http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/12/international/asia/12profile.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Ad Man-Turned-Priest Tackles His Hardest Sales Job
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
TOKYO
AFTER leading a salaryman's life for a quarter-century, commuting by train to his office at Dentsu, the world's largest advertising agency, Toshiaki Nambu left to run the family business. Another quarter-century passed before Act III unfolded in his life: at age 69, he became a Shinto priest.
He was asked - "a bolt out of the blue," he said - to become the chief priest of Yasukuni Shrine, the place of worship where 2.5 million war dead, including 14 Class A war criminals, are enshrined as deities. After thinking it over for two weeks, and receiving words of encouragement directly from the emperor, Mr. Nambu, a former aristocrat, accepted. Last fall, he became the ninth chief priest in the shrine's 136-year history.
It has been a busy few months, during which Yasukuni has become more than ever the source of a bitter dispute between Japan and China, which, like other Asian countries invaded by Japan, regards the shrine as a symbol of unrepentant militarism. Since Beijing bluntly asked Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi two months ago to stop making annual visits there, Yasukuni has been the backdrop of an unfinished drama between an increasingly nationalistic Japan and an ever-more-powerful China.
So will Mr. Koizumi worship at Yasukuni this year? Mr. Nambu says he does not know, and is not pressing the prime minister. Instead, he says he is wrapped up in his daily duties as chief priest, and in tackling a long-term threat: the declining numbers of veterans and relatives of the war dead, the shrine's strongest supporters.
"It is the biggest problem," Mr. Nambu said in a lengthy interview at the shrine here, dressed in a white and gray robe. "So we have to think of ways to get young people to visit."
To that end, it is not surprising that, for the first time in Yasukuni's history, its new chief priest is not only a salaryman but a former advertising man as well. "I cannot take advantage of my experience on issues such as China's opposition to the prime minister's visit to Yasukuni," Mr. Nambu said of his time at Dentsu. "That is a matter for the country to deal with. But I can help in making efforts to promote awareness among young people.
I'm not sure how they'll do this...1000 stitch belts refashioned for today's young females? A Willy Wokna like golden ticket contest? But some otauku subcultures have inroads they could exploit if they took the effort to do so, such as this
http://www.konami.jp/th/figure/mecha/
