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LIFE / Travel
Sep 14, 2000

Bruised flowers: China's hidden army of child laborers

BEIJING -- Hu Changjun was desperate to escape the poverty trap in Wuxi County in southwest China's Sichuan Province. So she couldn't believe her luck when a fellow villager named Changyan offered her work at a joint-venture factory in distant Beijing. "A joint venture means a foreign company, where...
COMMENTARY
Sep 13, 2000

Religion's small role in the public realm

WASHINGTON -- The American left has always had a simple view of religious people and politics. If they are liberal, welcome. If they aren't, be gone. So it seems to be with Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Lieberman.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Sep 10, 2000

Chris McDonald

To commemorate his having lived for 50 years in Japan, Chris McDonald produced an engaging book of memories. In it he wrote: "If I were asked to single out one aspect of Japan that I have found more rewarding and enjoyable than any other, I would not hesitate to answer quite simply: 'Its people.' From...
CULTURE / Music
Sep 10, 2000

Long trip from Kiev to Tokyo justified by 'Pathetique' results

Kiev National Opera and Ballet Theater Orchestra July 25, Vladimir Kozhukhar conducting in Takemitsu Memorial Hall -- Ballad (Pormbescu), Concerto No. 1 for Violin and Orchestra in D Minor, Op. 99 (Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich, 1906-75), featuring Atsuko Tenma; Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 74 "Pathetique"...
CULTURE / Art
Sep 9, 2000

Photographer, gallery meet at the edge of Shinjuku

You'd never suspect it to look at the polite 27-year-old German photographer, but a survey of David Steets' work can lead to no other conclusion: Here is a man who loves to live on the edge.
LIFE / Travel
Sep 7, 2000

Cambodia feeds a hunger to learn

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- "A young man applied for a scholarship to go and study in Australia," says Helen Cherry, director of the Australian Center for Education, Cambodia. "His English was very good, and I asked him where he had studied. He replied 'By windows.'
JAPAN
Sep 5, 2000

Miyake schoolchildren get fresh start in western Tokyo

Schoolchildren from Miyake Island began the new school term Monday at Akikawa High School in Akiruno, western Tokyo, where all 356 of the young evacuees are staying in dorms.
JAPAN
Aug 31, 2000

Pupils evacuated from Miyake settle in at west Tokyo school

Schoolchildren evacuated from Miyake Island arrived Wednesday afternoon at a school in western Tokyo that will be their temporary home shortly after an evacuation order was issued for all parts of the volcanic island.
EDITORIALS
Aug 31, 2000

More than a private matter

Not for the first time, members of the Japanese public seem to be proving the experts wrong by their behavior. It is no longer merely a provocative social phenomenon, however, when the means by which they choose to do so is suicide. According to a new report from the National Police Agency, 33,048 Japanese...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 29, 2000

Captivating fragments of Southeast Asia

THE TRUTH ABOUT ANNA . . . and Other Stories, by William Warren. Archipelago Press, Singapore, 2000, 224 pp., unpriced. Most of these essays by William Warren, who has lived in Bangkok for 40 years, concern aspects of life in Thailand, about which the author has written copiously. There are also glimpses...
JAPAN
Aug 27, 2000

Women join the ranks of the nation's lost

With 92,000 yen in her pocket, the 52-year-old woman left her native city in northern Kanto for Tokyo on March 15, seeking a new job in the nation's capital after she was fired from a hotel where she had worked for 10 years.
COMMUNITY
Aug 24, 2000

A new deal for man's best friend

Theta was a month-and-a-half-old puppy when she first came to live with Fuyumi Morita and her husband in the city of Kakegawa, Shizuoka Prefecture, one year after the couple's marriage. Morita remembers Theta's little paws scrabbling at her when she picked her up, Theta's little eyes looking into her...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Aug 24, 2000

Handling of Kursk fiasco belies Putin's promise of change

"Shameful and disgraceful" -- these are the words many Russians are using now to describe the attitude of their government toward the sunken nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea. Slow and incompetent rescue attempts, an inability to assess the scope and nature of the damage and, above all, a stubborn...
LIFE / Food & Drink / WINE WAYS
Aug 24, 2000

