Word: seppuku
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...factual. But it is the character of Okura, a Japanese officer steeped in samurai values, that gives the novel real soul. Alisjahbana hits a rich seam of tragedy in Okura's battle to reconcile defeat with honor. Only by rejecting the samurai tradition of seppuku, or ritual suicide, can Okura see a future in his shattered country. Dearest to Alisjahbana's heart, of course, is Indonesia's independence, declared in the language he codified. But his depiction of Okura - as a metaphor for Japan's rebirth in a new, humanist world - is evidence of a magnanimous and rare sensibility among...
...sadomasochism and homoeroticism - have become iconic, and sprang[an error occurred while processing this directive] from an artistic interest the two men shared in the grand themes of beauty and decay, love and hatred, life and death. But while Mishima became obsessed with the latter (famously committing seppuku in 1970), Hosoe was able to tame his darker promptings and channel his creativity toward life-affirming ends. He found satisfaction in teaching - becoming a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Polytechnics in 1975 - while perfecting a photographic style characterized by consummate control of light and shadow. Themes as diverse...
...proven to be a political equal of the LDP. It has consistently missed opportunities, failed to define a coherent message, staked its reputation on trivial issues and repeatedly imploded amid avoidable public embarrassments. Seiji Maehara, 43, whom Ozawa now succeeds, was the most recent casualty. He committed political seppuku when a scandalous e-mail introduced by a DPJ member purporting to prove an LDP member's corruption turned out to be fake...
...artist embodied the tortured contradictions of contemporary Japan as completely as Mishima, the homosexual who worried about Japan's effeminate image, the sickly aesthete who turned himself into a modern-day samurai and in 1970 finally committed seppuku, the ancient samurai ritual suicide, after failing to inspire a coup d'Etat. Mishima was thoroughly steeped in the traditions of Western literature - his early work shows the imprint of Oscar Wilde and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion is wholly Dostoyevskian - but he was obsessed with the notion of purifying the national character and returning Japan to its pre-Meiji...
...overcome their past tendencies toward spectacular acts of self-destruction. The party's smart money last year settled on George W. Bush precisely because he was thought immune to the party's traditional suicidal impulses, to "extremism in the defense of liberty," as Goldwater called it, and to ideological seppuku as practiced by Newt. Bush may yet prove tougher, smarter and foxier than some previous Republicans...