Word: samurais
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BORN. To Toshiro Mifune, 62, ruggedly handsome film actor often referred to as the John Wayne of Japan (Rashomon, 1950; The Seven Samurai, 1954; and the TV movie Shōgun, 1980); and Mika Kitagawa, 33, his longtime girlfriend and sometime movie actress: his third child, her first (he is still married to his first wife); a girl; in Tokyo. Name: Mika...
...sister, as well as his brother, killed themselves in the face of deteriorating health. After five operations this year to stave off leg amputations from diabetes-induced circulatory problems, Leicester shot himself in the head. Two decades earlier he wrote of his brother's suicide: "Like a samurai who felt dishonored by the word or deed of another, Ernest felt his own body had betrayed...
Only at the climax does Frankenheimer build something durable out of the mayhem: a metaphorical bridge between old and new Japan, between the integrity of the samurai and the ingenuity of the technocrat. The warlord's fortress is an executive suite; the watchtowers are electronic eyes; hero and villain cross swords over a photocopier, wrestle on sleek chairs and desks, almost electrocute each other with a computer's exposed wires. The final blow, be warned, is a vertical slice through the bad guy's cranium. One wonders how many members of the audience will stay around...
...ranking institution is an almost irreversible disaster. The thousands of students who do not get accepted at the one university of their choice spend a year, sometimes even two, in cram schools preparing to try again. These crammers are called ronin, a word used to describe the masterless, wandering samurai of the 17th and 18th centuries. The ultimate measure of success: acceptance by the 14,000-student Tokyo University (Todai), for which final qualifying exams took place last week. Since all the national universities have a single standard exam, academic security is taken very seriously. Says Todai Physics Professor Steve...
...time of our best season ever, the future looks just horrible," groans PBS President Larry Grossman. Samurai budgeteers have already cut the original 1983 federal appropriation from $172 million to $137 million, and by 1985 that figure is expected to dwindle to $85 million. Bruce Christensen, president of the National Association of Public Television Stations, is worried about the network's toughing out even the first cut. "No industry can lose 25% of its funds and continue to operate at the same level," he says. This means fewer funds to produce or import expensive programs like Brideshead Revisited, Life...