Word: yamato
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...swinging a sledgehammer at a Toyota in Blytheville, Ark. Situated in one of the most impoverished sections of the U.S., the Mississippi River town (pop. 24,000) has outdone itself trying to make Japanese business people feel welcome. In 1985, when Blytheville first learned that the Japanese steel firm Yamato Kogyo and North Carolina-based Nucor were looking for a 500-acre site to build a jointly owned mill, the townspeople rallied to action. The school system agreed to add extra English classes and hire special tutors. The Cotton Boll Vocational and Technical School promised low-cost training to help...
...Arkansans kept up their wooing even after the bride was won. Once Nucor and Yamato picked Blytheville for the $230 million mill, the town chose eight civic leaders to travel to Japan at public expense to see what more could be done. Shortly after ground was broken for the plant in 1987, tempura and stir- fried dishes were on the menu at the Holiday Inn and townspeople were flocking to seminars on Japanese culture and business...
...image, however distorted, apparently has wide appeal. Kazuhiro Nakajima, a spokesman for Yamato Mannequin, says his company began manufacturing black mannequins and arranged them in dancing poses after a study found that the design expressed "new sexiness, kawaii ((cuteness)) and fresh energy." Yamato made 100 of the figures before the Foreign Ministry called the firm's attention to a critical article about the mannequins in the Washington Post. The company stopped production. Sanrio Co., the manufacturer of a well-selling line of toys and gift items, followed suit. Its products included large-eyed dolls called Sambo and Hannah, and towels...
Preoccupation with exams leads the Japanese to emphasize memorization rather than analytical thinking. The pedagogy is simple: the teacher talks, the students listen. Says Taeko Yamato, an English instructor at a private school outside Tokyo: "The school system doesn't let teachers teach well." Admits Twelfth-Grader Ayutaro Kogure: "For the tests you only memorize, which you forget as soon as the exams are over." Some students are beginning to take an uncharacteristically disrespectful course: open rebellion. Youthful crime has jumped 12.4% in the past year, with juveniles accounting for almost half of all criminal offenders in Japan. Violence...
Commissions for Giugiaro now seem to come in faster than the awards Ital Design keeps winning. They include a new electric razor for N.V. Philips of Holland, a television set for Saba of Germany, an electronic scale for Yamato Scale Co. of Japan and the interior for a personal helicopter for the President of Italy...