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JAPAN
Jun 10, 2000

EBC chair urges politicians to work for deregulation

Foreign businesses in Japan expect political leaders to facilitate fair competition by promoting further deregulation and harmonizing Japanese standards with global rules, said Isabelle Hupperts, chairwoman of the European Business Community.
BUSINESS
Jun 9, 2000

Japan signals willingness to help Plan Colombia

After months of foot-dragging, Japan appears willing to help Colombia pay for its ambitious, multibillion-dollar plan to crack down on drugs, achieve peace with guerrillas and rebuild its economy.
COMMUNITY
Jun 8, 2000

Pageants losing face with public

Mari Nishihama, 20, a native of Oshima, an island located 100 km south of Tokyo, had always lived a peaceful, if somewhat uneventful, life in the small tourist resort town. But all that suddenly changed last fall, when town celebrities voted the local bank clerk Miss Oshima 2000.
COMMENTARY
Jun 8, 2000

U.S. presidential candidates use 'soft money' campaign funds to stock war chests

WASHINGTON -- With still six months to go, the U.S. presidential campaign of 2000 is in the doldrums. Neither candidate really has much wind in his campaign sails. Texas Gov. George W. Bush is still out in front -- 47-41 -- of Vice President Al Gore. That is about the same margin his dad was behind at...
JAPAN
Jun 7, 2000

Windswept town realizes gusts can be a clean money-spinner

TOMAMAE, Hokkaido — They tower above the ocean on bluffs and farmland, spinning like otherworldly contraptions misplaced on Hokkaido's bucolic coast. But the livestock don't seem to mind.
BUSINESS
Jun 5, 2000

U.S. utilities target mammoth Japanese market

KANSAS CITY, Kansas -- U.S. utilities are paying close attention to Japan's $150 billion electricity market, where rates are high, monolithic utilities unready for competition and rival competitors virtually nonexistent.
COMMENTARY
Jun 5, 2000

The conservative's dilemma

Traditionally American voters have been given a choice between conservatism and liberalism. The Republican Party is labeled "conservative" and the Democratic Party "liberal." In Japan before 1993, when the Liberal Democratic Party lost its monopoly on power, the choice was between conservatism and socialism....
CULTURE / Music / HOGAKU TODAY
Jun 3, 2000

Drumming to a Japanese beat

The drum is easily Japan's most popular instrument.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 3, 2000

India has no stake in Sri Lanka's war

NEW DELHI -- With Sri Lanka torn by renewed internal war, India has withstood the impulse to intervene once again in the ethnic conflict of its tiny neighbor to the south. Despite calls for Indian assistance by Sri Lanka's beleaguered president, Chandrika Kumaratunga, New Delhi has balked at sending...
JAPAN
May 31, 2000

Motherly love a hurdle for teens

In today's society, families are having fewer children, fathers are working more and mothers are clinging to their children with greater intensity, hampering children's growth, according to psychologist Yoshiomi Takahashi.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
May 31, 2000

Musical festivals

It's time again for the Saito Kinen Festival in Matsumoto. The first was held nine years ago when many outstanding Japanese musicians gathered together, as they have every year since, to honor their teacher, Hideo Saito, with a combined musical performance.
EDITORIALS
May 30, 2000

Trouble in paradise

Fiji is tiny cluster of islands about 3,600 km east of Australia. With a population of fewer than a million people scattered across some 300 islands, it is sometimes considered the South Pacific ideal, offering secluded beaches, crystal-clear waters and a relaxed lifestyle that beckons to visitors from...
CULTURE / Books
May 30, 2000

Ghost in the political machine

NATION AND RELIGION: Perspectives on Europe and Asia, edited by Peter van der Veer and Hartmut Lehmann. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999, 231 pp., $17.95 (paper). The modern world is characterized by the differentiation and separation of social domains that in ancient and medieval...
JAPAN
May 28, 2000

Osaka homeless have nowhere else to go, World Cup eviction or no

OSAKA -- In the back streets of Osaka's Nishinari district, thousands of elderly men loiter, stopping only to eat at a 100 yen ramen stand or join in a yakuza-run floating craps game.
JAPAN
May 28, 2000

