Word: asako
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...tackle Japan's problems, but the revolution seems unlikely. Less than two years after Koizumi electrified the nation by calling a snap election to defend his reform plans, voters seem resigned to the return of Japanese politics as usual. Back at the Minato welfare office, 71-year-old Asako Hamada sees little reason for hope. "I don't know anything about politics, but I know things are not well at the present moment," she says. "That neither the LDP nor the opposition parties have been able to offer any resolutions that give peace of mind to the Japanese is quite...
...than to consensus-oriented Japan, prevented the legal population from getting out of control by making the national bar exam notoriously difficult. But with courts backlogged and lawsuits mushrooming, the scarcity of lawyers is becoming dire. "There are lots of cities in Japan without a single lawyer," says Hiroshi Asako, a dean at the newly opened Waseda Law School in Tokyo. The Japanese Diet passed a bill in 2002 allowing universities to establish graduate law schools, and the "if you build it, they will come" approach is working. Waseda, one of Japan's largest law schools with 300 first-year...
...Katshuhiro (Tanabe Seiichi) is a brooding engineer who's gay, gets hit on by women, but tries to keep his secret hidden. That is until he meets Naoya (Takahashi Kazuya), a self-centered gay man, and the two of them start a love affair. Into their lives comes Asako (Kataoka Reiko), a surly twentysomething who has been on more laps than a restaurant napkin, and who takes a shine to Katshuhiro. In him she sees a man with "a father's eyes" and suggests they conceive a child by artificial means, to Naoya's initial displeasure. Between bouts of bowling...
...kernel of Hush!, its conscience, is delivered in one zestful 10-min. sequence. The three characters' families gather in Katsuhiro's living room for a confrontation over his relationship with Asako. The nine relatives in the room, framed together like a painting, each get to voice their concerns, prejudices and, in Asako's case, undying love (for both men). Hashiguchi's passive, distant lens is the perfect partner for their very active dysfunction. Hush! is felicitously titled. Wry and endearing, it makes the right noises but doesn't shout about...
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