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CULTURE / Film
Jan 12, 2001

Curry on my wayward sons

Culture clash comedy is a shtick often brought to the big screen, but its success depends heavily on the details. For "East Is East," the particulars lie in the U.K.-Asian community of Manchester,circa 1971. Focusing on first-generation Pakistani immigrant George Khan, his British wife Ella and their...
BUSINESS
Jan 12, 2001

Three insurers to merge in '04 deny units will tie up sooner

The presidents of Tokio Marine & Fire Insurance Co., Asahi Mutual Life Insurance Co. and Nichido Fire & Marine Insurance Co. -- scheduled to consolidate under a holding company in 2004 -- on Thursday denied the possibility of an immediate merger of the companies' subsidiaries.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jan 10, 2001

What's it all about, IT?

2001 may well be the year of the IT revolution, but as far as I'm concerned, we're talking about utilITy. From here on, usefulness is going to be the benchmark for information technologies.
JAPAN
Jan 9, 2001

Kono departs for Middle East to discuss security

Foreign Minister Yohei Kono left Tokyo on Monday on a tour that will see him visit four nations in the Middle East, Sweden and Russia.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 8, 2001

When two worlds collide

JAPAN AND THE DUTCH 1600-1853, by Grant K. Goodman. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000, 304 pp., 40 pounds. Thanks to the Tokugawa shogunate's decision at the beginning of the 17th century to expel the Portuguese and other Christian missionaries who had started to meddle in Japanese affairs, the...
JAPAN
Jan 7, 2001

New government opens doors

The new-look streamlined government opened its doors for the first time on Saturday, shorn of almost half the powerful central government entities that built post-war corporate Japan.
CULTURE / Music / HOGAKU TODAY
Jan 6, 2001

Japanese music gets support from New Year's tradition

New Year's in Japan is a period when Japanese suddenly seem to "rediscover" their traditional music. Radio and television stations, which, except for NHK, practically ignore traditional music for most of the year, get into the seasonal spirit and air programs of the classical performing and theatrical...
COMMENTARY
Jan 6, 2001

Globalism: our last, best hope

LONDON -- The central proposition of our times was summed up neatly over 200 years ago by Samuel Johnson. "Society," the sage doctor said, "is held together by communication and information."
EDITORIALS
Jan 5, 2001

Familiar faces in Washington

President-elect George W. Bush has completed his Cabinet nominations. He has assembled a diverse group that has ample experience in Washington and in dealing with the bureaucracy. They are competent, capable and conservative. Taken as a whole, however, the group raises questions about Mr. Bush's claim...
JAPAN
Jan 5, 2001

Changing diet brings rising food concerns

The traditional Japanese diet of rice, grilled fish and vegetables has long been heralded as among the healthiest a culture has produced -- just witness Japan's long life spans.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 5, 2001

The high human cost of anticapitalism

There has been a rising swell of voices to denounce the forces of capitalism and globalization. It has gone beyond the normal complaints of professors, journalists and politicians who criticize capitalism and markets and, if not the wealth they create, the way it is distributed. Demonstrations at the...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jan 4, 2001

Blips that stayed on the media radar

Media Persons of the Year: Yasuo Tanaka and Shintaro Ishihara
LIFE / Travel
Jan 3, 2001

Glimpse an older, more harmonious Korea amid the artifice of a 'living museum'

Two centuries of ice, rain, summer heat and a civil war have reduced the ramparts of Suwon, a city just an hour's drive south of Seoul, to heaps of twisted rubble.
EDITORIALS
Jan 1, 2001

The rebuilding starts now

At the dawn of a new century, the Japanese seem to be looking to the future with more worry than hope. The realities of contemporary Japan are grim. The nation seems to have lost its way. The social and economic systems that raised it to unprecedented levels of prosperity are falling apart at the seams....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 1, 2001

Eye-openers for the new year

GREETINGS FROM EROS!: Hokusai and the Erotic Calendar-Print. Richard Lane, bilingual (Japanese/English) text. Tokyo: Kawade Shobo, 2000. Unpaginated, profusely illustrated -- color plates, b/w photos, 3,800 yen. Sending calendar prints as New Year salutations was one of the amenities of traditional...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

