Word: yokosuka
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...even the loosest definition is the Prime Minister a true outsider. He was born into a political family. His grandfather Matajiro was a construction-crew boss with a full-body dragon tattoo. He lived in Yokosuka, a town on Tokyo Bay. Matajiro's florid oratory and populism won him numerous terms in Parliament. He had no sons, but a protege insinuated himself into the family by marrying the old man's daughter. That man was Junya, the father of Koizumi, and he succeeded Matajiro in Parliament. When he died, he left clear instructions for his eldest son: "Certain victory, Junichiro...
...read a note written in his father's script. In Japan, political inheritance is common: about a third of the seats in parliament are passed from one generation to the next. So Koizumi's election should have been a slam dunk. Instead, he suffered an embarrassing defeat in Yokosuka, his family's parliamentary district. "His political base was fragile, because a lot of new people were moving into the urban areas," says Naoki Tanaka, an economist who now heads a Prime Ministerial advisory panel. "And at first, his speeches were not very good. He was very...
...tight-knit core of advisers who would guide him for three decades was already in place, led by his elder sister, Nobuko, who ran his Diet office; his younger brother, Masaya, who runs his Yokosuka home office; and Iijima, the political operative who takes care of his media and campaign strategies. What Koizumi lacked was the vital player in every politician's entourage: there was no Mrs. Koizumi. In 1977, the inner circle presented him with dozens of photos of potential spouses, which he stacked high on his parliamentary office desk. The one that caught...
...biggest draws, especially for Japanese women, are the real, live Americans. Amejo is Okinawan slang for girls who love Americans, but they can be found anywhere in Japan where Americans hang out, sipping beers in the bars around the Naval base at Yokosuka, dancing in clubs in Tokyo's Roppongi district. Ground Zero for the amejo and their subcultural peers, the kokujo, though, is Okinawa...
...Japanese aircraft carriers and battleships were idiosyncratic, unique, individually laid down in Yokosuka and Shikoku shipyards and fitted with quirky characteristics. Superstructures set too far aft. Smokestacks emanating from the ship's hull. These were the vessels that captured my imagination. For one thing, these ships were all at the bottom of the Pacific, heroically overwhelmed, it seemed to me, by the sheer numbers of nondescript American ships. And the Tamiya Waterline models, with their jeweler's attention to detail and scholar's obsessive historical accuracy, somehow evoked the mystery of these lost ships. The kits didn't bring...