Word: waing
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President Mobutu has been asked to speak on the subject of peace in Southern Africa because he has been a voice of reason in a region of instability for over twenty years. Muchobekwa Kalimba wa Katana Ambassador of the Republic of Zaire
Mobuto Sese Seko Nkuku wa za Banga (just plain Mobuto to his friends)--a man who tortures students for complaining about inflation, a man who throws loyal government ministers in prison for sneezing improperly, a man who likes to watch a good hanging now and then--will speak Thursday at Harvard's very own Institute of Politics on the subject, "Peace and Progress in Southern Africa...
...after twelve innings -- the Japanese play baseball by American rules. It's been that way since 1873, when the game was introduced in Japan and soon became the national obsession as well as the national sport. Yet as journalist Robert Whiting notes in his new book You Gotta Have Wa (Macmillan), the style and, most important, the mind- set of baseball in Japan differ dramatically from those in America. Japan and the U.S., concludes Whiting, are two countries separated by a common sport...
...Japanese managers are ironhanded disciplinarians who believe that great players are made, not born, and they try to reshape the foreign players into the Japanese mold. The Americans, intense individualists that they are, rebel. The Japanese conclude that the Americans are rude, lazy, and worse, lacking in the sacrosanct wa, the sense of team spirit that obliges the Japanese to subordinate everything else in life to the interest of the team...
Randy Bass was one of the most successful foreigners to play in Japan, but his lack of wa nonetheless did him in. A towering left-handed batter who once played for the San Diego Padres, Bass hit 54 homers for the Hanshin Tigers in 1985, and that year helped his team win the Japan Series. Then in May 1988, the idolized Bass left Japan to be with his son, who was undergoing brain surgery in the U.S. The team slumped, and Bass's absence offended many Japanese; they could not forgive him. The Tigers cut him and then quibbled over...