Open network at core of Japan's IT strategy

How should Japan promote its information technology revolution?
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Dec 31, 2000

Minoru Akimoto

"For a college kid in a provincial town in the early 50s, there were not many options for learning English. My teachers were Hollywood movies. I memorized a script and then sat in a movie theater all day, watching and listening to the same movie time and again."
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 31, 2000

Solving the Kashmir dispute

Three of the world's most protracted conflicts are in Asia: the Palestinian-Israeli crisis in West Asia, Kashmir in South Asia and Korea in East Asia. The world's interest is engaged in South Asia because of the fate of over 1 billion people, the importance of India as the world's most populous democracy...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 29, 2000

Rare rumblings of dissent ruffle Dalai Lama's agenda

NEW DELHI -- Even as the Dalai Lama has softened his attitude toward China -- which annexed Tibet in 1950 and drove him to an Indian exile nine years later -- the spiritual leader of his people, who was honored with a Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, now finds himself facing dissent within his own community....
LIFE / Food & Drink / NIHONSHU
Dec 28, 2000

May you all live long and prosper -- kanpai!

Happy Holidays to all Japan Times readers.
EDITORIALS
Dec 27, 2000

Learning the wrong lessons

Japan's basic law on education, enacted after the end of World War II to replace the Imperial Rescript, should be reviewed -- that is a key recommendation from Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's advisory panel. The final report, released last week, calls for a set of reforms. The report is in marked contrast...
JAPAN
Dec 27, 2000

Vice ministers named for merging ministries

The Cabinet on Tuesday named the career bureaucrats who will take up posts as vice ministers at the Cabinet Office and the seven ministries to be created under sweeping reforms that will take effect Jan. 6, when the current 23 government entities will be reduced to 13.
COMMENTARY
Dec 24, 2000

English-education reform gets watered down

Imagine the fuss if Japan's car industry was producing a million defective cars a year. But for some reason no one bothers much if Japan's English-education industry produces roughly that number of defective English speakers each year.
JAPAN
Dec 23, 2000

Education Law in need of drastic review: report

The 53-year-old Fundamental Law of Education should be reviewed to determine if it meets current needs and lends itself to the formation of an educational system appropriate for the 21st century, an advisory panel to Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori said in its final report released Friday.
JAPAN
Dec 22, 2000

DPJ to seek 30% cut in public works spending

Executives of the Democratic Party of Japan adopted a pledge Thursday to seek a 30 percent cut in public works expenditures over five years in the runup to next summer's House of Councilors election.
JAPAN
Dec 22, 2000

Volunteer ranks thin; lack of information cited

A majority of those who took up volunteer activities following the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995 have since quit because they feel there are too many restrictions and a lack of information, a survey released Thursday by the Economic Planning Agency showed.
LIFE / Travel
Dec 20, 2000

Rapt in the spell of a castle town

There's something exotic about a castle town, and Kumamoto is no exception. Kumamoto Castle's enormous fortifications and steps give an immediacy to the thrills and spills of history, and tower knowingly above its surrounds today.
LIFE / Digital
Dec 13, 2000

Deck the halls with boughs of games

Video games used to be the No. 1 gift request of preteen boys alone, but not anymore. With the release of sophisticated hardware such as Sony's PlayStation 2 console, the audience for games has expanded to include older gamers, both male and female.
JAPAN
Dec 12, 2000

Noodles nip karaoke, Walkman

Instant noodles are Japan's most famous accomplishment of the 20th century, according to a recent survey reported Monday by a Fuji Bank-affiliated think tank.
CULTURE / Music
Dec 10, 2000

A feast of orchestral sound to take the chill off winter

Concertgoers could hardly escape noticing that the past month or so has been the season for hearing big symphony and opera orchestras from abroad. The Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Phil- harmonic, for example, were both here for weeks at the same time, and they weren't the only ones.

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami