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ENVIRONMENT
Feb 16, 2000

Rambling after migrating bramblings

The many seed-bearing plants of the temperate region, the grasses and the herbs, the trees and the shrubs, produce an enormous volume of seed each year. Typically of the natural world, a vast amount of effort is rewarded by very few successes. In the game of chance that is life, relatively few seeds...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 16, 2000

Will Indonesia survive Suharto?

INDONESIA BEYOND SUHARTO, edited by Donald Emmerson. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1999, 395 pp., $26.95 (paper). Can Indonesia succeed in returning the troops to the barracks? Can it afford not to? Recent rumors of an impending coup against President Abdurrahman Wahid, moves by the president against some...
JAPAN
Feb 14, 2000

Mitsui pulls out of insurers' merger plan

Mitsui Marine & Fire Insurance Co. announced Monday that it will pull out of a three-way merger plan with Nippon Fire & Marine and Koa Fire & Marine, opting instead to strengthen its ties with other Mitsui corporate group firms and seek an alliance with Sumitomo Marine & Fire Insurance Co. Speaking...
EDITORIALS
Feb 13, 2000

When old age starts at 35

"That is no country for old men," the poet W.B. Yeats wrote more than 70 years ago, referring wistfully to the country of the young. He was not so old when he wrote it, either, barely in his 60s, but he knew that his age automatically excluded him from much that interested him -- chiefly heedless sensuality...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Feb 13, 2000

Nicola Cerrone

The warmth and blue skies of Italy and the sunshine and freshness of Australia make a winning combination. These elements come together in Nicola Cerrone, young, winsome and friendly.
CULTURE / Art
Feb 12, 2000

A new talent blooms in the Kyoto school

Some eight years, when Chieko Oshie was a student at the Kyoto City University of Art, she went out walking on the grounds and chanced upon a wild burdock plant in bloom. It was something in the colors that caught her eye, and the plant became a favorite of the young student's fancy. When autumn came...
CULTURE / Music
Feb 11, 2000

G. Love and Gomez have got them blues and got 'em new

Every 15 years or so we seem to get another blues revival. Revivals imply something dead being brought back to life, which means the blues isn't considered a living, breathing musical form, but something frozen in time, and each successive generation that revives it is further removed from the cultural...
JAPAN
Feb 10, 2000

NPA admits defeat in Glico-Morinaga case

Prior to Saturday's expiration of the statute of limitations on the last crime in the Glico-Morinaga extortion case, the National Police Agency conceded defeat Thursday to the extortion ring. The 15-year statute of limitations on the crime runs out midnight Saturday. It will be the first time the NPA...
LIFE / Food & Drink
Feb 10, 2000

Whiter than white, cooler than cool

You can't miss Rokko An. It's the flash new place in Nishi-Azabu with the brilliant white concrete facade, on the left as you wend your way down toward Hiroo. From dusk till 4 in the morning it gleams out from a long, low picture-window right across Gaien Nishi-dori from (and totally in contrast with)...
JAPAN
Feb 10, 2000

Patriot 'Mariko' asks populace to develop global mind-set

Staff writer True patriotism does not equal narrow-minded nationalism, said Mariko Terasaki Miller, the first female honorary consul general of Japan, as she called on the Japanese to develop a sense of internationalism and pacifism at the core of their identity. "To develop an international or cosmopolitan...
JAPAN
Feb 9, 2000

Kyoto business seminar kicks off with eye on reform

KYOTO -- The two-day Kansai Business Seminar opened here Wednesday with organizers calling on business leaders to reform Japan's business practices and to revitalize the Kansai economy in the face of global competition. Before about 380 business leaders, government officials and university professors,...
CULTURE / Music
Feb 8, 2000

Music of An-Chang Project best-kept secret of Okiniwa

The new album by Jun Yasuba's A-Chang Project, "Harara Rude," should be heralded as a major new album of Okinawan music. However, Yasuba is at present unknown to even Okinawan music aficionados. It took her two years to sell 500 of the first An-Chang Project albums, "Yarayo-Uta no Sahanji," and at present,...
JAPAN
Feb 7, 2000

Reversal by top court casts doubt on boys' convictions in '85 murder

The Supreme Court on Monday reversed a lower court ruling in a civil suit filed over the 1985 murder of a 15-year-old girl in Soka, Saitama Prefecture, saying it doubted the credibility of the confessions made by the boys accused of killing her. Six men were found guilty of committing the murder by...
JAPAN
Feb 7, 2000

Ota ready to slash Osaka government jobs

Staff writer OSAKA -- Newly elected Osaka Gov. Fusae Ota said Monday that her priority is to restore financial health to the prefecture, noting she is confident she can push through plans for major cuts in local government jobs as part of the effort. "If prefectural officials really want to save Osaka...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 5, 2000

