Eight Japanese brands will showcase Japanese leather products, hoping to highlight the designers' craftsmanship, said Kaoru Imajo, a spokesman for the event.

CNN: Country chic: Nations showcase at Fashion Week

Yesterday the point man, Yosano Kaoru, caused a stir by hinting about raising the minimum age for drawing benefits and reducing amounts paid.

FORBES: Work Begins on Reforming the National Pension (3)

Kaoru Ishikawa, a professor at Tokyo University who died in 1989, is attributed with much of the development of the idea of quality circles.

ECONOMIST: Idea

Thereabouts, on clear nights, they will see a comet known as Ikeya-Zhang, after its co-discoverers, Kaoru Ikeya, of Japan, and Zhang Daqing, of China.

ECONOMIST: Comet Ikeya-Zhang is enlivening the skies

"When our customers come in, they see, 'This is for us, '" says Ariga Kaoru, president of Ryohin Keikaku, which makes most of the items it sells in its 256 stores.

CNN: THE NEW JAPAN INC.

The embodiment of the new urgency and resolve to find solutions is the appointment of a 72-year-old veteran fiscal policy expert, Yosano Kaoru, as the new Minister for Economics and Finance.

FORBES: Critical Moment in Japanese Politics and Society

Some of his cabinet appointments reflect this change of focus: the new finance minister, Fukushiro Nukaga, and the new chief cabinet secretary, Kaoru Yosano, are supporters of fiscal restructuring and have better relations with the bureaucracy than their predecessors.

ECONOMIST: Another blow to Japan's Shinzo Abe as a minister goes

The chief lines of debate will be drawn between Kaoru Yosano, a former economy minister who argues for a swift start to hikes in the consumption tax, and Hidenao Nakagawa, once a close adviser to Mr Koizumi, who says the bureaucracy must be fixed and supply-side measures taken first.

ECONOMIST: A grey man tries to show his gumption

Meanwhile Kaoru Yosano, the new economy minister with a clear sense of what needs to be done to overhaul the country's finances in the face of an ageing population, was ordered to cobble together a fiscal-stimulus package in response to panicky (and probably unfounded) fears that the economy was tipping into a deep recession again.

ECONOMIST: Japan