Word: rice
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...changing hands rose by 30% during the week and the closing average price of 225 stocks hit $1.71, highest since the market reopened in 1949. Reasons: Premier Kishi's recent election victory, a cut in the central bank rate to 7.67%, and Japan's third consecutive bumper rice crop. ¶ On London's Threadneeue Street, where stocks have bounced back 30% since the low point last February, industrial prices rose to a new 1958 high every day in the week. The London Financial Times's index stood at 205.4, only 7.9 points below the alltime high...
Despite Typhoon Ida's depredations, Japan's rice farmers were counting their blessings last week. By the time Ida struck, the vast bulk of Japan's rice had already been harvested, and peasant pockets were ajingle with the proceeds of the nation's fourth bumper crop (400 million bushels) in as many years...
Imposed Blessing. For centuries the inhabitants of Ichijo, like the vast majority of Japanese peasants, have lived in tiny wood-and-wattle cottages heated only by a fire pit sunk in the earthen floor. In years when the rice crop was good, Ichijo's farmers eked out a bare existence. When the crop failed, they sold their daughters to the city brothels. Steeped in this tradition, one of Ichijo's wrinkled, kimono-clad elders reflected with horror last week on Mrs. Sato's latest acquisition. "Indecent extravagance," he moaned...
...Supreme Symbol. The pervasive odor of human manure, the characteristic fragrance of Japan a decade ago, has all but disappeared. Today's farmers buy chemical fertilizers instead. In rice-rich Ichijo. almost all farmhouses now have tiled kitchens, running water and-as a supreme mark of gentility-neat, outdoor privies with trim red pillars...
Matsushita himself came up by frugality and work that was hard even by Japanese standards. Born in Osaka, son of a merchant who lost his kimono selling rice, Konosuke quit school in the fourth grade to go to work in a bicycle shop. At 17 he saw the electric streetcars come in. concluded the future lay in electricity, got a job with the Osaka Electric Light Co. His lack of education blocked promotion, so he saved and borrowed $98 to open a factory in his home...