Tokyo

TOKYO -- The 13 hours Japan's Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa spent in the air en route to Washington for meetings today with President Clinton may be as good as it gets.Left behind in Tokyo were a crumbling government and a depressed economy. Ahead are difficult, perhaps impossible, trade discussions with the United States over Japan's notoriously closed markets, discussions that, as Mr. Hosokawa reportedly said Wednesday, are "completely stalled."The tough circumstances are in sharp contrast to the situation just three months ago at their last meeting in Seattle.

TOKYO -- Tokyo's top trade bureaucrats left a bit of room yesterday for negotiations on a hotly contested demand that the Clinton administration has put at the core of its Japan policy.In carefully phrased English sentences that stopped short of accepting anything, the officials said they were leaving room to work out statistical "indicators" to "measure progress" in opening Japan's markets to more imports. Close monitoring of such measurements is central to the Clinton administration's strategy in pressing for more access to Japan's markets.

TOKYO -- Ask singer Mel Torme what his kind did through those grim years from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, when most of America turned its back on jazz. He has a ready answer."Jazz never died, it just took a long trip to Japan and Europe."For most of two decades, it seemed that jazz might never regain a place in its own country against wave after wave of rock. Those were the years when Tokyo's thousands of studious jazz fans, scores of clubs and dozens of concerts and festivals helped keep the music and its U.S. musicians alive.

TOKYO -- Two days into his first big walk on the world stage, Bill Clinton the international statesman from Washington looks a lot like Bill Clinton the presidential candidate from Arkansas.If his purpose was to make himself the center of attention at the annual summit of the Group of Seven industrialized nations, he succeeded almost as soon as Air Force One put wheels down in Tokyo, 22 hours before the G-7 sessions opened.That much, he accomplished in typical Clinton fashion, by seeming to be everywhere in rapid succession.

Tokyo -- Michitaka Yamaguchi, Tokyo branch manager for the Baltimore-based RTKL Associates Inc. architects, was sipping coffee and leafing through the Japanese-language construction-trade newspapers one July morning when he spotted the ad.He read only the address before rushing downtown to place RTKL's name atop a list that Ministry of Construction officials were just posting. That fast response, the symbolism of getting RTKL's name down first, a documented history of intense effort and perhaps a hundred other small factors stretched over six years -- all paid off for RTKL last week.

TOKYO -- Sandwiched between restaurants that sell tempura, sushi and sake one can find a little bit of Maryland in this Japanese city.Just outside downtown Tokyo, crab cakes and soft-shell crabs on a bun are sold for 550 and 650 yen respectively, about $4 and $5.The delicacies that most Marylanders take for granted are being sold by Taiyo Oil Co. Ltd.In 1988 Taiyo, a 500-employee Japanese company that imports, refines and markets oil products, created a...

TOKYO -- Ten days after President Clinton and Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa announced a new "framework" for U.S.-Japan trade talks amid much fanfare, Tokyo's political crisis has put vital follow-up negotiations on hold at least until September.Japan's top trade negotiator acknowledged the delay yesterday, providing the first concrete evidence of the impact Japan's political crisis is likely to have on relations with trade partners of the world's No. 2 economic power.Meanwhile, the prime minister told leaders of his governing Liberal Democratic Party that he will resign tomorrow.

TOKYO -- Japan's long-awaited turn in the host's limelight of G-7 meetings turned sour yesterday as other industrialized countries reacted coolly to both its $1.8 billion Russian aid pledge and its $116.8 billion economic stimulus package.Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa and other senior Japanese officials have long counted on chairmanship of the next summit of the world's seven wealthiest industrial nations to boost Tokyo's drive for a leadership role in world affairs, including eventual permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council.

TOKYO -- For millions of Japanese, the enduring image of the 19th summit of the Group of Seven industrial democracies will be their country's supreme celebrity, Princess Masako, in a floral dress comfortably chatting, now in Russian with Russia's President Boris N. Yeltsin, now in English with the United States' President Clinton.For scores of politicians in Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa's governing Liberal Democratic Party, what endures will be a gut-wrenching memory of Mr. Clinton preaching the virtues of "change" at every public appearance while they struggled to head off an electoral "change" that could end their 38-year grip on power eight days from today.

NEW YORK -- Bankers Trust New York Corp. and Nippon Credit Bank Ltd. have agreed to purchase about $10 million of each other's shares, the most recent step in the companies' developing relationship.Bankers Trust has been helping Nippon Credit Bank, including selling $2.2 billion in loans to American companies, as the Japanese bank attempts to recover from $9.9 billion in uncollectible loans.Tokyo-based Nippon Credit Bank and New York-based Bankers Trust said the companies will buy the shares after Nippon Credit Bank has completed restructuring its capital.