The ensuing investigation caused Olympus shares to plunge and forced its chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa to step down.

BBC: Olympus submits earnings to try to avoid delisting

Workers, says Tsuyoshi Hirabayashi of the justice ministry, are often abused by employers demanding long hours and paying much less than the legal minimum wage.

ECONOMIST: Japanese immigration

The three directors who stood down on Thursday include Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, who resigned as chairman last month, but had remained at Olympus in a non-executive role.

BBC: Ex-Olympus boss says board meeting was 'constructive'

As if that were not bad enough, Tsuyoshi Hondou, a physicist at Tohoku University in Japan, published a paper in 2002 that gave commuters yet another reason to feel uncomfortable.

ECONOMIST: Are mobiles phones on trains dangerous or not?

Both the defender of the island, General Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), and his friend and fellow-officer Baron Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara), an Olympic equestrian before the war, are such idealized figures modest, gentle, and gallant that they lose any serious interest as characters.

NEWYORKER: Letters from Iwo Jima