The wonderful things in which Japan is number one in the world.
One of the things that amazed Europeans that arrived in Japan at the end of the Edo period（1603-1867）was that Japanese were highly educated. It was believed that the literacy rate was over 80 percent in cities like Edo (now Tokyo) and Osaka. Read More »
March 7, 2007- Thomson Scientific, leading provider of academic information, announced that AKIRA Shizuo (審良 静男) of Osaka University (Immunology) has been recognized as the 2005-2006 “Hottest Researcher” for the second consecutive year. 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 »
The national anthem of Japan, “Kimigayo”, is a song of celebration, expressing our wish that the Emperor’s reign would last for all the eons that it would take for tiny pebbles to mass together into a great moss-covered boulder. Read More »
At the time of Japan’s modernization during the Meiji Era (1868-1912), the beautiful ‘Hinomaru’ design attracted a great deal of attention from ambassadors of many countries. France sent formal delegates of her government to Japan, and asked the new Meiji Administration to sell the ‘Hinomaru’ design to France for five million yen (equivalent to twenty billion yen at the present time). Read More »
Japan supported revolutionaries in colonies around the world. President Sukarno in Indonesia was one of them. Read More »
In the mid-19th century, when the artists in Europe were exposed to the influx of the decorative artworks from Japan, they were fascinated by the unique artistic insight and imagination in them. Especially, Ukiyoe 浮世絵, the Japanese woodblock painting, became a crucial source of inspiration for many innovative artists, and exerted a considerable influence on the development of the new styles of arts including Impressionism and Art Nouveau. Read More »
In June 1955, a former Lieutenant-General, Aketo Nakamura, who had served as Commander of the troops of the Imperial Army of Japan stationed in the country, was invited to the Kingdom of Thailand under the honored title of state guest. Read More »
The samurai history is very old. It can be traced back to the ninth century, when local powerful families and influential farmers became armed in order to prevent infringements by enemies. This developed into the samurai class system before long. Read More »
Bangladesh’s national flag was established from the model of the Japanese flag of the Rising Sun. The red circle on the flag expresses the sun that rises, while the green conveys the rich earth. Moreover, the red symbolizes the blood of those killed in the war of independence. Read More »
Of all the animation in the world, 65% or more is Japanese. In 1917, Seitaro Kitayama created the animation “Monkey and the Crab” drawn on paper in India ink. Osamu Tezuka turned comics into attractive art and built a foundation of comics and animation in present day Japan. Many excellent works have influenced other genres such as literature and movies and thus, the world’s animation community was established. Read More »
Toshiro Mifune (三船敏郎) is considered the most prominent Japanese actor in the world. He teamed with the charismatic Japanese director Akira Kurosawa (黒澤明) for sixteen films during his career. He starred Kurosawa’s Rashomon (羅生門) , which made him world famous when it won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1951. He won two Best Actor awards at the Venice Film Festivals, for Yojimbo (1961) and Red Beard (1965). Read More »
Japan’s traditional performing arts of Noh 能, which developed in the 14th century, has been highly acclaimed for their artistic value by the world audiences. In 2001, UNESCO added Noh to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list as a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Read More »
British well-known scholar of gardening, Robert Fortune who visited Japan in 1860 wrote in a book called “Edo and Beijing” as follows: “Regardless of social position, the clear characteristic of Japanese people is that they like flowers. If the love of flowers is a way to measure human intellectual standard, the lower classes in Japan seem to be superior, comparing to people of the same class in England. Read More »
