Word: japanized
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Japan has long had a special regard for the navel. The shape of the umbilicus of a newborn baby would be discussed at length, and if it happened to point downward, the parents would brace themselves for a weakling child who would bring them woe. The thunder god Raijin, with his terrifying drums, his great horns and long tusks, was said to have an insatiable appetite for young navels, and mothers had constantly to nag their youngsters to keep themselves well covered up. But for all the national preoccupation with it, the navel in Japan never quite achieved the status...
Last week Murata's long-awaited book on his philosophy finally came out, and though copies of it were snatched up, its author was no longer alone in the navel business. One of Japan's top beauticians, Mrs. Aiko Yamano, hit upon the idea of mixing a perfumed olive oil with a bit of lanolin and persuading women to pour a few drops into their navels before retiring. She called her oil "BB" for Brigitte Bardot. Girls in their 20s, she found, began sprouting pimples in spite of this treatment, but women over 30 developed clear, smooth skins...
...unlikely gimcrack that for years has been the hottest-selling art object in Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost big island, is the small plaster bust (price: $1) of a stern-faced New England schoolmaster who died in 1887. William Smith Clark stayed only eight months on Hokkaido, but the visit, in 1876, was long enough for him to be enshrined by the islanders as something between seer and saint. On leave from his job as president of Massachusetts Agricultural College (now the University of Massachusetts), Clark helped found the school that was to become the outpost island's pride...
...university's graduates include such top industrialists as Takeshi Mitarai, president of the Canon Camera Co.; Mitsugu Sato, head of the firm that supplies more than half of Japan's dairy products; and Hohei Sugimatsu, president of the Nissan Chemical Co. One of Hokkaido's noted scholars is Physicist Dr. Ukichiro Nakaya, a world-respected authority on snow crystals and the elasticity of ice. Since development of the rugged northern island (pop. 5,000,000) is a prime government objective, it seems certain that Hokkaido University will keep on growing...
...William Smith Clark the ambitious growth would be satisfying; so would the new student union (the first one in Japan) and the faculty-exchange program carried on with the University of Massachusetts. But possibly even more pleasing would be the sight of young Japanese scholars pursuing knowledge with Yankee vigor. When frostbite threatens in a Hokkaido lecture hall-outside temperature sometimes reaches 40° below and that indoors is often only somewhat more temperate-the sufferer rushes outdoors, rubs his ears hard with snow, then bundles right back to resume his notetaking...