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COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Jan 1, 2001

Much ado about nothing

In a fierce fit of free-market commercialism, ads in Moscow subway insist that the real new millennium will start today. With the economy weakened by crisis, revenues from the advent of Y2K were not as impressive as in the West, and now Russian boutiques, travel agencies and software stores are trying...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

Japan needs open, clear agenda in an age of life science

The 21st century will be called the century of life science. In fact, an enormous amount of money has already been reinvested for research in this field on a global scale. A representative example is the human genome project, which is closing in on the complete deciphering of human DNA. In addition,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

Progress alone won't be enough

IT, shorthand for information technology, was a buzzword in Japan in 2000. Never before had computers and the Internet caused such a furor in the media. To be sure, IT had created a boom several times in the past, but its impact had been confined to the corporate sector. In contrast, the latest boom...
COMMUNITY
Dec 31, 2000

Michinoku Ginko chief banks on Japanese-Russian relations

Talk about a profitable end to the year. Invited to meet a Taisho man -- that is, someone born in the last year of what many consider to be Japan's most liberal period of the 20th century -- I was met in one location to be maneuvered into a taxi and delivered outside another: a nondescript utility block...
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...
EDITORIALS
Dec 30, 2000

Economy still stuck in a rut

Looking back to 2000, the critical question hanging over the Japanese economy is: Has there been movement, or at least the preparations for a move, toward a new system befitting the start of a new century? The answer, unfortunately, is no.
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....
JAPAN
Dec 28, 2000

Three years sought for health official in HIV contamination case

Prosecutors on Wednesday demanded that a former health official be given a three-year prison term for failing to stop the use of HIV-tainted blood products in the mid-1980s.
COMMENTARY
Dec 28, 2000

The fight for liberty continues

WASHINGTON -- We are entering a new year, the true third millenium. Unfortunately, the prospects for liberty do not burn bright. Human history is largely one of tyranny. The history of the last couple thousand years has been largely one of combatting tyranny.
JAPAN
Dec 27, 2000

Education panel hits individuality, stresses Japanese-language focus

An Education Ministry advisory panel is calling for increased Japanese-language study and reading opportunities for children, saying a good command of the language provides a solid platform for education and cultural literacy.
LIFE / Travel
Dec 27, 2000

In a gray concrete world, a city of beautiful churches

GRODNO, Belarus Most Belarusian cities get a bad press, at least for good looks, in foreign guidebooks. Polatsk is notable for "what was once there," Mogilev is decidedly "uninspiring," Homel's biggest drawing card is a bust of its most famous son, the late Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, and...
CULTURE / Music / MUSIC NOMAD
Dec 26, 2000

The best of this year's world music crop

Strangely, I had thought this year was not a particularly vintage one for world and roots music. That was until I had to whittle down a list to come up with a top 10, as part of a panel for the British magazine fRoots.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 26, 2000

A moral beacon in Japan's darkest days

YANAIHARA TADAO AND JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE: Redeeming Empire, by Susan C. Townsend. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000, 296 pp., 50 British pounds (cloth). Scholarship can be a dangerous vocation. The ideological witch-hunt against Tadao Yanaihara, holder of the prewar chair of colonial policy at Tokyo...
CULTURE / Books
Dec 24, 2000

Palestinian families at a scholarly remove

POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND THE PALESTINIAN FAMILY: Implications for Mental Health and Well-Being, by Vivian Khamis, Haworth Press, 144 pp., $20. The appearance of a book on the impact of political violence on Palestinian families could hardly be timelier. Deaths caused by the present unrest in Israel and...
COMMUNITY
Dec 24, 2000

The miraculous manifestation of a man of the cloth at Xmas

T'was 10 days before Christmas, and all through the house . . . complete and utter panic! Who to interview for Christmas Eve? Jim Carey (promoting his seasonal movie "The Grinch") has come and gone -- along with most of the foreign community (for the holiday break). As for the Japanese, they are all...
COMMENTARY
Dec 23, 2000

