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EDITORIALS
Apr 14, 2000

Mr. Mori fails to articulate a vision

With a new Cabinet at the helm, the Diet has completed a round of plenary debates following a policy speech by Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori. The first order of business for the Mori Cabinet, despite the extraordinary events preceding its inception, is to present its political vision to the nation. But...
LIFE / Travel
Apr 12, 2000

Taking it to the skies of Bangkok

On the anniversary of the King's 72nd birthday in December 1999, the revolutionary concept of electricallypowered mass transit finally hit Bangkok, a city long dependent on the noisy, noxious, internal combustion engine. Two short elevated lines, totaling 23.7 km of track, were built at a cost of 54.9...
COMMUNITY
Apr 9, 2000

Financial services fly at Banner

Some loudmouth once said that anyone who was in Japan during the bubble years of the late 1980s and had not made money -- a lot of money -- was a fool. Well, that makes me a dunce of the first order.
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.
COMMUNITY
Apr 6, 2000

Sisters doing it for themselves at any age

Seiko Kuboi stops at the end of the catwalk and poses with hand on hip, showing off her gold lame-edged jacket, long black skirt and black bolero hat. The crowd goes wild. "Whoo-hoo! Looking good! Great hat!" they scream in raucous appreciation.
LIFE / Travel
Apr 5, 2000

Bacchanalian bliss under the blossoms of spring

Dozens of spring perennials are in bloom right now, but none are revered so much in Japan as sakura, or cherry blossoms. The pale pink blossoms hail the true arrival of spring, and their brevity (the shower of petals lasts about a week only) has symbolized the fragility of life for centuries.
COMMUNITY
Apr 2, 2000

Europe cheese fan driving wedge into parochial taste buds

OSAKA -- It was love at first bite when Hisaji Taketomo discovered the joy of European cheese more than 20 years ago.
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...
COMMUNITY
Mar 31, 2000

Party offers gays more than just fun

Dancers in flamboyant costumes and heavy makeup performed for around 400 students at a small night club in Tokyo on Wednesday night as part of an event to raise money for HIV education and provide a supportive social network for young gays.
EDITORIALS
Mar 30, 2000

The real need for foreign workers

Japan must soon get ready to accept, even to welcome, a far greater number of legal foreign workers in its midst. The possibility is not remote, in view of plans just announced by the Justice Ministry's Immigration Bureau to relax visa procedures for non-Japanese workers in a wider range of fields than...
COMMENTARY
Mar 27, 2000

Election reform isn't the cure

The ruling coalition and the opposition Democratic Party of Japan have worked out a bill to correct defects in the existing election system. If approved by the current Diet, the proposed changes to the Public Office Election Law will apply to the next Lower House.
JAPAN
Mar 24, 2000

Allies urge Japan to be Asian leader

As a regional and global power, could Tokyo have halted '97 crisis? The meltdown that started in Thailand in 1997 nearly brought the economies of East Asia to their knees. Why did it happen and how might a similar crisis be averted in the future? These and other questions were the focus of the March...
JAPAN
Mar 24, 2000

Diet holdout Tomobe gets 10-year sentence for fraud

Independent Upper House member Tatsuo Tomobe was sentenced to 10 years in prison Thursday for swindling 35 people out of about 665 million yen between 1994 and 1996 in a scam involving his Orange Kyosai bogus mutual aid scheme.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 23, 2000

Beijing all bark and no bite? Think again

Tensions over the Taiwan Strait are palpable after China did its best to intimidate Taiwanese voters in the runup to last weekend's election. First, the Cabinet released a white paper that drew an unmistakable line -- thickened with a new condition -- regarding the limits of acceptable Taiwanese behavior...
ENVIRONMENT
Mar 23, 2000

Housing for human beings: Let natural harmony prevail

Akinori Sagane is a man with a mission, an architect with an idealistic vision of how humans can live in greater harmony with the natural environment.
COMMUNITY / How-tos
Mar 22, 2000

