Word: obara
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...Obara's Den'en Chofu mansion that the shabby decadence of his post-bubble lifestyle comes into stark focus. The mod 1960s design rises up behind a gated drive, with surveillance cameras poking out from bushes. At the height of the bubble it was worth more than $25 million. Liens were filed against this property when his firm went bust in the early 1990s. Obara continued to frequent the house up until his arrest, letting it slide, like some Dorian Gray portrait of Japan's national psyche, into a state of advanced decay, with rust flaking off the exterior ironwork...
...essence of post-bubble Japan, it is "failed real estate speculator." During the '80s and early '90s, real estate speculation had been the frothy center of Japan's double-espresso economy, with developers and brokers becoming that era's version of the more recent dotcom billionaires. Speculators like Joji Obara were the heroes of Japan's go-go era, driving their Bentleys and Rolls Royces, living in their mansions, dating their exotic blond girlfriends. This was the period, remember, when Japan was going to take over the world. Men like Joji Obara cast themselves as the Fibe Mini warriors...
...Obara's decline - his firm collapsed, his banks called in their loans - is also a parable for Japan's economic journey. And like most of his countrymen, the downturn didn't affect his lifestyle. His lavish habits continued; he kept his Ferrari, vintage red Rolls Royce Silver Cloud, his condominiums by the sea in Miura. Driving his Ferrari around Roppongi, he was a curious figure with his droopy mustache and surgically altered, Westernized eyes. At 1.7 m tall, he wore shoe lifts and took regular doses of human growth hormone under the mistaken belief it would make him taller...
...When police searched the home, they also found a real German shepherd frozen in a solid block in a large freezer next to a bouquet of roses and some dog food. Obara would later say he had preserved it with the hope that, one day, science would enable him to "reanimate my loving pet into a clone dog." Strange as it was, the dog fits a pattern Obara had of hoarding personal detritus. There were stacks of old car batteries, trashed TV sets, receipts, journals and personal tape recordings dating back to the 1970s. The biggest haul comprised more than...
...Joji Obara was born in 1952 to an impoverished Korean family in postwar Osaka. His father had been a scrap collector, then a taxi driver who worked his way into owning a fleet of cars and a string of pachinko parlors from which he amassed a fortune. Perhaps mindful of the discrimination faced by Koreans, when the young Obara - then known by his Korean name Kim - was asked to pen a farewell sentiment in his junior-high class yearbook, he wrote: "Upbringing is more important than family name...