Early last month a masked man wearing a lamé cloak and a silver turban, decorated with half-moons and stars, sat down outside the Japanese Ministry of Finance (MoF). He announced that he would set himself on fire to protest the use of ¥685 billion ($6.5 billion) in taxpayers’ money to bail out insolvent housing loan corporations (jusen).
The man’s bizarre suicide threat is just the most dramatic example of the widespread protests in Japan – including a protracted sit-in by opposition MPs in parliament – over the government’s rescue of the jusen.
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