Word: taro
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Pacific Rim, new tax and secrecy havens have multiplied on such remote islands as Nauru in the western Pacific and Palau and Truk in Micronesia. Citizens of Vanuatu, a volcanic archipelago of some 80 islands formerly known as the New Hebrides, have found that international finance beats coconut and taro farming. In Port Vila, the capital, it is not unusual for a $100 million transaction between major international banks to take place on any given...
...industry grows, hot lines are catering to increasingly specific audiences. Anglers in Ohio can call the 976-FISH line to find out what's biting. Superstitious residents of New York City can ring up the 976-TARO (short for tarot) to hear their fortunes, while nonsmokers can call 540- LUNG to find out about the latest tobacco-industry liability cases. Customers with Touch-Tone phones can program a wake-up service in which the customer will be greeted by a sultry recorded voice ("Time to wake up, tiger...
...course, King Lear. But wait. The great lord is called Hidetora, and he speaks in a tongue Will Shakespeare would not have recognized, inhabits a landscape unknown to the Bard, that of 16th century Japan. And Goneril, Regan and Cordelia are here men called Taro, Jiro and Saburo. We are obviously far from the place of this tragic tale's mythic birth and noble retelling, and we are far from the inert reverence of the typical movie adaptation of a classic. Indeed, in Ran (which means "chaos" in Japanese) we venture into a territory where the very word adaptation distorts...
...From above and beyond, we perceive him not as a great man falling but as a fragile, all too human stumbler. Distance lends an analogous irony to the scenes in which his older sons and their advisers--among them a hypnotic Kurosawa invention, Lady Kaede (Mieko Harada), wife of Taro, lover of Jiro and a woman demonically possessed by vengeful needs of her own--meet to scheme multiple betrayals. Their still, geometrically formal groupings imply the characters' deluded faith that they are engaged in rational enterprises, when, of course, they are sowing anarchy's seeds...
...Pacific Ring of Fire," vulnerable as always to earthquakes and typhoons, virtually unarmed, without any significant natural resources, dependent on the outside world for oil and food, the Japanese have a hard time seeing themselves as any kind of threat. "In our history of 2,000 years," says Taro Aso, a member of the Japanese parliament, "this is the first time that the Japanese have not had to worry about poverty. We are nouveau riche, a nation of farmers a short tune ago. It is difficult to accept international responsibilities when you have an inferiority complex...