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COMMENTARY / World
Jul 22, 2000

No point mourning the loss of languages

Early in Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life," there's a skit sending up the Catholic Church's ban on contraception in which hordes of ragged but pious urchins sing several choruses of "Every Sperm Is Sacred." The industry of worrying about dead, dying and declining languages is a bit like that.
BUSINESS
Jul 22, 2000

Carmakers get in gear to offer online service, sales

Growing enthusiasm for information technology is spurring Japanese carmakers to introduce online automotive services in an effort to cultivate new customers and establish efficient procurement systems.
BUSINESS
Jul 21, 2000

Stimulus policy should continue: Imai

While acknowledging that the much-anticipated economic recovery has become more evident, Takashi Imai, chairman of the Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren), is emphasizing that the government should continue its current stimulus-oriented fiscal and monetary policies for the foreseeable...
JAPAN
Jul 20, 2000

Long wait for 2,000 yen bank note finally over

The Bank of Japan on Wednesday began distributing 2,000 yen bank notes, the country's first new bill in 42 years, to financial institutions at its head office in Tokyo's Nihonbashi district.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 20, 2000

Okinawans behind Japan-U.S. alliance

Following the tragic rape of a 12-year old Okinawa school girl by three U.S. servicemen in 1995, Secretary of Defense William Perry, perhaps the most respected member of President Bill Clinton's Cabinet, invited former Ambassadors Mike Mansfield and Richard L. Armitage to have lunch with him and the...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 20, 2000

My thoughts toward Okinawa as host

MASAHIDE OTA Former governor of Okinawa Prefecture
BUSINESS
Jul 19, 2000

MMC may have hidden complaints

Transport authorities have inspected Mitsubishi Motors Corp.'s head office in Tokyo and some of its dealers on suspicion it concealed documents regarding complaints from users at the time of a regular inspection, Transport Ministry officials said Tuesday.
JAPAN
Jul 19, 2000

Diet members pitch ideas to Mori for G8

Leaders of both the ruling and opposition camps on Tuesday called on Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori to take up a wide range of issues during the upcoming Group of Eight summit in Okinawa, including information technology, Korean reconciliation and security issues.
JAPAN
Jul 19, 2000

Top court backs state-sponsored health care for A-bomb survivors

The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld lower court decisions that ordered the Health and Welfare Ministry to provide special medical coverage granted to survivors of the atomic attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima to a partially paralyzed Nagasaki woman who did not meet government criteria for such coverage....
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jul 19, 2000

Big train a-comin'

Pick your measure. No matter what standard you choose, the information revolution is less than 3 percent complete. That's right: Whether you count users, devices, speed, content or number of applications, the revolution is just revving up. That has two implications: 1) virtual lifetime employment for...
BUSINESS
Jul 19, 2000

BOJ chief reiterates desire to abandon 'zero-rate' policy

Bank of Japan Gov. Masaru Hayami on Tuesday reiterated his desire to abandon the current "zero-interest-rate" policy, describing it as "unnatural."
JAPAN
Jul 19, 2000

Wildcat threatened as projects encroach on last wilderness

Staff writer
JAPAN
Jul 18, 2000

Japan urged to promote IT in developing nations

Japan should promote education in developing countries by offering international education programs over the Internet and by providing information technology training to school teachers and engineers in those nations, an Education Ministry panel said Monday.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 18, 2000

Get in the game with 'Ultra Nippon'

ULTRA NIPPON: How Japan Reinvented Football, by Jonathan Birchall. Headline, 2000, 256 pp., 16.99 pounds (cloth). Hundreds of books have been written about the J. League since its launch in 1993, and now one has been written in English.
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 18, 2000

Ennosuke lights up the stage with super summer program

July is the month for Ennosuke Ichikawa at the Kabukiza. For the champion of Super Kabuki, this year's event is particularly significant because it marks the 30th performance since the initial presentation of his summer program at the Kabukiza.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 18, 2000

The art and artistry of translation

WORDS, IDEAS, AND AMBIGUITIES: Four Perspectives on Translating from the Japanese, edited by Donald Richie. A Pacific Basin Institute Book, Imprint Publications, 2000, 88 pp., $19.95. This volume is a faithful account of an important and stimulating series of colloquia held at the International House...
COMMUNITY
Jul 17, 2000

No breakfast needed, say health heretics

Many people worship breakfast. They believe it is the most important meal of the day, and that skipping it causes various problems, such as fatigue, inefficiency at work and poor academic achievement in children.
JAPAN
Jul 16, 2000

Romance is in the air: tour the city by helicopter

Tomoko Suzuki's boyfriend gave her a special birthday present this year -- a night view of the Tokyo metropolis from an altitude of 600 meters and at speeds up to 200 kph.
CULTURE / Music
Jul 16, 2000

A guide to the music festivals of summer

The recession has reportedly made concert promoters' lives miserable, and yet it doesn't seem to have affected the flood of foreign acts rushing to these shores.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 16, 2000

Will G8 swelter in sartorial splendor?

U.S. Ambassador to Japan Thomas Foley was the first to predict that the forthcoming G8 summit on Okinawa might have to be held with the participants wearing sport or aloha shirts instead of formal or business attire.
EDITORIALS
Jul 15, 2000

The Kashmir knot tightens

India's reluctance to support increased autonomy for the troubled state of Jammu and Kashmir is understandable. Indian leaders fear that giving more power to local leaders would set a precedent that could lead to the unraveling of the whole country. That is a possibility, but any sprawling state that...
JAPAN
Jul 15, 2000

Bailout decisions case by case, says Mori's 'younger brother'

Although the controversial bailout plan for the Sogo Co. department store chain and its group firms was eventually scrapped when the group filed for court-mandated rehabilitation this week, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hidenao Nakagawa is not sure how the government will handle similar cases in the future....
JAPAN
Jul 15, 2000

Snow Brand plants face inspection

The Health and Welfare Ministry on Friday set up a 12-member team to carry out its own inspections of Snow Brand Milk Products Co.'s 20 plants.
JAPAN
Jul 14, 2000

Japan should rebrand itself: Blair adviser

Mark Leonard had a somewhat negative image of Japan before his arrival, thinking that people would be pessimistic over the prolonged economic downturn and that Tokyo would resemble a ghost town populated by listless youths.
JAPAN
Jul 13, 2000

Security role a two-edged sword but U.S. keeping lower profile

CHATAN, Okinawa Pref. -- It's an early Tuesday evening at Morgan's, a popular bar along Gate Two Road, and the mood is festive.
JAPAN
Jul 12, 2000

Is Okinawa museum rewriting history?

ITOMAN, Okinawa Pref. -- Stepping out of the dark exhibit room, visitors to the new Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum are overwhelmed by a view of the ocean bright blue under a blazing sun.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 12, 2000

Remedies for globalization's side effects

GENEVA -- After intense negotiations on social remedies for poverty and other destructive side effects of globalization, the United Nations has hammered out an international policy pact that can make the world economy less turbulent, less cruel and much more fair.
JAPAN
Jul 11, 2000

Japan, U.S. business leaders agree on NTT

Business leaders from Japan and the United States expressed their support Monday for a reduction in Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp.'s interconnection charges, a move which they say is essential to information technology-led economic growth.
JAPAN
Jul 11, 2000

North Okinawa mixed on planned military-civilian airport

NAGO, Okinawa Pref. -- From a tiny desert island off the U.S. Marine Corps' Camp Schwab, Takuma Higashionna looks out over the coral reef amid clear water.

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