Word: dieting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...another, she commits suicide by leaping off the tacky flat's tiny balcony. In a third, their children join her in denouncing him. In the last -- the quietest, most real and yet, one feels, the most tragic -- he settles down at the table to eat yet another loathed diet meal of water-packed tuna as his wife sits opposite, each stuck in the nightly silence of despair...
EVER SINCE HIS JULY ELECTION, KNOWing oddsmakers had doubted that Morihiro Hosokawa could keep his promise to write corruption out of the unofficial rulebook of Japanese politics. Two Prime Ministers before him, Kiichi Miyazawa and Toshiki Kaifu, lost the job trying to accomplish that feat, and the Diet was full of wily politicians determined that Hosokawa would fare no better. But the doubters underestimated the extent to which the scion of an aristocratic landowning family was a politician of a new stripe. Nor did the skeptics anticipate that Hosokawa's unprecedented popularity would give him the authority he needed...
...they did, as legislators filed forward to present small blocks of wood to the Diet clerk -- white for yes and green for no. When the tallies were added up, Hosokawa had won by a comfortable majority of 270 to 226, 10 more than the seven-party government's total strength. As Hosokawa watched with satisfaction, 13 Liberal Democratic legislators broke party ranks to vote with his program, and an additional seven braved the stern eye of party leader Yohei Kono to leave the floor and thus abstain from the balloting...
...reforms will bear fruit in elections that may be two years away, but the Diet victory will also help Hosokawa in important near-term ways. It should stiffen government resolve on another key promise: to break the collusive ties among the bureaucracy, business and politicians that are the essence of Japan, Inc. That onetime source of Japan's strength is now blamed for paralyzing Tokyo's ability to respond to trade conflicts with the U.S., improve the lives of consumers, or even help lift the still deepening recession. The government has already commissioned reports on economic deregulation and tax reform...
Hosokawa was cautious about the implications of his Diet victory. "There is a saying that 99 miles are only halfway for a traveler on a 100-mile journey," he said. "We're not halfway there yet." Political analysts contend, however, that change is irrevocably taking hold. "There is a progressive unraveling of the old system," says Kent Calder, director of the U.S.-Japan program at Princeton University. "I think we are in a reinforcing cycle of change, where one thing leads to another and unlocks new possibilities. It is a building revolution...