Word: banzai
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Banzai, banzai, banzai," cried the members of the Japanese Diet last week as they bolted from the chamber, bound for beer and sake in their party caucus rooms. Premier Ichiro Hatoyama's government had just formally dissolved the Diet in preparation for the Feb. 27 general elections. The Premier, who is partially crippled, was wheeled up and down the corridors by his aides, beaming and shaking hands...
Crown Prince Akihito, 35,000 miles, 197 days and 14 countries after leaving home, returned triumphantly to Japan. As he stepped from airplane to ramp to red velvet carpet, well-wishers shrieked "Banzai!", flashbulbs popped, the Yokohama customs office brass band blared the national anthem, and 500 rounds of fireworks boomed in downtown Tokyo. Self-possessed Akihito nodded to 200 official greeters (including Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida and U.S. Ambassador John M. Allison) on his march down the 50-yd. carpet, waved to 500,000 rain-washed faithful on the drive to the Imperial Palace. There he was received...
...fleet denuded of its air groups was like a crab without claws. Saipan, Tinian and Guam were doomed. Sake-crazed and glory-minded, the Japanese made desperate banzai charges and blew themselves up with their own land mines. They paid with ten lives for every American marine and G.I. life they took. "On 12 August 1944," concludes Historian Morison proudly, "the Philippine Sea and the air over it, and the islands of Saipan, Tinian and Guam, were under American control. May they never again be relinquished...
...that I am sure I will enjoy my visit here." As the ship nosed in, his eye was especially taken by a quartet of hula dancers; he asked, and was assured that he would see more hula-hula before he left. Thousands of Hawaii's Japanese wept, shouted "banzai." waved imitation cherry blossoms and risingsun flags as the Prince went ashore for a round of ceremonial visits...
...still to come. Two days after the first bloody lesson, the Emperor appeared in the Plaza, overflowing this time with a peaceful 10,000. He, at least, had changed since defeat: he spoke with a personal "I," not the old imperial "We." Pleased but a little bewildered by the "Banzai!" that reverberated from his palace walls, the tiny, spectacled man in the silk topper spoke humbly to his subjects. "Let us thoroughly embrace the tenets of democracy and keep faith with other nations," he pleaded. "Let us solidify the foundations of our state...