections, as were three of the other four short-listed works.
JAPAN / BENCH REFORM
Feb 28, 2001

Fight gets under way to increase public's access to legal aid

Lawyer Masaki Kunihiro had never dreamed his life would be so busy in the small city of Hamada, Shimane Prefecture.
BUSINESS
Feb 28, 2001

Higher 'kampo' premiums endorsed

An advisory panel to the government endorsed a plan Tuesday to raise premiums for "kampo," the government-run postal life insurance system, by an average of 2.9 percent from July, government officials said.
CULTURE / Film
Feb 27, 2001

Ghosts that lurk in the machine

Someone, perhaps John Carpenter, once said that to make a good horror film, it helps to be a bit of a sadist. True enough, if your idea of horror is whacking teenage girls with a cleaver. But if, like "Kairo (Pulse)" director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, you're making a film about the dead invading the world of...
COMMUNITY
Feb 25, 2001

Top industrial designer to lecture on lunchboxes

The ninth-floor room in Tokyo's Mejiro where Kenji Ekuan receives guests is a perfect reflection of his personality. One wall is stacked with diplomas, photos and portraits, all neatly framed but in no particular order. Opposite, floor-to-ceiling glass shelving is crammed with memorabilia and knickknacks...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 23, 2001

India's census will only confirm the obvious: the nation is overpopulated

The ongoing census in India, the sixth since its independence in 1947, is bound to unfold an ocean of data, perhaps bewildering to an outsider given the country's complex social and caste divisions.
CULTURE / Books / POETRY MIGNETTE
Feb 18, 2001

Avant-garde poet tosses Japan a luscious bouquet

The end of last year and the beginning of this one has produced a fine crop of poetry publications. Though each of these volumes deserves its own separate review, happily I'm able to give these works exposure here.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Feb 18, 2001

Helmut Morsbach

Something Helmut Morsbach has been dreaming of for many years is about to become reality.
CULTURE / Film
Feb 17, 2001

A British man in Shepard country

Sam Shepard, long known as the spokesman playwright of the American West, has a talent for endowing his cowboy-hatted characters with urban, neurotic psyches. The result has always been interesting. Now we get to see that firsthand in a film called "Simpatico," based on his play of the same title. This...
JAPAN
Feb 16, 2001

Court upholds ban on publishing novel

The Tokyo High Court on Thursday upheld a lower court ruling ordering prizewinning novelist Miri Yuu and publisher Shinchosha Co. to halt publication of a short novel and pay 1.3 million yen to a former friend of Yuu's for violating her privacy.
JAPAN
Feb 15, 2001

'Japan 2001' fest set to take center stage in U.K.

Several years ago, Foreign Minister Yohei Kono and former British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind came up with an idea. Why not try, they asked, to think of ways for Japan and the U.K. to promote each other's image in a better light?
SOCCER / World cup
Feb 15, 2001

Tickets to 2002 World Cup go 'on sale'

Get your wallets out, find some friends (don't forget their names), make sure you know exactly what you're doing in 16 months time, fill out a form and hope for a bit of luck.
CULTURE / Art
Feb 11, 2001

A passage to modern sculpture

There is a wraith of a bird stalking the basement of the Canadian Embassy, and if you are interested in contemporary sculpture it is worth tracking down. "Passages" shows 20 works by four Canadian artists, ranging from whimsical wildlife to meditations on a cube.
COMMUNITY
Feb 11, 2001

Shinto priestess finds freedom while minding duties of past

On summer weekends, Kugenuma Beach turns into a parody of the nearby metropolis' encroachment on the holidaymaker, with girls in bikinis and 20-cm platform sandals struggling across the sand while loudspeakers on towers belch J-pop at 50-meter intervals, making it difficult to find a moment for quiet...
CULTURE / Music
Feb 9, 2001

Richard Thompson defies death and lives to tell

By his own estimate, Richard Thompson played about 100 concerts last year, "which means you're on the road for about 150 days."
JAPAN
Feb 7, 2001

Help arrives for families with ill children

A facility to provide a place to stay and counseling for families with children who require long-term medical treatment far from home will open Friday in Tokyo.
COMMUNITY
Feb 5, 2001

Just follow your nose, it (almost) always knows

Bad odors may be having a negative effect on your mood, behavior and health, even when they're not consciously registered -- and therefore unavoidable.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 4, 2001

Quake made worse by greed and ineptness

NEW DELHI -- The earthquake that devastated many parts of India's western state of Gujarat opened a Pandora's Box, out of which tumbled a shocking spectacle of ignorance and mismanagement driven by greed and callousness.
JAPAN
Feb 1, 2001

Commune ordered to return 'brainwashed' woman's cash

The Tokyo District Court ordered an agriculture commune Wednesday to return about 240 million yen to a former follower who claimed she was brainwashed into donating the money.
JAPAN
Feb 1, 2001

Commune ordered to return 'brainwashed' woman's cash

The Tokyo District Court ordered an agriculture commune Wednesday to return about 240 million yen to a former follower who claimed she was brainwashed into donating the money.

Longform

An illustration features the Japanese signs for "ganbare" (good luck) and the Deaflympics, which will be held between Nov. 15 and 26.
A century of Deaf sport finds its moment in Tokyo