Word: nankin
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...overnight millionaires, a self-congratulatory middle-class with money and power was suddenly thrown among the feudal remnants of pre-War Japan. Its members invested in stucco villas and saxophones, art works and sex novels, phonographs, geisha girls and the best Scotch whiskey and earned the contemptuous nickname of nankin (chess pawns promoted by crossing the board). The fantasy lasted until 1923 when a 52 billion yen earthquake jolted Japan and proved a forerunner of Depression. Even today most moneyed Japanese are regarded by the Army and patriotic zealots (see below) as tainted with profiteering, and Japanese morals have never...
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