Sampling the best the world of wine writing has to offer

Next to a good wine, I might settle for a good wine book, if only I had time to read them. Having just finished writing a 20,000-word thesis last week on a rather weighty subject, I decided to reward myself with a little wine reading. Fate recently fed my bibliophilia with a few wine books, some of them...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 22, 2000

AIDS takes a toll in African classrooms

Since physicians first described its symptoms almost 20 years ago, HIV has infected 53 million people, of which 19 million have died. Of the 34.3 million people now living with HIV/AIDS, 24.5 million are in sub-Saharan Africa, where the epidemic has left 11 million children orphaned.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 16, 2000

May this force be with you

THE MYSTERIOUS POWER OF KI: The Force Within, by Kouzo Kaku, translated by Roger Machin and Mami Nakamura. Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental, 2000, 154 pp., with b/w photographs, 14.95 British pounds. Despite the title of this book, there is nothing mysterious about "ki." It is a concept popularly...
EDITORIALS
Aug 13, 2000

Not-so-lonely planet

Sometimes we forget how recently we Earthlings thought our planet was the center of the universe, which up until the 17th century ended at Saturn and used the "fixed" stars as a mere decorative backdrop. It was only in 1610 -- barely 400 years ago -- that Galileo looked at the heavens through a telescope,...
CULTURE / Art
Aug 13, 2000

Getting interconnected at Kim's

Interconnectivity is a technology buzzword, but Kim Gordon -- rock star of Sonic Youth fame, originator of the X Girl label, and now artist and curator of "Kim's Bedroom," currently at Parco Gallery -- has presented it as the locus of her first curatorial foray. Gordon has assembled an eclectic group...
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 13, 2000

A Dance of hope: Rediscovering the artistry and power of Choi Seung-Hee

On March 20, 1926, a 14-year-old Korean girl was in Seoul, watching a performance of the internationally renowned dancer Baku Ishii and his troupe.
JAPAN
Aug 11, 2000

Osaka's Yokoyama gets by with suspended sentence

OSAKA -- Former Osaka Gov. "Knock" Yokoyama was sentenced Thursday to an 18-month suspended prison term for molesting a 22-year-old female campaign worker during his re-election bid in April 1999.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Aug 9, 2000

Fried potatoes

world.std.com/~fwhite/spud/ Yes, there is actually a server out there powered by potatoes that really does work. Kind of. This address only takes you to a link to that server, which doesn't accept a whole lot of hits, and to an article explaining why the contraption was built.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 6, 2000

Journalistic cleansing at the Boston Globe

The U.S. media has long been known for its left-leaning bias. That bias seems to be coming through at the Boston Globe in its treatment of columnist Jeff Jacoby, who is now serving what looks to be a politically inspired suspension over a column that he wrote commemorating America's Independence Day....
CULTURE / Art
Aug 5, 2000

Photos capture nuclear tests' toll

The single eye of a cyclops baby preserved in a jar of formalin gazes out, unblinking. Beside it, the eyeless face of a severely disfigured boy seems to melt from his head, the swollen eyebrows and cheeks blinding him permanently.
ENVIRONMENT
Aug 3, 2000

Eco-conscious but comfortable: making environmentalism hip

Last year when advertising agencies asked Kazumi Oguro what his rival magazine was, he replied: "I wouldn't have to put out a new magazine if there was a rival."
LIFE / ALTERNATIVE LUXURIES
Aug 3, 2000

Lessons of the past inspire a future

Calligraphy by Nako Oizumi The evolution of a single human neither starts with their birth, nor stops with the end of their childhood. Each of us has been given pieces of the past by previous generations from which we make new meaning and, in turn, hand it on to the young.
LIFE / Style & Design / SIMPLY DIVINE
Aug 3, 2000

Dancing your way to fitness

Some medical experts claim a glass of wine is good for your heart, others believe chocolate is an excellent alternative to Prozac, but something they all tend to agree on is that adequate exercise is vital to a healthy life. However, if your idea of working out is a spot of intensive window-shopping...

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