Cabinet reshuffle solves little

Just a week remains until the curtain comes down on the 20th century. We are, in the true sense of the phrase, at the end of a century. Words like fin de siecle and millennium tend to be tossed about, but this year really can only be described as one of end-of-the-century blues.
JAPAN
Dec 22, 2000

Japan to ban EU beef imports

The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry on Thursday decided to ban imports of European Union beef, processed beef foodstuffs and cow sperm starting in January to prevent mad cow disease from spreading to Japanese farms, ministry officials said.
BUSINESS
Dec 21, 2000

Japan reform said key to Asian prosperity

Now that the United States has started showing signs of economic slowdown, business leaders in the Asia-Pacific region expect Japan to expedite full economic recovery and become an engine to ensure continued prosperity in the region, according to an American international business expert.
BUSINESS
Dec 20, 2000

Korean residents demand protection in wake of credit unions' insolvency

OSAKA -- Pro-Seoul Korean residents in Japan marched to the Finance Ministry's Kinki Finance Bureau in Osaka on Tuesday, seeking protection for customers of a credit union that was declared insolvent Saturday.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Dec 20, 2000

Real democracy, anyone?

Have we learned our lesson in democracy? God forbid anyone should ever weasel out of voting again with the claim that their ballot doesn't count, that it doesn't make a difference. There is almost no way the margin in the U.S. vote could have been narrower, and with the divisions elsewhere in the country,...
JAPAN
Dec 17, 2000

Japan divided over call to contribute more to U.N. peacekeeping

Japan always looks before leaping. Nearly a decade after the Persian Gulf War, the nation remains highly averse to taking risks and is even timid about participating in international peacekeeping efforts in regional conflicts.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 17, 2000

Strong pound strangling British industry

BRUSSELS -- Britain's exclusion from the single European currency and the resulting high pound has led to a bleeding away of jobs in manufacturing. Day by day, the press publishes the casualty figures as stories of closures, amalgamations and redundancies, for in manufacturing the high pound is a weakness...
JAPAN
Dec 16, 2000

New U.N. relief chief hopes to up funds, aid worker safety

Securing adequate financial resources and improving the safety of U.N. aid workers are two of the most important tasks to ensure the United Nations can carry out its humanitarian activities, according to the newly appointed chief overseeing such activities.
EDITORIALS
Dec 13, 2000

The EU makes nice in Nice

At its make-or-break summit last weekend in Nice, the European Union bent. Faced with the need to reform to accommodate new members and new responsibilities, European heads of state produced the inevitable compromises and fudges. Some choices were made; others, predictably, were put off. Still, the ground...
BUSINESS
Dec 12, 2000

Mori ready to scrap cozy budget conference

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori said Monday that he was ready to scrap a controversial budget conference that seats top politicians elbow to elbow with top government ministers.
JAPAN
Dec 10, 2000

Victim's feelings said pushed aside amid campaign to get at Yokoyama

OSAKA -- It has been nearly a year since "Knock" Yokoyama resigned as Osaka's governor and was charged with molesting a female campaign aide, for which he was given an 18-month suspended prison term finalized in August.
JAPAN
Dec 9, 2000

Nonbinding tribunal can only sentence the nation to shame

Since three Korean women came out in 1991 and demanded government compensation for being forced to serve as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers, many former "comfort women" have died in despair, receiving no compensation, never seeing their rapists brought to justice and having suffered the further humiliation...
JAPAN
Dec 9, 2000

NGOs open sex slave tribunal

Nongovernmental organizations began a five-day people's tribunal Friday in Tokyo to clarify the criminal role of the government and Japanese soldiers in regards to violence against women during the war.
JAPAN / CABINET INTERVIEW
Dec 7, 2000

Yohei Kono warns against turning inward

Japan needs to constantly examine the contents of its official development assistance, but a large-scale reduction in ODA spending could jeopardize relations with Asian countries, Foreign Minister Yohei Kono said Wednesday.
JAPAN
Dec 6, 2000

First Nordic-Japan Forum held

NAGANO -- About 950 people attended the first Nordic-Japan Forum on environmental issues held recently at a hotel in Nagano Prefecture.

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