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Junnosuke Ofusa (1908-1994) was the first journalist ever to receive Japan's Order of the Sacred Treasure. He was presented with the Fourth Class Order of the Sacred Treasure in a ceremony at the Foreign Ministry for "the service he has rendered in promoting friendly relations between Japan and the United States for many years." Emperor Hirohito later received Mr. Ofusa at the Imperial Palace.^[1]

Ofusa managed the Tokyo Bureau of The New York Times for nearly six decades.^[2]

Mr. Ofusa suffered a heart attack, said his son, Nobuo Ofusa.

He was hired in 1930 by the first bureau chief for The Times in Tokyo, Hugh Byas. The Japanese Government, which in prewar days suspected Mr. Ofusa was a spy, later honored him. A Reporter and Interpreter

He worked with more than 20 bureau chiefs and correspondents assigned to Tokyo, acting as reporter, interpreter and fixer.

"He was a lovely man whose devotion and courage on behalf of The New York Times were an inspiration," said Arthur O. Sulzberger, the chairman and chief executive officer of The New York Times Company.

When the Japanese authorities decided that Mr. Byas, who was British, was a spy, Mr. Ofusa said that he, not Mr. Byas, had collected statistics about Japan's industrial output, then a military secret, and the officer interrogating him backed down.

The next bureau chief, Otto D. Tolischus, was arrested on the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. For months Mr. Ofusa took food and clothes to Mr. Tolischus in prison, until he was sent to the United States in a prisoner exchange.

When the American occupation army swept into Tokyo in 1945, Mr. Ofusa greeted the arriving correspondent, Lindesay M. Parrott, with a smile, saying: "I did my best to defeat your country. But now the war is over."

Mr. Ofusa became a well-known figure in journalistic circles, with entree to political and business leaders.

After his formal retirement in 1987, he held the post of senior adviser to The Times's Tokyo bureau.

Mr. Ofusa is survived by his wife, Tama, his son, two daughters and seven grandchildren

---above here is obit ---below here is article about award of Order of Sacred Treasure Mr. Ofusa began his career with The Times in 1930 as an assistant to its first Tokyo bureau chief, Hugh Byas.

During the tense days before the outbreak of World War II, Mr. Ofusa discovered that the Japanese secret police suspected that Mr. Byas was a spy. Risking his life, Mr. Ofusa told the police they should arrest him because he had provided Mr. Byas with information for the articles the police believed to be treasonous. Neither man was arrested.

In an interview after he received the honor, Ofusa explained:

"I have worked hard for the maintenance of United States-Japanese relations throughout my life. Before the war, when relations were strained, I defended Mr. Byas, and When the war broke out, I did everything I could as a Japanese subject for my country. But never did I dream that I, as an employee of The New York Times and a working journalist, would have a great honor bestowed upon me by His Majesty the Emperor."^[1]

[1]

---article about 50th anniversary with NYT ^[3]

The New York Times honored Junnosuke Ofusa here today for 50 years of service to the newspaper. A.M. Rosenthal, the executive editor of The Times, and his wife, Ann, were the hosts at a reception at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan for Mr. Ofusa. The reception was attended by 150 guests, including Ambassador Mike Mansfield.

Mr. Rosenthal presented the 73-year-old Mr. Ofusa, who is the office manager of the Tokyo Bureau of The Times, with an engraved silver plaque and a gift of Times stock from A.O. Sulzberger, the publisher.

Ofusa-san has seen the arrival and departure of more than 50 New York Times correspondents in the half century since he joined our newspaper when we opened a Tokyo bureau in 1930, the inscription on the plaque read in part.

This 50-year anniversary party is the greatest event of my life, the slight, graying Mr. Ofusa said in a speech accepting the gifts.

Among the guests attending the reception were Ryugen Hosokawa, Japan's leading television commentator and an old friend of Mr. Ofusa, and Junichi Ueno, a major stockholder and owner of the mass circulation Asahi newspaper.

