Word: hanko
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...prized. Until this year's trade curbs, Japan, the largest consumer, took in some 40% of the world's ivory, in contrast to about one-third for the U.S. and Europe together. Last year Japanese carvers turned an estimated 64 tons of tusks into as many as a million hanko, or personalized name seals. Much of this ivory was bought from Hong Kong, which has long been the world's ivory marketplace. Between 1979 and 1987, Hong Kong imported 3,900 tons. That represents the death of more than 400,000 elephants...
...ivory trade, Japan has a better record of reform. In the mid-1980s, Japan accounted for as much as 70% of the final market for ivory products. In 1983 and 1984 alone, more than 135,000 elephant tusks were imported, mostly to be carved into signature seals called hanko. Then, as international complaints about the ivory trade mounted, Japan's dealers reversed their aggressive import policies. By 1988 ivory imports had been reduced by 75% from the peak years...
...output goes to Americans. "People in the U.S. just don't connect ivory with elephants," says Mark Stanley Price, a director of the African Wildlife Foundation, "but every bracelet represents a dead elephant." Another top consumer is Japan, where ivory has long been used for personalized seals called hanko. But under pressure from conservationists, Hong Kong and Japan have begun to check closely the documents on ivory imports to weed out illegal shipments. Japan's legal ivory imports, in particular, have dropped sharply in the past three years...
...revolt when a too-candid picture revealed that the towering (6 ft. 4 in.), rugged King had a chestful of tattoos. Norwegians felt genuinely sorry for King Olaf, a dedicated yachtsman and onetime Olympics champion, when Khrushchev's visit forced him to forgo a regatta at Hanko Island last week...
...Kronstadt's huge guns were silenced by Nazi artillery and dive-bombers. The sea approaches to Leningrad were threatened as German naval and Luftwaffe parties battered their way onto the stubbornly defended Estonian Islands, Oesel, Vormsi and Moon. The Finns put new pressure on the sea fort of Hanko. German warships were reported steaming into the Baltic to smoke the Red Fleet and its stinging artillery out of the Gulf of Finland...