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Written in the early 20th century, Night on the Galactic Railroad is a pre-Tolkien, galaxy-traversing fantasy born out of Miyazawa’s love of the stars. The collection of stories within are thematically connected by the cosmos and an elemental quality that resembles Japan’s connection to the natural world. The most famous tale, also called Night on the Galactic Railroad, is a Steven King-esque story (minus the gore) that shines light on the infallible power of childhood friendships.
Japan Story - Penguin Books UK
In this video, professional storytellers Fergus and Mio explain the benefits of teaching kamishibai and how it can be linked with Art, Music, English and Drama lessons as well as increasing students’ cultural awareness. While I can’t tell one hundred stories, here are seven of the scariest stories featuring female yurei ( Japanese ghosts) and yokai ( Japanese monsters and spirits) that you can tell your friends, maybe even your older and braver kids, as a spooky bedtime story. During the second half of the 16th century, Japan gradually reunified under two powerful warlords: Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The period takes its name from Nobunaga's headquarters, Azuchi Castle, and Hideyoshi's headquarters, Momoyama Castle. [71] Japan in 1582, showing territory conquered by Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi in gray
Between the fourth and ninth centuries, Japan's many kingdoms and tribes gradually came to be unified under a centralized government, nominally controlled by the Emperor of Japan. The imperial dynasty established at this time continues to this day, albeit in an almost entirely ceremonial role. In 794, a new imperial capital was established at Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto), marking the beginning of the Heian period, which lasted until 1185. The Heian period is considered a golden age of classical Japanese culture. Japanese religious life from this time and onwards was a mix of native Shinto practices and Buddhism. To finish: a contemporary love story, between a woman in her late 30s and her old high-school teacher. Set in one of Tokyo’s numerous small bars, the drama is marinated in beer, saké, miso soup, humour, poetry, and wonderfully warm, comforting conversation. Other stories dare to explore the same universal taboos that Earthlings dealt with — incest, cannibalism, and more — and the characters who perform these acts are far outside the status quo.
Japan Family In Law - Father in law and daughter in law in Japan Family In Law - Father in law and daughter in law in
The Yamamba look like harmless old women, but are actually terrifying mountain yokai that consume human flesh. One of their oldest legends is from the Konjaku Monogatari: Collected by Japan’s first folklorist in the early years of the 20th century, these are traditional tales of the strange, the supernatural and the monstrous, told by people from the northern village of Tōno. Yanagita worried that the corruptions of the modern city – from office drudgery to an unpleasant me-first individualism – would soon claim these rural people too, so he wanted to capture their way of living and relating to the world before it was too late. People From My Neighbourhoodsees Kawakami flexing her surrealist and comedic muscles to wonderful effect. This is a tiny collection of even tinier tales that splendidly captures the eccentricities of ordinary people. Kamishibai is a traditional form of Japanese street theatre in the form of picture card storytelling. Unlike children’s storybooks, the text is written on the reverse of illustrated cards so that the story can be easily read while pictures are shown to the students. As creating and using Kamishibai hones speaking, listening, reading and writing skills, they have many cross-curricular applications. Japan has a birthday this year. It’s 150 years since rebel samurai overthrew the old Tokugawa Shogunate, marched – or, rather, palanquined – a teenage emperor into the newly named city of “Tokyo”, and made him their figurehead as they set about transforming their country. Western warships had recently been menacing Japanese shores, not so much offering friendship as insisting on it at the point of a gun. If Japan’s new leaders were to avoid becoming next on colonialism’s to-do list, a rapid programme of modernisation was called for: factories and weapons; mines and offices; trains, trams, trade.