Seiki Watanabe, president of the Asahi, and Junzo Onoki, president of the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association, were represented by senior officials and board members. Numerous highranking Foreign Ministry officials were present.

The reception was a rare commemoration of service by a Japanese employee of a foreign company in Japan. It was believed to be the only such event ever held here by a foreign news organization.

Now for the next half century, said Mr. Rosenthal. Mr. Ofusa continues in his post as officer manager of the Tokyo Bureau.

--Pearl Harbor remembered ^[4]

On Friday night, for example, viewers tuned into a vivid drama called "Defeat in Showa 16," a title suggesting that Japan lost the war as soon as it began in 1941. The Japanese calendar begins anew with the ascension of each new emperor, and 1941 was the 16th year of the Showa era, Emperor Hirohito's reign. Shouting at the War Institute

Many historians and older Japanese say that the spirit of such dramas is accurate.

"Everyone knew that relations were at a critical position, even though there was no indication war would be coming so soon," said Junnosuke Ofusa, who joined The New York Times bureau in Tokyo in 1930 and helped guide the newspaper's coverage of Japan for the next five decades. Mr. Ofusa, who retired several years ago, said that "no one said outwardly that it was a bad idea, because the military police were everywhere. But the Japanese people knew there was little chance of winning the war."

At the same time, some Japanese bridle at placing all of the blame on the military, because the argument is often used to absolve the rest of the country. ---anecdote from Ofusa about 1947 ^[5] ON Oct. 14, 1947, fortunes of unimaginable size were won and lost in Japan. That was the day Japan's landholders -- princes and descendants of the samurai, small landlords and the giant zaibatsu conglomerates -- were forced to pay a huge wealth tax that Gen. Douglas MacArthur had imposed in hopes of turning occupied Japan into a more egalitarian society.

The days leading up to the deadline were a time of great chaos, enormous opportunity and spectacularly bad business decisions, as landholders raced to dump their properties. Junnosuke Ofusa, who was the office manager of The New York Times's Tokyo bureau for five decades, loved to tell the story of sending a cable to the paper's foreign desk in New York seeking permission to buy, for a pittance, a huge office block in the middle of the Ginza in downtown Tokyo. Now, of course, that is among the most expensive pieces of real estate in the world, and Ofusa used to double over with laughter remembering the one-line response he received from the home office: "We're not in the damn real estate business."

Yasuhiro Tsutsumi was in the real estate business, among many other businesses, and that October he laid the foundation for a fortune that would make the Rockefellers and the Trumps look like pikers. Never a man to think small, this peasant son of a broken home approached the just-disenfranchised members of the royal family and volunteered to let them live out their lives in their palaces if they would sell their vast properties to him. His crafty dealings with princes whose hands had never been soiled by yen were only one example of Tsutsumi's brash and often crass style. Eventually those palaces became the ubiquitous Prince hotels -- no Japanese city is without one -- and the start of a fortune whose true bounds no one can define, not even Japan's tax collectors.

That fortune has made Tsutsumi and his reclusive multibillionaire sons a subject of endless fascination in Japan. Lesley Downer, a British journalist who lives in Tokyo and London, has succeeded in breaking a conspiracy of silence surrounding the Tsutsumis, and she has written a gripping book. "The Brothers: The Hidden World of Japan's Richest Family" is overflowing with tales that Japanese know in snatches, and Americans know not at all.

By the way, don't worry about Junnosuke Ofusa, the recipient of that intemperate cable. When it came to his own affairs, he was wise enough not to take his business advice from journalists. He invested a few yen in a modest wooden house behind the famed Okura Hotel, but unlike the Tsutsumi family, he realized that the boom of the late 80's was more frenzy than reality, and he sold at the market's peak. His tiny house still stands, in the shadow of some Tsutsumi properties, and when he died last year he left a tidy fortune for his family.

