Word: feudal
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BACK IN THE Middle Ages, justice was a pretty informal commodity. In between jousting bouts, feudal lords would hang out in their fiefs, arbitrarily judging any and all disputes that may have occurred there...
...next five pages account for those continuities--how Japan has responded to each external shock, rallied its traditions and emerged stronger. The "dramatic changes"--the emergence of the most dynamic industrial economy in the world, the deep seating of pacifism in Japanese foreign policy, the collapse of feudal institutions and the rise of electoral democracy--disappear into the recesses of the reader's mind...
...That was the day when Commodore Matthew Perry sailed his black-hulled steam frigate Susquehanna into Edo Bay (now Tokyo Bay) and "opened" Japan at gunpoint, after more than two centuries of self-imposed isolation, to American merchants and missionaries. Humiliated, the Japanese decided to modernize their feudal regime by imitating the barbarian invaders. They hired French officers to retrain their soldiers and British shipbuilders to create their navy. From the Germans they learned the secrets of modern science and from the Americans the secrets of modern commerce...
...this could quicken Ethiopia's total disintegration. The many tribes have always been held together by force only. But Meles, the man shepherding this unorthodox democratic experiment, is remarkably serene about the unpredictable prospects. "A feudal monarchy and a repressive dictator couldn't hold Ethiopia together," he says. "Now we are trying another way. If Ethiopia breaks apart, then it wasn't meant...
...that the Holy Grail was really in Japan? American theater artist Robert Wilson seems to think so. For the Zurich Opera, Wilson has conjured up a LOHENGRIN that is far removed from Wagner's realm of Brabant. The composer's scenario is full of feudal warfare and knightly swordplay. But Wilson, whose career has included such mesmerizing efforts as Einstein on the Beach and the CIVIL warS, avoids conventional stage action, particularly the use of arms and hands. So this is a slo-mo Lohengrin with formalized gestures that recall tai chi. In place of the banks of the River...