Word: shirakawa
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...agreeing to liberalize agricultural imports, the party angered farmers, long the chief pillar of its support. The final straw came just weeks after Uno was named Prime Minister, when his supposedly spotless reputation was soiled by revelations of a paid affair with a geisha. "Along the way," says Katsuhiko Shirakawa, an L.D.P. legislator, "we lost sight of what the public was demanding...
...Socialists force elections in the parliament's lower house before next year, as they hope to do, there is also the remote possibility that for the first time in party history, the L.D.P. will be banished to the back benches. To avert that prospect, warns L.D.P. legislator Shirakawa, "we need to find the reasons for our losses and then show the people that we have corrected them." That is a tall order to fill, and the L.D.P. has no time to lose...
...hill village of Shirakawa, Hikosaku Matsumoto, 62, is called "Hyakkan Jii San"-100-kan oldster-because of his boast that he can lift 100 kan (825 Ibs.). His undisciplined white beard and scholarly bald dome make him look more like an elderly monk than an athlete. His nickname delights him so much that, after the manner of Tony Galento's boxing trunks, he has "Hyakkan" written in Chinese characters down the front of his athletic blouse...
Last summer Matsumoto again proved he was worthy of his nickname by climbing 12,395-ft. Mt. Fuji carrying a heavy stone on his back. Next he ran 56 miles from Shirakawa to Fukushima. Last week he topped all previous feats by trotting nonstop from his hometown to Tokyo's Ueno Station. The distance": 117 miles, five times the historic run from Marathon to Athens. The time: 29 hours...
...munching rice balls which he had arranged to have tied to convenient roadside trees the day before. A younger, less durable friend followed on a bicycle, but Matsumoto breezed into Tokyo with enough wind left to tell startled bystanders about his run. He also wheezed a challenge: at a Shirakawa shrine festival he would lift a 70-kan (579-lb.) stone, would give a prize of ten yen (65?) to anyone who could lift more. Sneered Matsumoto: "Youngsters these days are too soft...