It wrests power from the central government, slashes bureaucratic overlap, and gives leaders like him more power to make decisions what Mr Asada says the mayor really means when he talks of dictatorship.

ECONOMIST: Japanese politics: The man who would be dictator? | The

But Charles River is more the story of a man than of a mouse--a classic tale of a frustrated entrepreneur who wrests control of a family-founded company back from a giant corporation and remakes it in his own image.

FORBES: The rat pack

The brass conduct tours of the new, fortresslike headquarters in central Tokyo and even helped produce a movie, Aegis of the Doomed Country, in which a brave Japanese officer wrests control of his ship back from enemy agents bent on wrecking Tokyo.

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