The World’s Greatest Japanese

Sadayakko (貞奴), whose birth name was Sada Oguma, made an appearance at a Geisha parlour at age seven and was patronized by Hirobumi Ito at fifteen. After that she married Otojiro Kawakami, who was famous for a satirical verse titled “Oppekepe”. In 1899, Sadayakko joined Otojiro’s first Japanese touring theatre to America and made her debut as the very first Japanese actress in the country as “Madame Sadayakko”. At that time, because of a Japanese boom in the West, famous artists such as Van Gogh, Manet and Monet got to learn a lot from woodblock prints (or woodcuts) made by Hokusai, Hiroshige and Utamaro. Read More »

Yoshio Okada, the Okada company (the present OLFA Corporation) founder, invented the world’s first ’snap-off blade cutter’ in 1956( Showa 31) . Read More »

Nagasaki Airport (長崎空港) opened as the world’s first authentic seadrome on May 1, 1975. Located on Minoshima Island it floats almost in the centre of Omura Bay in Nagasaki Prefecture. Read More »

On March 14,1868, Katsu Kaishu 勝 海舟, as a royal retainer of Tokugawa Shogunate, negotiated with Saigo Takamori 西郷 隆盛, who was in charge of revolutionary forces, the peaceful surrender of Edo Castle to avoid the civil war in Edo, now is Tokyo. Read More »

In the early Meiji era, Gottfried Wagener, a foreign scientist hired by the Japanese government, noted in “Nippon no Kogyo no Hoshin” (The Policy on Japanese Industries):
“If Japan desires to compete with foreign nations in industrial fields, this country should enduringly preserve its unique sense of taste and artistic mentality. Never allow the Japanese people to forget this.” And he appreciated the Japanese aesthetic sense and technical capability.