Word: joji
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Joji...
...While Joji Obara awaits trial for killing Lucie, and the case mounts against him as one of the most prolific serial rapists ever caught, he has become a symbol to some Japanese of the malaise of the post-bubble economy and its moral aftermath...
...essence of post-bubble Japan, it is "failed real estate speculator." During the '80s and early '90s, real estate speculation had been the frothy center of Japan's double-espresso economy, with developers and brokers becoming that era's version of the more recent dotcom billionaires. Speculators like Joji Obara were the heroes of Japan's go-go era, driving their Bentleys and Rolls Royces, living in their mansions, dating their exotic blond girlfriends. This was the period, remember, when Japan was going to take over the world. Men like Joji Obara cast themselves as the Fibe Mini warriors...
...Joji Obara was born in 1952 to an impoverished Korean family in postwar Osaka. His father had been a scrap collector, then a taxi driver who worked his way into owning a fleet of cars and a string of pachinko parlors from which he amassed a fortune. Perhaps mindful of the discrimination faced by Koreans, when the young Obara - then known by his Korean name Kim - was asked to pen a farewell sentiment in his junior-high class yearbook, he wrote: "Upbringing is more important than family name...
...pundit on television shows and was given his own newspaper column. Obara's arrest prompted a deluge of phone calls to the British embassy from Japanese who wanted to express their shame. But at the same time, hostesses in Roppongi report a rash of male customers introducing themselves as "Joji Obara." Amelia, one of the young women working at Lucie's old club, says a customer told her recently: "'I know a girl like you would never sleep with me. The only way I could get you would be to drug...