Word: japanized
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...seized by visions of a rerun of 1997's "Asian contagion," when a financial crisis in Thailand triggered stock crashes from Jakarta to Moscow to New York. On Feb. 28, as this new outbreak of investor gloom spread, India's main stock index tumbled 4%, Singapore's dropped 3.7%, Japan's fell 2.9%, South Korea's lost 2.6%, and Hong Kong's slipped...
...That helps to explain why, for example, Japan's stock index took such a hit on Feb. 28 after approaching a seven-year high earlier in the week. Toyota, Sony et al would surely feel it if a slowdown in the U.S. proves sharper than expected. But will it? On the same day that the dismal durable-goods number came out, a monthly survey of U.S. consumer confidence rose unexpectedly, and so did the latest figures for existing U.S. home sales. In other words, a painful U.S. slowdown is not, by any means, a given. And for those...
...chop sushi, speak Russian, operate heavy equipment and (most important) pour tea. But Haruko doesn't have a full-time job. She's a part-timer-and the main character in the new hit Japanese TV show Haken no Hinkaku, which roughly translates as "the dignity of temp workers." Japan may once have enshrined lifetime corporate employment, but today nearly a third of its workforce is made up of part-timers like Haruko, as companies that cut payrolls during the recession years have been slow to add full-time jobs...
...feeds the success of Haken, which satirizes the changing nature of the Japanese workplace. The confident and capable Haruko, played by the 33-year-old actress Ryoko Shinohara, makes more than the average part-timer but still has to put condescending co-workers in their place-onscreen justice for Japan's downtrodden real-life temps. "It feels good to see Haruko tell full-timers things that you cannot say face to face," says fan Kaoru Ishizaki, a former temp herself...
...Regardless, Nanking is bound to cause deeply uneasy feelings in Japan, where many members of the extreme right either deny that the massacre occurred, or claim that the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal greatly exaggerated the death toll when it concluded that Japanese troops killed about 260,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians in Nanjing between 1937 and 1938. (Some also argue that photos of the atrocities were faked, including the beheading shown at left). At a news conference on Jan. 24, filmmaker Satoru Mizushima-who also runs a Japanese satellite-TV station-lashed out at Nanking, calling it "a setup...