NTT then and now

Last week's column dealt with NHK's fees and why we should pay them. Similarly, there are complaints from readers about paying the initial 72,000 yen plus 2,184 yen consumption tax and 800 yen contract charge to NTT for the standard telephone installation fee. None of this amount is refundable although...
JAPAN
Mar 22, 2000

Leprosy victims demand compensation for injustices

For the past 60 years, 76-year-old Koji Suzuki's life has been contained within a sanitarium for sufferers of leprosy in Kusatsu, Gunma Prefecture.
JAPAN
Mar 22, 2000

Nursing-care plan to get simplified start

The new state-run, nursing-care insurance system for the elderly that takes effect April 1 will begin with simplified "care plans" because the full-fledged programs are not ready, Health and Welfare Ministry officials said Tuesday.
JAPAN
Mar 21, 2000

Long road back from mind control

Akira Sawaki was just another high school student when he joined Aum Shinrikyo in the winter of 1991, believing the world was full of corruption and wanting to be the one to change it.
JAPAN
Mar 21, 2000

Obuchi pays respects to gas attack victims

Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi visited a central Tokyo subway station Monday to mark the fifth anniversary of Aum Shinrikyo's nerve gas attack on the capital's subway system that killed 12 people in one of Japan's worst incidents of terrorism.
EDITORIALS
Mar 20, 2000

Mr. Chen's historic victory

In a historic election Saturday, Taiwanese voters gave Mr. Chen Shui-bian of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party a convincing victory. In electing Mr. Chen, the Taiwanese people defied threats from Beijing and brought an end to 50 years of Nationalist rule in Taiwan. His win in Taiwan's second...
JAPAN
Mar 20, 2000

Elderly seen heading 30% of all households

Households headed by people aged at least 65 are projected to account for more than 30 percent of households in Japan's 47 prefectures by 2020, the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research has said.
COMMENTARY
Mar 19, 2000

Traveling for business or for pleasure?

MYANMAR -- As the nurse expounded on the risks of dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis and malaria, I realized it was going to be an unusual trip. No five-star hotel this time.
COMMUNITY / How-tos
Mar 19, 2000

Getting away

A gentleman asks about shipping a four-wheel-drive car to Namibia on the southwest coast of Africa. The most appealing way would be to ship it first to Cape Town and then drive it to Namibia. I remember a visit to Cape Town a number of years ago, where a former Tokyo resident told me of the elephants...
CULTURE / Art
Mar 19, 2000

Feeling the past through your skin

How can we be intimate with the past? Human beings have always yearned to know the ways and feelings of those who came before. History books, old folk music, paintings and petroglyphs: All of these tell us about how our ancestors thought and felt. For textile craftswoman Eiko Noda, the way to feel what...
JAPAN
Mar 17, 2000

Reformer calls for overhaul of scandal-hit police system

The scandal-tainted police system must be overhauled, believes Kohei Nakabo, a lawyer who has just been appointed to a new government panel established to advise on police reform.
LIFE
Mar 16, 2000

Slowing down to the pace of nature

When he first came to Rebun Island, wilderness guide and temple carpenter Miyuki Kobayashi was struck speechless with the natural pageantry before his eyes.
EDITORIALS
Mar 15, 2000

Chile's new beginning

In one of his first moves upon taking office last weekend, Chile's new president, Mr. Ricardo Lagos, reopened the presidential palace to the Chilean people. It is a symbolic gesture by the country's first socialist president since former Gen. Augusto Pinochet launched a coup against Salvador Allende...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Mar 15, 2000

Seeds of knowledge

Welcome to the digital revolution, where we crunch numbers, process information and mine data. Maybe we don't get grease under our fingernails, but one wonders how far we've progressed beyond the industrial revolution. Though the metallic cling-clang of factories is rare, isn't there something familiar...
BUSINESS
Mar 15, 2000

eBay may herald an online revolution

The recent arrival of major U.S. online auction operator eBay Inc. may bring another online revolution to Japan, the world's second-largest Internet market.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past