Word: hidebound
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...rooted in Shinto, the native animist religion, and its training emphasizes ancient Japanese virtues, such as duty, fortitude and respect for elders, as much as it does pure athletic prowess. Even though the foreign invasion has reignited public interest in the stagnating sport, many elders at the clubby and hidebound Japan Sumo Association have become fearful that admitting too many hungry foreign upstarts will dilute what they routinely rhapsodize as professional sumo's unique Japanese character and traditions. In the past decade, they have imposed veritable import quotas and have slowly squeezed the numbers even smaller so that each beya...
...Tokyo and other large cities are full of crowds so rich and stylish that you would never guess the nation had ever smelled a recession, Japan is beset by a host of social, political and economic problems: a shaky financial system, chronically low GDP growth, an aging population, hidebound and paralyzed political leaders. Meanwhile, China, the sleeping giant next door, has awakened to spar with Japan over export markets and natural resources, challenging Japan's customary position as the region's role model. In the past year, foreign direct investment in Japan dropped by 3%. In China, it surged...
...once associated with the female vote, and in modern America the suggestion that only men should be allowed to vote would be deemed contrary to the spirit of precious freedom and democracy. Perhaps one hundred years from now, citizens will look back on our era and wonder at our hidebound refusal to enfranchise children, just as we now marvel at the outmoded beliefs of men such as Williams...
...some ways, though, Japan's Olympians are still restricted by a hidebound hierarchy. When their coach saunters by their training corner at the Athens Aquatic Center, members of Japan's swimming team rip off their MP3-player headphones and bob their heads in a simultaneous expression of fealty. Their coach is still called sensei, or master...
...distracted, mounting and managing two unfinished wars, that it hasn't had time to take itself apart and figure out what's broken. The other reason is that the two agencies most in need of reform--the FBI and the CIA--over the past 60 years have become famously hidebound and self-protective creatures. As four or five outside groups launched probes of--and proposed changes to--FBI and CIA activities after 9/11, the bureau and the agency played a shrewd, wait-'em-out game, allowing small changes proposed by outsiders but drawing a hidden "line of death" at anything...