Word: tokyo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Japan's political process is oiled in a number of ways. Besides the $128 million in political donations publicly reported last year, there has been a recent boom in so-called "political" stocks on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Thus an obscure stock can be grossly inflated in value while a candidate-tipped off in advance-makes a killing, with no capital gains tax to pay. Occasionally candidates have been known to obtain large loans from banks in the hope that after the election, business friends will "volunteer" to pay the money back...
...cash is needed not for television coverage, which is free, but for more or less openly buying delegate votes. Already the lavish wooing of the 478 delegates voting in next week's election is being conducted in the expensive geisha restaurants of Tokyo's Akasaka district. According to widely circulated rumors, a delegate can receive $1,500 for merely attending one of these persuasion sessions. If he promises his support, the reward can jump to as high as $15,000 for an ordinary delegate and $30,000 for the leader of a faction. In some cases, the faction...
...loudest complaints are coming from farmers. Fuki Moki, 48, whose ancestral patch of land lies near Mount Takago Natural Monkey Park south of Tokyo, says that the macaques wreak havoc in his onions and beans. "They also tear up my mushrooms and throw them around just for the hell of it -without even trying to eat them." Moki's next-door neighbor, Haruji Kenmoto, 65, estimates that engai damage cost him $6,000 last year. "Sometimes they even come indoors and bare their teeth at the children," he says. "It scares the daylights out of them." One macaque climbed...
...accomplishments of bureaucracy affect individuals in wondrous ways -and nowhere more so than in Japan. Consider the case of Herbert Freidman, an American businessman living in Japan. One day last month, he climbed aboard a plane at Tokyo airport and flew off to Okinawa, dutifully surrendering to a customs agent the alien-registration card he carries. His passport was stamped to show that Freidman was leaving the country. According to procedure, his passport would be stamped again when he returned to Tokyo, and he would be issued a new alien-registration card...
...only problem was that during the week that Freidman spent on Okinawa, that island reverted from U.S. occupation to Japanese possession. Thus it was a domestic flight on which he returned to Tokyo. Since he was merely traveling from one Japanese island to another, no customs man would stamp his passport, and since his passport was not marked, no one would issue him a new alien-registration card...