Word: kawaguchi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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During a thundershower of biblical proportions, hundreds of people dash from a train station in the Tokyo suburb of Kawaguchi, across a bricked plaza and into a modern civic center. Inside, there are English lessons on the 11th floor, "welcome to kabuki world" on the first floor, a seminar on working at home on the sixth floor. It's a busy night for the self-improvement crowd. But the main attraction on this Tuesday night in late June is holding forth in the auditorium. There, more than 2,000 people have gathered to see a man whom they believe possesses...
...still exists, but another movement has eclipsed it. Asai's Nichiren Kenshokai sect, which drew throngs to the Kawaguchi civic center, claims to have 881,865 followers. "Kenshokai is the biggest of the new religions," says Taro Takimoto, a lawyer who helped in 1995 to organize a group comprising family members trying to rescue relatives from cults. "There are many high school students quitting school, people quitting their jobs, to join Kenshokai." Kenshokai's nationalistic appeal is particularly popular among young men, including members of Japan's Self-Defense Force. The cult claims to have attracted 11,000 new adherents...
...many people flock to see Shoei Asai in Kawaguchi that dozens of latecomers must wait outside in the lobby because there isn't room for them in the auditorium. Black-suited men with walkie-talkies and earplugs roam through the crowd, reminding people to turn off their cell phones. Two of these guards, surprised to see a foreign visitor, stop me from entering before another explains that I was invited. It's the first time a journalist has been allowed to witness a Nichiren Kenshokai meeting...
...Atal Behari Vajpayee rejected calls by Pakistan for new talks. JAPAN Cabinet Kerfuffle Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi scrambled to replace Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka after impetuously sacking her and her deputy following parliamentary squabbles. When former unhcr chief Sadako Ogata turned down the post, Koizumi appointed Environment Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi after temporarily holding the portfolio himself. The Prime Minister?s approval rating plummeted during the crisis. MIDDLE EAST New Challenges For Israelis Thousands of Palestinians attended a symbolic funeral for Wafa Idris, the first woman suicide bomber to strike against Israel. An Israeli man also died in the Jerusalem blast...
These days going to Tokyo Disneyland is the closest thing to going abroad. So many Japanese abandoned their overseas travel plans to visit the amusement complex instead that attendance for the fiscal year ending Oct. 1 showed a jump of 16%. Takayuki Kawaguchi, 31, and his wife Hanako, 30, should have been spending a late-autumn weekend in Australia where the finance company he works for had planned to celebrate its 10th anniversary. After the U.S. attacks, the company canceled the trip. So Kawaguchi was making it up to his disappointed wife, an events M.C., and their two toddlers with...