Word: dam
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...adore him and young people think his brashness is kakkoii, or cool. His guri-guri-ing of the political establishment, however, is proving to be a more strenuous task than an assignation with Mrs. U at the Hyatt. The ldp hacks in Nagano have overruled his plan to stop dam construction and rammed through their own budget. (Even though Tanaka is Governor, they still hold the majority power in the prefectural legislature.) That's a lesson Prime Minister Koizumi in Tokyo might learn when his honeymoon ends. Promising change in Japan is undeniably popular these days. Making it happen...
...that he has to make use of that popularity to bring the recalcitrant bureaucrats on board and to convince his legislative opponents that they'd be fools to stand in the way of a popular Governor. In March, lawmakers brutally destroyed his plan to stop construction of the Shimosuwa dam. There wasn't a thing Tanaka could do about it but grouse. "The general contractors and construction companies think that more highways and bridges will bring on prosperity and recovery," he fumes. "But ordinary people are just annoyed...
...Access to adequate, unpolluted water is increasingly being viewed in development circles as a basic human right, something that governments must ensure. As Mary Robinson, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the dam commission: "In an age of globalization, greater efforts can and must be made to reconcile the need for economic growth with the need to protect the dignity of individuals, the cultural heritage of communities and the health of the environment we all share." For billions of people, that - like water itself - is a matter of life and death...
Hair curlers and Pocket Monsters, comfort women and labor camps. Like young Lee Doo Dam and retiree Park Sung Pyo, much of Asia sees Japan as a country with a split personality, a hard-to-understand culture that inspires contradictory sentiments. It represents evil. And fun! Fear. And awe. No matter what the impression, the stereotypes fail to capture the nuances of the culture - or the postwar relationships that have evolved between Japan and its Asian neighbors. Instead, the images of Japan - the warmonger, the economic powerhouse, the rich sugar daddy and the epitome of teen cool - are like...
Little Lee Doo Dam is just one example. He may have managed to hold out against Pokémon, but then the newest Japanese fad hit - the Digimon cartoon series. Doo Dam caved - like most of his buddies who have helped make the comics the top-selling children's books at Seoul's giant Kyobo bookstore. "It's fun and there is no Korean comic to match it," he says. "So I think it is O.K. to read Digimon. Even if it comes from Japan...