Word: meiji
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...Japan's samurai era of the 17th century. In those days, the burakumin were social outcasts: the butchers, tanners and waste-handlers who fell to the bottom of the heap in a five-tier caste system. The archaic social structure went the way of the shoguns during Japan's Meiji transformation in the late 19th century. Yet the burakumin still exist on the fringes of this mostly homogenous society, and fight the age-old battles of discrimination. "It's still a taboo," says Hiroshi Kanto, organizer of a burakumin rights group in Kyoto. "It probably always will...
...mother, Saki Kitano, pushed her children hard. She wanted them all to study engineering in college, and Beat did, enrolling at the prestigious Meiji University before growing restless and dropping out. He drove taxicabs, worked in a strip joint and then decided to try his hand at comedy. "Takeshi, you are the son of a house painter," his brother admonished him. "You will never make it in entertainment." Beat just nodded when he heard this warning. He didn't say a word...
...after the violent recessions of the 1970s and early '80s. And the revolution was accomplished with the help of lavish federal deficits (which are only now being paid down), tax cuts and extensive, bottom-up restructuring that transformed dinosaurs like Ford into world-class competitors. Ever since the Meiji era, when the nation ended centuries of isolation, Japan has proved expert at adopting American ideas to its own revolutionary needs. In the eyes of investors, at least, that would suggest that the Nikkei may indeed be the next...
...time to close the postwar chapter. He argues that Japan's highly regulated society inhibits the cultivation of talent at home and friendship abroad that Japan needs if it is to thrive in the future. He calls for a "third opening," a change in Japan as momentous as the Meiji revolution, which opened the nation to the world...
UENO PARK, IN TOKYO, was ordained by the Meiji Emperor in the late 19th century as a public space in which Japanese could pay homage to ancient shrines and native traditions. Nowadays, it is a mess of illegal Iranian immigrants selling phony telephone cards and cocaine. The statue of Takamori Saigo, a Meiji-era samurai, is surrounded by junkies seeking out teriyaki (heroin) or shabu-shabu (crystal methamphetamine). Indeed, when Choco Bon- Bon, star of such Japanese porn classics as Tales of a Hard Banana, needs a fix, he goes shopping in Ueno and then goes home to the Hotel...