Word: samurais
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...luxury of fiction allowed Mishima the license of idealization difficult to discover in his actual self-destruction. His fictional suicide is Isao lunuma, a right-wing student with an obsessional love of Samurai tradition and a hatred for the 20th century's destruction of imperial values. lunuma enjoys an almost erotic anticipation of the moment when he will solemnly disembowel himself for the Emperor. In the 1930s, he assembles a group of similarly obsessed conspirators to plot the assassinations of Japan's leading industrialists, hoping to precipitate a general uprising against the corruption of Japan's ancient...
...When the samurai hordes poured across the Sea of Japan into Korea almost four centuries ago, a legendary Korean kisaeng (courtesan) named Gae Non vowed to kill the invaders' leading general. She toasted her prey at an outdoor party, then bound herself to him with a sash as a token of eternal love. A moment later, so the story goes, she plunged into a nearby ravine, dragging the general with her to death and fulfilling her vow. In Seoul these days, the kisaeng response to a new and different kind of Japanese invasion is a lot more affectionate...
FISTS OF FURY is such a shambles that Five Fingers of Death, the other Chinese battle hymn to Kung Fu that is currently cleaning up in the U.S. (TIME, May 14), looks by comparison like The Seven Samurai. The fights, which are plentiful but somehow lackadaisical, are all generated by the disappearance of several brothers who work down at the icehouse, where envelopes of white powder are frozen in the middle of each cake. Pressed to explain this, the plant manager says guilelessly: "There's no profit in ice. In dope, plenty." The hero, Bruce Lee, may be furious...
...unique kind of company in the country's spectacular economic rise. Because most Japanese manufacturers concentrate solely on production, they rely on trading houses to buy abroad the raw materials that they need and to sell their finished products both at home and abroad. Combining silken persuasiveness with samurai dedication, the trading houses also serve as market researchers, financiers and worldwide economic intelligence agents. In short, they are archetypical middlemen, helping Japanese business, banks and government to capitalize on economic opportunities...
...fictitious entertainment. "I have done it whenever I needed a stiff drink for myself and my staff after a long spell of hard work," admits Toshimichi Natsume, a former Fuji Film Co. executive. "Then a few days later the friend would call back to reciprocate. As the saying goes, samurai must always sympathize with each other." The next step, as many an American could counsel the Japanese, is to use a friend's name without bothering...