Word: tokyo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...notable byproduct of Japan's swift rise to economic superpower status is a mildly bizarre cult of the price tag. Some of the best customers of art galleries on Madison Avenue and the Faubourg St. Honoré these days are dealers from Tokyo or Osaka, their pockets stuffed with yen, who are willing to pay astronomical sums for French impressionist paintings. Japanese buyers are equally conspicuous at the yearling auctions in Saratoga and Deauville, bidding handsomely for the best thoroughbreds. In fact, the Japanese seem to have supplanted the stereotype Texans as the world's most eager status...
...shrewdly exploited his compatriots' fixation on expensive luxuries is Keishiro Funakoshi, proprietor of the Akaneya Coffee Shop in scenic Karuizawa, a popular mountain resort 100 miles northwest of Tokyo. There, for 9,900 yen (roughly $38), he serves what must surely be the world's most expensive cup of coffee. Funakoshi readily concedes that it is not so much the quality of his coffee (a home-blended brew of charcoal-roasted grains freshly ground for each customer) or the decor of his establishment (a narrow, dark wooden hut decorated in rustic Mingei style), as the defiantly exorbitant prices...
...slow-motion freaks do not fare any better. Japan's Kon Ichikawa, who all by himself made a better Olympics film about the 1964 Tokyo Games, uses slow motion to record the 100-meter dash. Although it is fascinating to see some of the world's fastest humans running in place for a few minutes, it is finally frustrating not to see the essence of their thing, which is a blur. Arthur Penn has some extremely pretty pictures of pole vaulters slowly soaring, but when he cuts a lot of vaults together to form a sort of aerial...
...deluxe articles, and we feel that Motorola's big sets are perfect for the situation," says Tadahiko Sasaki, AIWA's sales promotion chief. Motorola, with its long head start on production, could undersell its rivals on their home ground. Transportation costs and Japanese taxes will raise the Tokyo price of Motorola Quasars to a range of $750 to $1,250, or 25% more than they cost in the U.S.-but that will still be below the introductory prices of $1,750 to $1,800 expected on Sony and Matsushita big-screen color...
...thirsty for investments, the Japanese had an excess of foreign currency built up by their booming export trade. Over the years Japanese have edged out Americans as Korea's No. 1 investor, with more than $326 million in private investments. Then came the mysterious kidnaping last month in Tokyo of South Korean Opposition Leader Dae Jung Kim. Although Kim was released in Seoul five days after being abducted, many Japanese are convinced that South Korean President Chung Hee Park's CIA masterminded and carried out the bizarre plot in violation of Japanese sovereignty. Now Japanese Premier Kakuei Tanaka...