Unity in Diversity
Upon the consolidation of power, Minamoto no Yoritomo chose to rule in concert with the Imperial Court in Kyoto. Though Yoritomo set up his own government in Kamakura in the Kantō region located in eastern Japan, its power was legally authorized by the Imperial court in Kyoto in several occasions. In 1192, the emperor declared Yoritomo seii tai-shōgun ( 征夷大将軍; Eastern Barbarian Subduing Great General), abbreviated as shōgun. [70] Yoritomo's government was called the bakufu ( 幕府 ("tent government")), referring to the tents where his soldiers encamped. The English term shogunate refers to the bakufu. [71] Japan remained largely under military rule until 1868. [72] Tokugawa Ieyasu served as regent for Hideyoshi's son Toyotomi Hideyori and used his position to gain political and military support. When open war broke out, Ieyasu defeated rival clans in the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. In 1603 the Tokugawa shogunate at Edo enacted measures including buke shohatto, as a code of conduct to control the autonomous daimyōs, and in 1639 the isolationist sakoku ("closed country") policy that spanned the two and a half centuries of tenuous political unity known as the Edo period (1603–1868), this act ended with Portuguese influence after 100 years in Japanese territory, also aiming to limit the political presence of any foreign power. [94] Muromachi culture [ edit ] During the Yayoi period, the Yayoi tribes gradually coalesced into a number of kingdoms. In the earliest written work to unambiguously mention Japan, the Book of Han, published in 111 AD, states that one hundred kingdoms comprised Japan, which is referred to as Wa. A later Chinese work of history, the Book of Wei, states that by 240AD, the powerful kingdom of Yamatai, ruled by the female monarch Himiko, had gained ascendancy over the others, though modern historians continue to debate its location and other aspects of its depiction in the Book of Wei. [24] Kofun period (c. 250–538) [ edit ] Daisenryō Kofun, Osaka A notoriously difficult genre … Toshiro Mifuner and Richard Chamberlain in the 1980 TV adaptation of James Clavell’s Shogun. Photograph: Cine Text/Allstar/Sportsphoto Ltd Historians agree that there was a big struggle between the Yamato federation and the Izumo Federation centuries before written records. [29] Classical Japan [ edit ] Asuka period (538–710) [ edit ] Buddhist temple of Hōryū-ji is the oldest wooden structure in the world. It was commissioned by Prince Shotoku and represents the beginning of Buddhism in Japan.
Top 10 books about Japan | Books | The Guardian
During the subsequent Kofun period, Japan gradually unified under a single territory. The symbol of the growing power of Japan's new leaders was the kofun burial mounds they constructed from around 250 AD onwards. [25] Many were of massive scales, such as the Daisenryō Kofun, a 486m-long keyhole-shaped burial mound that took huge teams of laborers fifteen years to complete. It is commonly accepted that the tomb was built for Emperor Nintoku. [26] The kofun were often surrounded by and filled with numerous haniwa clay sculptures, often in the shape of warriors and horses. [25] Japan's participation in World WarI on the side of the Allies sparked unprecedented economic growth and earned Japan new colonies in the South Pacific seized from Germany. [209] After the war, Japan signed the Treaty of Versailles and enjoyed good international relations through its membership in the League of Nations and participation in international disarmament conferences. [210] The Great Kantō earthquake in September 1923 left over 100,000 dead, and combined with the resultant fires destroyed the homes of more than three million. [211] In the aftermath of the earthquake, the Kantō Massacre occurred, in which the Japanese military, police, and gangs of vigilantes murdered thousands of Korean people after rumors emerged that Koreans had been poisoning wells. The rumors were later described as false by numerous Japanese sources. [212] The stories charm, soothe, serenade. They are calming, beautiful, warm tales of love and family and history. It is told through the eyes of people who greeted this change not with the confidence and grasping ambition of Japan's modernizers and nationalists, but with resistance, conflict, distress.A couple of freelance writers form the central pairing in Takashi Hiraide’s The Guest Cat. They live in a small cottage in a quiet part Tokyo; a place where life moves at an agreeable pace. Yet they have reached a phase in their relationship where they have begun to drift apart. Then the titular cat appears, and slowly but surely, it binds the couple together again. There really is little more to it than that. But that’s not to discredit the book. The Guest Cat is infinitely Japanese in its understated simplicity, while remaining deeply emotive and beautiful to its core.
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