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COMMENTARY / World
May 19, 2000

Populist bloc sends UMNO strong message

KUALA LUMPUR-- Delegates to the recently-concluded triennial elections of Malaysia's top political party have voted according to their conscience, sending a strong signal to party president, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, that they prefer their leaders who can reach out to the grassroots of the politically-dominant...
COMMENTARY / World
May 17, 2000

Pakistan peace initiative just a first step

ISLAMABAD -- The empty trailers along the road from the Afghan capital of Kabul to the border with neighboring Pakistan serve as powerful reminders of what Afghanistan's Islamic rulers -- the Taliban -- have achieved in the four years since they took control of most of their Central Asian country's territory....
LIFE / Digital
May 17, 2000

Webby winners for 2000

SFMOMA Webby Prizefor Excellence in Online Art Entropy8Zuper (www.entropy8zuper.org)
JAPAN
May 16, 2000

Mori hails new defense headquarters

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori said Monday that the completion of the Defense Agency's new headquarters presented a good opportunity for him as chief commander of the Self-Defense Forces to talk about the nation's defense policies.
CULTURE / Books
May 16, 2000

Asia's storm clouds haven't dispersed

ASIAN STORM: The Economic Crisis Examined, by Philippe Ries. Translated by Peter Starr. Tokyo: Tuttle, 2000, 2,800 yen. The economic typhoons that swept though Asia in 1997 capsized regional economies, sent the misery index skyrocketing, wiped out colossal amounts of wealth, swept away an aging dictator...
COMMENTARY / World
May 15, 2000

China: an emerging partner or threat?

Is China a rising colossus that intends to bully its neighbors and dominate Asia? Should Washington adopt a more hardline policy toward China on trade, human rights and national security issues? Or is China a country that has already moved far along the road to a market economy and a more open society...
COMMENTARY / World
May 14, 2000

Myanmar's Karens fight for freedom

MAE SOT, Thailand -- Theirs is the longest-running insurgency in Asia, against a regime widely recognized as one of the world's most repressive. And yet the Karen National Union, which launched a guerrilla war in 1949 to secure a homeland for the Karen ethnic minority in eastern Myanmar, is anything...
COMMENTARY / World
May 13, 2000

Era of abundance sparks religious revival

WASHINGTON -- American history abounds with apparent contradictions, but few loom as large as this: We are a people wedded simultaneously to materialism and spirituality, mostly (though not exclusively) religious. In a recent Gallup poll, 61 percent of Americans said religion is "very important" in their...
BUSINESS
May 12, 2000

Firms downplay fall in their share prices

Japan's business community on Thursday generally downplayed the Nikkei Stock Average's precipitous plunge, saying the dive is merely a reaction to irrational buying of high-tech shares in recent months.
COMMUNITY
May 11, 2000

Young women study up for the future

A high attendance in classes ranging from aromatherapy, beadwork and flower arrangement to exotic languages and cooking, offered at department stores and community centers all over Japan, is a sign of a new trend among women in their late 20s and early 30s.
JAPAN
May 11, 2000

Diet passes bill mandating barrier-free transportation

The Diet passed a government-sponsored bill Wednesday to make railway stations, airports and roads more accessible for the disabled and senior citizens.
JAPAN
May 10, 2000

Report focuses on NGOs, missile threat

The government will step up its efforts to build partnerships with nongovernmental organizations and other groups to meet emerging diplomatic challenges, according to the Foreign Ministry's annual foreign policy report released Tuesday.
JAPAN
May 9, 2000

City strives to school foreign youth

TOYOTA, Aichi Pref. -- When the bell signals the end of the day at Homi Junior High School here, students run out of the building to play on the grounds.
COMMENTARY / World
May 8, 2000

Tackling sectarian strife in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD -- A volley of gunfire that followed a grenade attack last month in a small village two hours from Islamabad shattered the myth that the government had begun to effectively contain the country's religious extremists.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
May 7, 2000

All good things

Here is good news for all Kenny Endo fans, and if you aren't a fan you will be once you attend one of his performances. Kenny is a master of the taiko. Most of you know that taiko is drum, and then there is "odaiko," a huge drum. In general, taiko is to drum like the tea ceremony is to a tea bag. It...
COMMENTARY
May 4, 2000

Will Clinton crumble again?

If Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's overseas foreign-policy tour this week has a theme, it is "coverup" and "damage control." Mori, known as a colorless political fixer, has been tasked with assuring foreign leaders that the July G8 summit will go forward successfully no matter what happens on the Japanese...
COMMENTARY / World
May 2, 2000

A quest for human rights

ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has launched a drive to improve his country's human rights.
COMMUNITY
Apr 27, 2000

Celebration to wash away tears

A water festival without any water may sound like a contradiction in terms, but in Tokyo that's exactly how the Myanmarese community celebrate the New Year.
EDITORIALS
Apr 25, 2000

Combating cross-border crime

With international exchanges of people and goods expanding at an accelerated pace, cross-border organized crime is also rising rapidly. In a concerted effort to combat the globalization of crime, the United Nations in 1999 set up a special panel to work out a global anticrime treaty. Now that drafting...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 22, 2000

Use Earth's ecosystems more sustainably

The findings of a new report sponsored by the U.N. Development Program, the U.N. Environmental Program and the World Bank, titled "World Resources 2000-2001: People and Ecosystems: The Fraying Web of Life," underscore the fact that the growing worldwide demand for resources is threatening the world's...
JAPAN / Society
Apr 21, 2000

Racism in business rampant: groups

A group fighting to eradicate discrimination in Japan reported on a number of recent cases of discriminatory practices by businesses across the country on Thursday at a gathering in Tokyo and called for legislation to ban such practices.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 17, 2000

Alternative nuclear futures

The world community will gather in New York from April 24 to May 19 for the first review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty since it was indefinitely extended in 1995. Unfortunately, the nuclear future looks a lot less rosy than it did five years ago. Since then, India and Pakistan have crashed through...
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 14, 2000

Adventures in cross-cultural theater

NEW YORK -- In the Japan Society's latest cross-cultural experiment, the subtlety and spirituality of Japanese noh drama was played off the stirring pace of Kurt Weill's opera.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 9, 2000

Peace's high price in Kosovo

I previously argued that to supporters, NATO cured Europe of the Milosevic-borne disease of ethnic cleansing. To critics, however, the NATO cure worsened the disease ("NATO in the Balkans: Between disaster and failure," April 1).
CULTURE / Music
Apr 9, 2000

Conductors introduce some new stars

It is fair to assume that anyone reading this column is a music lover of some degree. Take a moment to reflect, though, that there was a time in your life when you had never heard a note of music. What was it that inveigled your innocent ear? When was it? Where were you? Who introduced you?
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 8, 2000

Shall we hula dance?

MATSUSHIGE, Tokushima Pref. -- "It began with a cold," Lance Kita, 24, replied when asked how he came to teach hula in Japan. Kita, raised in Hawaii, had never taught or even performed the dance native to his home state before coming to Shikoku, Japan's least visited major island.

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