Word: koizumi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...style: no tie, no jacket, no buttoning up. Dubbed "Cool Biz" (kuuru bizu), the new casual has officials and executives shedding their signature suits a la Clark Kent this summer and raising office thermostats 5°F, to a wilting 82.4°. Aptly dressed in casual clothes, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi hopes to save the second largest importer of oil 81 million gal. each summer. But the policy already has many conscripted conservationists sweating in their seats. "Like samurais giving up topknots and swords, it requires a change in mentality for salarymen to abandon suits and ties--it's their identity...
...That attitude has conservationists rallying to save the whales all over again. Australian Prime Minister John Howard last month sent a plea directly to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, though it had little effect. Australian newspapers have run story after fevered story on the barbarity of Japanese whaling. "People feel a lot of empathy toward them here," says Beynon of HSI, which unsuccessfully sued to stop Japanese whaling in Antarctic waters claimed by Australia. (It's appealing the decision.) Though Japanese fishing officials say more common whale species should be managed like any other marine resource, environmental groups argue that...
...think it is the holy souls enshrined at Yasukuni that are experiencing the saddest feelings by seeing this kind of situation." RYUTARO HASHIMOTO, former Prime Minister of Japan, who along with four other former leaders last week denounced Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's continued visits to the controversial war shrine...
...flap start? Japanese leaders have made private pilgrimages to Yasukuni without causing a fuss, but in 1985, Yasuhiro Nakasone became the first Prime Minister to visit the shrine in an official capacity, prompting outcry from other Asian nations. his successors avoided official visits for the next 16 years, until Koizumi came to power promising to resume them?which he has done, visiting the shrine each year since 2001. China, along with other Asian countries invaded during World War II, insists that for Japan's leader to visit a shrine where the war's masterminds are worshipped as gods...
...What happens now? In the interest of harmony, China and Japan have begun to tone down their disparaging comments. And there are some calls in Japan's ruling coalition to start from scratch with a new memorial. Meanwhile, Koizumi hasn't visited the shrine yet this year?but insists that regardless of whether or not he does, it will be a domestic issue...