Word: hikotaro
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...Hikotaro Hirano was a 22-year-old foot soldier stationed in Manchuria when he died in battle against the invading Russians in the final week of World War II. Late last month his aging parents and a small group of mourners filed through the rain into a peaceful Buddhist temple outside Osaka. There, after a priest sounded a massive gong to begin a memorial sutra, the worshipers paid their silent respects to Hikotaro's memory. According to the Buddhist calendar, it was the 33rd anniversary of his death-the date on which the spirits of the dead are believed...
...particularly taxing for Japan's 1.7 million Buddhist priests. Most Sundays, Tokyo Priest Kotetsu officiates at five or six services. "By the time I go to bed," he says, "I feel physically dead tired although spiritually aroused." Shoko, the Osaka abbot who presided at the services for Hikotaro, has stopped smoking to protect his overworked vocal cords. The work has its secular compensations. Temple offerings range from $100 to $3,000 per service...
Though Fuji's example started the uproar, the city offers no solution. Mayor Hikotaro Watanabe confronts a familiar dilemma: "To stop paper production will prove too costly a step for the city. But to let the production go on will prove too dangerous a proposition to our citizens." The prefecture has been equally unsuccessful in banishing hedoro. A first suggestion, to dredge up the sludge and dump it 200 miles offshore in the Pacific, was quickly dismissed by scientists as ecological madness. When officials next proposed to pump hedoro into "temporary repositories," one outraged citizen spoke for many...
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