Word: samurai
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...recent evening, Japanese at their 14-inch TV screens watched breathlessly as a topknotted samurai disarmed his opponent after some ferocious swordplay. The cowering loser awaited the death thrust; instead, the victor tossed him a bottle of tranquilizer pills, shouted the manufacturer's name and advised: "If you took these regularly, you wouldn't get into such...
...hero is Joe Chapin (Gary Cooper), leading citizen of "Gibbsville," a small town in Pennsylvania, "a gentleman in a world that has no use for gentlemen." Decent, limited, middleaged, he is as set in his honorable ways as any samurai in his Bushido. and step by inevitable step the story describes how he is driven to commit what might be called O'Hara-kiri -he drinks himself to death...
Possessed by Vengeance. Author White invests each episode with the bladed tension of a poised samurai sword. Though the Japanese never appear, they lurk menacingly just behind the last hill. The major's men achieve grace or disgrace under pressure, but, unfortunately, they are etched in bas-relief-nearly flat characters caught in symbolic or merely arbitrary poses. The book is even shallower when it tries to be most profound, e.g., in suggesting that the major is the compulsive victim of his self-corrupting power when he goes on an irresponsible shooting spree to avenge the killing...
...Japanese seaside village of Kawana, hell-for-celluloid Director John Huston was about to shoot a panoramic movie scene encompassing some 350 fisherfolk extras, all decked out in elaborate 19th century samurai costumes, tunics, kimonos and big wigs. Suddenly a voice bellowed in Japanese over the village's loudspeaker: "Dolphins!" Departing radically from the script, the male extras quickly put to sea in Huston's rented sampans while the women took off their film kimonos and excitedly awaited the return of their men. Net catch for the inscrutable villagers: 270 dolphins worth $3,500 in the seafood market...
Early Career. Born in Yamaguchi Prefecture, 70 miles from Hiroshima, son of a poor sake manufacturer and an aristocratic mother (her father was a samurai) who demanded perfection. Nobusuke (meaning: defender of the trust) was a child prodigy at school, specialized in German law at Tokyo University, graduated at the top of his class (1920). With offers of teaching posts, he chose the civil service, joined the Agriculture and Commerce Ministry as a clerk, rose rapidly, toured (1926-27) in the U.S. and Europe studying the steel industry. Posted to Manchuria in 1937, he was a top economic czar...