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EDITORIALS
Apr 17, 2000

URL burial is grave news

Is there anyone who still really thinks the Internet is not transforming the world -- or at least those spreading patches of the planet that are connected to it? Every day, some new swath of mental territory falls prey to the Web, as if a gigantic, benevolent spider had suddenly taken control of humanity...
ENVIRONMENT
Apr 17, 2000

Germinating a new attitude toward brown rice

A new way of eating rice may revolutionize the Japanese diet in the next century.
ENVIRONMENT
Apr 17, 2000

Southern white rhino comes back

HLUHLUWE-UMFOLOZI, South Africa -- The ample white rhino sighted on a visit to Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park might lead one to believe that they are plentiful in the wild.
CULTURE / Art
Apr 16, 2000

Picasso, magic and childhood

You may not like Picasso very much. You may even agree with the American who said, "If I can do it, it ain't art!" But you would have to be very thick-skinned to remain unmoved by "Picasso's World of Children."
COMMUNITY
Apr 15, 2000

Children's story and picture book contest

Okayama-based Yamada Bee Farm is inviting entries for its second "Children's Stories and Picture Books about Bees" contest.
EDITORIALS
Apr 13, 2000

Where will Microsoft go now?

Where will Microsoft go now?
COMMUNITY
Apr 13, 2000

Home is where the condo is

Mari Ishiyama, a 38-year-old secretary at a foreign bank, had been looking for an apartment for several years, but always struck out when it came to the final lottery (a standard real-estate practice to decide who can purchase a unit in a building when there are too many prospective buyers). "My friends...
LIFE / Food & Drink / NIHONSHU
Apr 13, 2000

Fish, sake and crowds come together at Uoshin

Like the indigenous beverages of most countries, sake developed along with its national cuisine. Indeed, there are great differences in Japanese cuisine from region to region, small country though Japan may be, and these differences are reflected in the subtle differences in the sake.
CULTURE / Film
Apr 11, 2000

Lessons learned from the master

"What I really want to do is direct." This phrase, heard everywhere in Hollywood from interviews with A-list stars to conversations between waiters at Hamburger Inn, has become a joke -- to everyone but the legions of gottabe directors themselves. Among this crowd, scriptwriters have traditionally been...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 9, 2000

EU knocking down the Tower of Babel

BRUSSELS — The European Union brings together 15 states with a total population of 380 million people. Thirteen other countries have applied to join. Europeans speak some 45 different languages, of which 11 are recognized as official languages for the purposes of EU business. But millions of European...
COMMUNITY
Apr 7, 2000

'Parasite singles': problem or victims?

Recently much attention is being paid in Japan to the so-called "parasite singles," grown children in their 20s and 30s who have left school and gotten jobs but are still unmarried and living at home with their parents.
LIFE / ALTERNATIVE LUXURIES
Apr 6, 2000

The alchemical way of self and bamboo

"The etymology of the word 'God' in English is totally different from the Japanese word kami, and has a completely different sense," says master charcoal burner Hironori Takebayashi, in his deep, laconic voice.
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Apr 5, 2000

Nemuro rolling down a road to nowhere

We may think of America as the land of the automobile, but for a place that both produces them and is constantly involved in road works for them, we need look no further than Japan.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 4, 2000

Lessons from a life unlike any other

NO ONE'S PERFECT, by Hirotada Ototake. Translated by Gerry Harcourt. Kodansha International, 226 pp., 1,900 yen. Hirotada Ototake, in his first major literary effort, "No One's Perfect (Gotai Fumanzoku)," has written a work whose seismic rating has scaled off the page: To date, over 4 million copies...
COMMENTARY
Apr 3, 2000

Partial reform will not work

The Japanese-language version of "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations," by David Landes, professor emeritus of history and economics at Harvard University, has been published. The translator of the book, Keio University Professor Heizo Takenaka, notes that gaps are widening between winners and losers in...
CULTURE / Music
Apr 2, 2000

