AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to over 30 million articles from top publications available through your library.
Create a link to this page
Copy and paste this link tag into your Web page or blog:
Ritual was meant to command the day. Japan's newly appointed Land, Infrastructure and Transport minister, 46-year-old Nobuteru Ishihara, stood in his office last Thursday afternoon as some 60 public- corporation chiefs entered, one after another, to intone the formal salutation, Yoroshiku-onegaishimasu. The script called for mutual bowing and a quick exit; in and out in 30 seconds for each gray-suited man in line. Yet with Haruho Fujii, president of the quasi-governmental Japan Highway Public Corp., the young minister broke protocol briefly to discuss pressing business. "We have to talk," Ishihara told the veteran company boss, who turns 67 this week. "I want to hear your ...