[edit] References

^ ^a ^b Bird, David and Robert McG. Thomas Jr. "Notes on People: Japanese Writer for Times Decorated by Hirohito", New York Times, May 13, 1982.
^ Sanger, David. "Junnosuke Ofusa, Long the Manager For Times in Tokyo", New York Times, March 30, 1994.
^ "Times Veteran Feted in Japan; Joined the Tokyo Bureau in 1930", New York Times, April 24, 1981.
^ Sanger, David. "Pearl Harbor Remembered; History's Refraction Illuminates 2 Views Of a Date of Infamy", New York Times, December 8, 1991.
^ [ Sanger, David. "The Rise of the House of Tsutsumi"], New York Times. August 27, 1995.

Ofusa, Junnosuke. (1982). A journalist's memoir: 50 years' experience in an eventful era. Tokyo: New York Times. -- a history of New York Times Tokyo Bureau (1928-1980)

[edit] Cholesterol

Tenji 3, in the 3rd month (1128): Taiken-mon In ordered the construction of Enshō-ji in fulfillment of a sacred vow.^[1] This was one in a series of "sacred vow temples" (gogan-ji) built by imperial command following a precedent established by Emperor Shirakawa's Hosshō-ji.^[2] [The six "superiority" (sho) temples were:
1. Hosshō-ji (Superiority of Buddhist Law), Shirakawa, 1077
2. Sonshō-ji (Superiority of Worship), Horikawa, 1102
- JSTOR: Yakaku Teikinsho. Secret Teachings of the Sesonji School of ...

Sonshoji: Former Emperor Horikawa; plaque, Great Minister of the Left; door, Director of the Bureau of Palace Equipment and Upkeep. ...links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0027-0741(199423)49%3A3%3C315%3AYTSTOT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P - Similar pages

- JSTOR: The Lotus Lectures. Hokke Hakko in the Heian Period

1073 28:1081-1187 1109 Sonshoji Emperor Horikawa, d. 1107 28:1110-1231 1131 Hoshoji Emperor Shirakawa, d. 1129 43:1133-1249 dedication ceremony, ... links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0027-0741(198424)39%3A4%3C393%3ATLLHHI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4 - Similar pages

- The Gates of Power: Monks, Courtiers, and Warriors in Premodern Japan - Google Books Result

by Mikael S. Adolphson - 2000 - History - 456 pages ... (built by Shirakawa), Sonshoji (Horikawa), ... books.google.com/books?isbn=0824823346...

3. Saishō-ji (Most Superior), Toba, 1117
- Saishō-ji -- at Neyagawa, Osaka
- Saisho-ji -- at Ashikaga, 50 miles north of Tokyo
4. Enshō-ji (Superiority of Perfection), Taiken-mon In, 1128
- Ensho-ji -- at Nara (model for Mishima book)
- Ensho-ji -- at Obama, Wakasahttp://www.city.ikoma.lg.jp/en/for_tourists/touristguide/ --at Ikoma City, Nara]
- Ensho-ji [
5. Jōshō-ji (Superiority of Becoming), Sutoku, 1139
- Josho-ji -- Nichiren 1616
6. Enshō-ji (Superiority of Duration), Konoe, 1149

Preview this book Preview this book

By Mikael S. Adolphson, Mikael S. (2000). The Gates of Power: Monks, Courtiers, and Warriors in Pre-Modern Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-824-82334-6

The political influence of temples in pre-modern Japan, most clearly manifested in divine demonstrations, has traditionally been condemned and is poorly understood.

Page 64

... of Hosshoji, which had been built in Kyoto in 925 by the former regent and chancellor Fujiwara no ... Page 84 Hosshoji was the first and most formidable of these temples.20 Construction of the main temple building (the Kondo) began in 1075, and it was designated an ... Page 85 Hosshoji itself possessed at least thirty- three estates spread across fifteen provinces.21 These new temples were not merely a means to gain control of ... Page 87 ... were the construction of Hosshoji—a new religious center controlled by the retired emperor—and the establishment of princes as powerful abbots who could ... Page 119 ... to have the abbot of Hosshoji, Ningen, also appointed abbot of ..