IPO's Tokyo performance unforgettable and provocative

Israel Philharmonic Orchestra: Feb. 23, Zubin Mehta conducting in Suntory Hall -- Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21 (Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770-1827); Symphony No. 4 in E-flat Major "Romantic" (Josef Anton Bruckner, 1824-96)
COMMUNITY
Apr 2, 2000

Activist monthly comes to Japan

When Caitlin Stronell first came to Japan in 1984 to spend a year in Tochigi Prefecture, her father gave her a subscription to the U.K. cooperatively produced monthly magazine New Internationalist. "He thought it'd keep me in touch with social and political activism in the rest of the world, while giving...
CULTURE / Art
Apr 1, 2000

Nagoya-Boston Museum of Fine Arts

A portion of the 13th-century picture scroll depicting the Battle of Heiji will return to Japan for the first time in 17 years, to be shown at the Nagoya-Boston Museum of Fine Arts, April 11-May 7.
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 1, 2000

Something Royal this way comes

"Stars, hide your fires. Let not light see my black and deep desires." True to the play's dark imagery, the Royal Shakespeare Company's new production of "Macbeth" is steeped in visions of the night.
COMMENTARY
Mar 31, 2000

Obuchi heading for trouble

The sun may be setting on the administration of Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi. Recent polls indicate that the Obuchi Cabinet's approval ratings have fallen sharply while its disapproval ratings have risen. The phenomenon is generally blamed on the continuing recession, a growing public-debt burden stemming...
COMMUNITY / How-tos
Mar 29, 2000

Very little help

A foreign woman married to a Japanese is concerned about her son who refuses to go to school, a problem that is shared by a lot of other families today. Many kids are revolting against Japan's education system. It could be an indication that they are getting smarter, but unfortunately it doesn't make...
CULTURE / Art
Mar 26, 2000

Impressions of an overlooked artist

In February 1866, three young artists tramped along the frosty paths of Fontainebleau, declaring that nature would ever be their muse. One, handsome, rich and carefree, would follow that muse until he lost everything except the respect of his friends. He died in poverty, in a home stacked with unsold...
JAPAN
Mar 25, 2000

Takeshita's political influence radiates even from his sickbed

A year after disappearing from sight following hospitalization for a back injury, former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita maintains his reputation as a major behind-the-scenes political influence.
BUSINESS
Mar 24, 2000

Recovery difficult to judge from figures

Official figures released earlier this month gave a conflicting picture of the prospects for economic recovery.
JAPAN
Mar 23, 2000

Tobacco-curbing target up in smoke

Up in smoke -- that is the simplest way to describe the fate of an ambitious Health and Welfare Ministry plan to drastically cut the number of smokers as well as overall tobacco consumption in Japan by 2010.
JAPAN
Mar 23, 2000

Prosecutors indict Cresvale executive over bogus securities

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office on Wednesday indicted a former executive of Cresvale International Ltd. on charges of selling customers securities that turned out to be irredeemable, prosecutors said.
LIFE / Food & Drink
Mar 23, 2000

The magic of dancing spores

Sake fans these days are quite often inundated with information (much of it extraneous) about how a sake was made. The rice, yeast strain, water quality, nihonshu-do (specific gravity) and acidity are commonly found listed on the labels of most decent bottles of sake.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 23, 2000

Breaking down the doors of Japan's discriminatory press clubs

In May 1993, David Butts, then Tokyo bureau chief of Bloomberg Business News, was fed up. After years of unsuccessful efforts to penetrate Japan's press clubs through polite negotiation, the tall Texan chose a more direct approach. On the day annual company reports were released, Butts, with other foreign...

Longform

Dangami House is a 180-year-old former samurai residence of the Kato clan, who ruled over Ozu, Ehime Prefecture, until the Meiji Restoration.
A house, a legacy and the quiet work of restoration in rural Japan