Kansai's largest windmill gives town, tourism energetic spark

KIBI, Wakayama Pref. -- On top of a 586-meter-high mountain here, white blades of a wind turbine rotate in the strong wind.
JAPAN
May 28, 2000

North Korea on agenda for Mori's talks in Seoul

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's scheduled meeting Monday in Seoul with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung comes at a crucial point in Japan's efforts to advance normalization negotiations with North Korea.
COMMENTARY / World
May 27, 2000

Politicians don't create jobs, people do

As Japan's leaders do battle against the ravages of deflation and recessionary conditions that grip their economy, unemployment rates are at a postwar high. Government data indicate the unemployment rate set a record high for the second consecutive month in March and now stands at 4.9 percent.
COMMENTARY / World
May 26, 2000

From Asian style to global style

"If mankind eradicates the habitat of the giant panda, then the panda ceases to exist in the wild. The IMF package is a mandate to eradicate the existing habitat of Asia's corporates." -- Russel Napier, a strategist at Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia
EDITORIALS
May 25, 2000

At long last, silence in Aceh

After nearly a quarter of a century of fighting, the Indonesian government and rebels in the province of Aceh have taken a first, albeit shaky, step toward a peaceful solution to their conflict. Earlier this month, the two sides signed a ceasefire agreement that opens the way for dialogue and negotiations...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
May 24, 2000

Contrasts everywhere

We all know generalizations are dangerous, we shouldn't make them, but we do, especially when there is considerable evidence to support them. Japanese conformity is an example, though we must acknowledge that there is much to suggest a contrasting, imaginative individuality. For example, five perfectly...
LIFE / Travel
May 24, 2000

Echoes of Gandhara and ancient Rome

LANZHOU, China -- Four hundred kilometers from Dunhuang the Jiayuguan Pass, the "Greatest Pass Under Heaven," marks the old border between China proper and the Western Territories. The Chinese considered it the outer limit of civilization. In the 5th century B.C. the legendary Taoist master Laozi, aged...
JAPAN
May 23, 2000

Youth crime laid to insular life

Juvenile crimes stem from a society adults created, and changing laws to merely impose a stricter punishment on young offenders will not get to the root of the problem, according to a former family court examiner.
JAPAN
May 23, 2000

Taxi firm owner to take 1,000 used cabs to North Korea

OSAKA -- In his recent meeting with North Korean Vice Premier Kwak Pom Gi, the 71-year-old owner of Kyoto-based taxi company MK Corp. was told of three areas in which the Stalinist country is seeking assistance.
BUSINESS
May 22, 2000

As with risk, ranks of analysts rising

Once again the time has come for the mass-release of Japan Inc.'s annual earnings reports. While the stock market is showing signs of rumbling back to life after nearly a decade of dormancy, significant changes to Japan's financial landscape are forcing players to make rapid transitions just to keep...
COMMENTARY / World
May 21, 2000

Making mountains out of molehills

SYDNEY -- China's opening to the world amid its economic reform and modernization has brought immeasurable benefits to many of its citizens who are being enriched through growing trade linkages. Trading with the rest of the world and even the lukewarm welcoming of foreign investment capital have improved...
JAPAN
May 20, 2000

Africa calls on G8 for more help

Participants in a one-day seminar held Friday in Tokyo called for the Group of Eight countries to agree at the upcoming Okinawa summit to cooperate with African efforts to reduce debt, fight infectious diseases and meet the challenges of globalization.
CULTURE / Music / HOGAKU TODAY
May 20, 2000

New made old, old new at Manabiya

I waited for the performance to begin, sitting amid the audience of 30 people or so, packed into the ground-floor room of a new building in the sprawling, nondescript suburbs of Yokohama.
COMMENTARY / World
May 20, 2000

The limits of peacekeeping

There is a troubling sense of deja vu in the tragedy befalling the U.N. peacekeeping effort in Sierra Leone (it is really peace enforcement, a euphemism for getting sucked into someone else's war). And more than just putting at risk future U.N. operations, recent events pose vexing questions about how...
BUSINESS
May 19, 2000

Nikkeiren, Keidanren join drive for greater efficiency

The call for organizational reform that is leading many Japanese companies and even government agencies to struggle to streamline operations is finally reaching the nation's business groups.

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