Word: kumamoto
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...born Chizuo Matsumoto in 1955 on Kyushu, one of Japan's main islands, just south of Honshu. At birth he was sightless in one eye and purblind in the other, so his father, a craftsman who made tatamis (straw mats), sent him at age six to the city of Kumamoto, where he could attend a subsidized school for the blind. There a child with any sight at all had a great advantage. A former teacher said, "Being able to see even a little is prestigious because blind children want to go out and have coffee in a tearoom...
Following graduation, he set up shop as an acupuncturist-first in Kumamoto, then Tokyo and finally in a rented room in Funabashi. He married a college student, Tomoko Ishii, in 1978, then opened an apothecary specializing in traditional Chinese medicaments. A turning point in his life appears to have occurred in 1982, when he was arrested for selling fake cures. Authorities detained him for 20 days and fined him 200,000 yen--about $800 at that time. The business went bankrupt, and Asahara was reputedly shattered by the incident. Out of shame at what neighbors thought, for some time afterward...
...carrying a picture of an Indian saint, he went berserk and said I should not respect anyone but him." In this way, perhaps Asahara's early life was a foreshadowing of what would come later. "When I look at the way Aum operates," a onetime classmate in Kumamoto said, "I think Matsumoto is trying to create a closed society like the school for the blind he went to. He is trying to create a society separate from ordinary society in which he can become king of the castle...
...suspect loan, worth $960,000, came from the Sagawa Kyubin trucking company. Hosokawa claims that he repaid the money, but critics say he kept it to fund his campaign to become governor of Kumamoto prefecture the following year. When pressed, the Prime Minister first asserted that he used the cash to purchase an apartment in Tokyo and to repair the roofed gate and plaster wall of an ancestral home. Opposition legislators charge that he bought the apartment before he received the loan. They tracked down the construction workers and determined that they charged only $67,000 for the repair...
Popularity may be the most extreme thing about the unassuming former governor of southern Kumamoto prefecture, who has become Japan's most admired Prime Minister ever. The first thing Japanese seem to like is his aristocratic lineage, which dates back 18 generations. The Hosokawa clan ruled southwestern Japan from the 16th to the mid-19th century and produced important historical figures, including the father and son Yusai (1534-1610) and Tadaoki (1563-1646), who prospered under all three military rulers who unified Japan. The new Prime Minister "makes people feel history," says essayist Yoshimi Ishikawa. "Everyone can participate in discussions...