Word: kabuki
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Paris' Grand Palais. "Images du Monde Flottant" (Images of the Floating World), which runs until Jan. 3, brings together more than 200 screens, scrolls and prints from Japan, the U.S., Britain, Germany and, especially, Paris' famed Mus?e Guimet. And what a world it was?a paradise of courtesans and Kabuki stars, teahouses and "green houses," where courtesans entertained their customers. All of it was tolerated, though watched closely, by the shogunate. Originally the term "floating world," or ukiyo, referred to the Buddhist notion that the everyday grind of travail and tears is ephemeral. Yet the proprietors and patrons...
Corporate mergers in Japan are usually less than scintillating, proceeding as predictably as a Kabuki play. Executives of two companies?one strong, the other in dire financial straits?typically retreat behind closed doors to broker a deal, usually with little input from shareholders but plenty from the government. All too frequently, these secretive, stage-managed bailouts put a priority not on maximizing profits, increasing shareholder value or reforming busted business models but on preserving jobs (especially those of the managers themselves), promoting "stability" and maintaining the status...
...often turn out to be, it's likely to yield some fortuitous by-products: the disappearance of both Japan's worst basket-case bank and its most notorious corporate zombie. It also sets a strong precedent for increasingly open, shareholder-oriented corporate takeovers. By deviating so spectacularly from the Kabuki script that has governed corporate mergers for decades, the heads of Japan's largest banks are finally upholding a truism that theater and capitalism seem to share: the end of a drama is more satisfying when no one knows the outcome in advance...
...cathedral of St. Francis Xavier, where couples can still get married. Every building, from old post offices to police posts, butcher shops to banks, is fronted with an English-language plaque explaining its history. Within, dioramas depict life in the Meiji era (1867-1912). Many displays are interactive: a Kabuki troupe performs in the Kureha-za Theater, while an antique Kyoto streetcar runs to sake tastings at the city's former Nakai Brewery...
...Human Comedy." She was a smash as an amnesiac chanteuse in the off-Broadway "Song of Singapore," as the obsessive jilted lover in Stephen Sondheim's "Passion" and as a dark-hued Anna in the 1996 Broadway revival of "The King and I." Here she uses her kabuki face to all manner of deadpan delight, then goes into giddy spasms in the dance numbers. She's Buster Keaton in repose, Diane Keaton in motion. Her and the show's peak moment comes when she reluctantly teaches the conga to six randy sailors from the Brazilian Navy. The number, which...