Word: japanized
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...week's end junketing Sukarno reached Japan in his chartered Pan Am plane, celebrating his 58th birthday aboard. Before returning to his racked island nation, he intends to visit North Viet Nam and Cambodia. A spokesman for Sukarno said airily: "If it were a critical situation in Indonesia, the President would have stayed home...
...JAPAN Choosing Up Sides
Premier Kishi's decisive victory over the Socialists (see above) seemed like any other modern, democratic electoral competition. But there were reminders of a more ancient Japan. On election eve a Buddhist priest from Hiroshima, who disagreed with Kishi's foreign policy, used a 5-in. dagger to disembowel himself in ceremonial hara-kiri in front of the Premier's official residence. And there was also something decidedly un-Western about the election of all six candidates nominated by the Soka Gakkai sect...
Freshened Minds. Founded in 1930 by a crusty, quick-tempered high school principal, the sect seeks to annihilate all other religions and to establish Soka Gakkai (literal translation: the value-creating study group) as the national religion of Japan. New to politics, this flamboyant sect first made its mark in the April municipal elections when 337 of its 362 candidates were elected to office. Founder Tsunesaburo Makiguchi believed that mankind's salvation lay in the teachings of the Buddhist saint Nichiren* By merely chanting the magic formula, "Namu My oho Rengekyo [I devote myself to the Scripture...
Money comes in through "voluntary" contributions, and most of it is lavished on its Taisekiji temple (which it hopes to make a national shrine) at the foot of Fujiyama and on some 130 branch temples scattered throughout Japan. Claiming a membership of 1,100,000 families, the current sect leader, Takashi Koizumi, 52, explains that the move into politics is "simply insurance. Several years ago we began getting official interference, and that was when we decided we must have our representatives in the Diet." As a happy afterthought, Koizumi adds: "Besides, having men who believe in Nichiren's teachings...