Japan changes -- its own way

"Is Japan changing?" This is the question asked by virtually every recent visitor to Japan. The question reveals both the long-standing desire by many non-Japanese to see Japan change in fundamental ways and the heightened expectations fostered by years of hope-inducing Japanese rhetoric that the country...
CULTURE / Music
Feb 4, 2000

Rescuing abandoned electones from a grim fate

The electone, better known as the home organ, might recall memories of drunken uncles playing shambolic versions of Christmas songs, or upwardly mobile parents forcing a bit of culture down junior's throat. In many family homes, it is a dust-gathering fixture, a hulking monument to the musically dasai....
CULTURE / Art
Feb 4, 2000

Digital world bids farewell to Soseki

The Japanese press doesn't seem to have had quite the frenzy of millennium coverage that took place in America, but there were various attempts to look back at the recent past of Japanese literature and to forecast its future. I found two discussions in particular interesting for their contrasting viewpoints....
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 4, 2000

Rising tension in South Asia

ISLAMABAD -- India and Pakistan have maintained an ongoing standoff for much of their 52-year history, but it is only during moments of heightened tension that the international community focuses on South Asia.
EDITORIALS
Feb 3, 2000

The showdown in Indonesia

This week, the old order and the new squared off in Indonesia. An official inquiry concluded that the violence that erupted in East Timor last year was planned, carried out and abetted by a group that included top-ranking members of the country's military. The report incriminated 40 members of the armed...
JAPAN
Feb 3, 2000

DCI unveils programming for digital data broadcasts

Digital Cast International Ltd. on Thursday unveiled programs it plans to deliver on a digital data broadcasting service it is planning to launch Dec. 1. The Tokyo-based broadcaster will offer a 24-hour schedule of news, weather forecasts, local government bulletins, sales programs for books, regional...
JAPAN / Media
Feb 3, 2000

The made-for-TV tragedy of Rumiko and Kenya

He: "She always said, 'I made you what you are today.' It was too much for me."
MORE SPORTS
Feb 3, 2000

Stevenson handles media like a pro

Tennis player Alexandra Stevenson could be excused if she chose to respond to questions on her family background with a terse "no comment."
JAPAN
Feb 2, 2000

Loan firms aim to mend image by joining banks

Staff writer Major consumer finance companies, despite their soaring profits and superb risk assessment skills, still lack one thing: a positive image. Hiroki Jinnai, president of top consumer moneylender Promise Co., is well aware of that weakness. And it is exactly why he wants the firm's planned...
EDITORIALS
Feb 1, 2000

Glimmers of hope in Sri Lanka

There are few more enduring and pointless tragedies than the civil war that has raged across the island nation of Sri Lanka. That island paradise has suffered through nearly two decades of terrorism while the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam fought for their independence. Yet even as the death toll continues...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 1, 2000

Life is more than the great 'I'

At the beginning of the new millennium, I would like to ponder what the world will be like hundreds, if not thousands, of years from now. With the world getting smaller in time and space, it should not be very difficult to think long-term about its future -- to say nothing of the future of our own country....
MORE SPORTS
Feb 1, 2000

Rams outlast Titans in Super Bowl thriller

ATLANTA -- The St. Louis Rams outlasted the Tennessee Titans in the greatest finish in Super Bowl history Sunday, hanging on, literally, for a 23-16 victory before a crowd of 72,625 at the Georgia Dome.
BUSINESS
Jan 31, 2000

Social parity, commerce rules needed for leap to cyberspace

As the world entered the 21st century, a number of newspapers and economic journals ran feature articles with grand forecasts for the new age.
EDITORIALS
Jan 31, 2000

Matters of life and death

Medical blunders in the nation's hospitals invariably make headlines -- when they are discovered and acknowledged. The patient's right to informed consent has been severely tested by reports that two patients at a municipal hospital in Osaka Prefecture were recently operated on for a second time without...
BUSINESS
Jan 31, 2000

Gateway tweaks sales strategy by applying Dilbert principle

Gateway is bullish on Japan, especially on the smaller businesses it is targeting, and the computer maker is counting on a perhaps unlikely character to help make the sale: a mouthless, bespectacled, befuddled -- yet likable -- dweeb named Dilbert.
COMMUNITY
Jan 30, 2000

Preaching the gospel of women's television

Those who watch the program "New Yorkers," broadcast weekly on NHK's satellite channel, will be familiar with the name Nancy Lee. But how many realize that this snappy, bright, Jewish-American from New Jersey is as much at home in Japanese as English?

Longform

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.
What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji