Japan is an archipelago located in an arc around the Sea of Japan in the very east of Asia and consists of 3,000 large and small islands, including 4 largest ones: Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu, with a territory of 377 thousand km2. Being in the volcanic Pacific belt, the country is prone to volcanic… Read More »
Fuji-Hakone-Izu and the Japanese Alps Fuji-san ( Fudjijama ), the highest mountain in Japan, is a special attraction. Fuji Five Lakes and Hakone, a hot spring resort, are worth visiting. The Izu Peninsula is known for its warm, subtropical climate. In recent years there have been more and more earthquakes in Izu, which indicate increased… Read More »
Delimitation and extension. – The defeat in the Second World War caused Japan to lose its empire with Formosa, Korea and Manchuria (returned under the sovereignty of China), the southern part of the island of Sakhalin and the Kuril islands returned to Russia, the islands Ryū-Kyūdi whose destination has not yet been established, the Caroline… Read More »
For the representation and protection of the commercial and industrial interests of the various provinces, there are now 77 chambers of commerce, while 42 stock exchanges facilitate and regulate the movement and activity of internal and external commerce in the Empire. The establishment of banks, in the modern sense, dates back to 1873, the year… Read More »
Agriculture is, and always has been, the country’s greatest economic resource and rice is its main product. Due to the predominantly mountainous character of the territory of the Empire, only about 19% of its surface is usable for agricultural purposes. For Japan, this figure is 26%, but this area has not yet been fully cultivated.… Read More »
Hit by a deflationary spiral for over twenty years, the Japan after the earthquake and tsunami of the Tōhoku (2011) asked the architecture to take a voluntary step back, out of declared solidarity with the affected compatriots. However, despite the disastrous natural events that hit it cyclically, the country remains an important laboratory for experimenting… Read More »
In the modern age, between the periods of the Taisho reign (1912-26), Showa (1926-89) and the current Heisei reign (1989-), the expressive forms of Japanese art directly participate in the various movements and currents of contemporary art, as regards both Yōga production and Nihonga trends. All the historical avant-gardes (including Italian Futurism) feed the creative… Read More »
From Kamakura, considered the second capital of the empire, the ruling princes, belonging to the Hōlō family, now dominate both the emperors and the shōguns of the Fujiwara family. Those warriors took nothing away from Kyoto of its splendor as a center of artistic production; but under their influence there was a detachment, at least… Read More »
It is named after the shōguns Ashikaga. The town was dominated by the great feudal lords who became more and more independent; but despite all the struggles, Kyōto, safe within its walls, lost nothing of its artistic hegemony, and the patronage of the princes, passionate about art, continued to favor its production. The sculpture was… Read More »
After violent struggles, a new lineage of shōgun prevailed, whose founders resided in the new city of Yedo, the future Tōkyō. The state, perfectly organized. it is closed to any European influence, granting permission to trade with whites only in a few points of the empire, carefully isolated from the inside. The most beautiful works… Read More »
Suiko (552-645). – The first truly historical era of Japan takes its name from an empress, under which cultural relations with the continent became extraordinarily intense. The Chinese influence was so strong during this period that one can even speak of a Chinese art in Japan. Chinese missionaries were spreading Buddhism in the country at this… Read More »
These two epochs, the second of which takes its name from the capital, are do. undermined by a common great artistic event, by the conquest of external reality, which is the event of decisive importance also for the art of China during the T’ang era. Also in this period we can follow the evolution of… Read More »
According to Thenailmythology, this era takes its name from the feudal families that for a long time deprived the emperors of any effective power. It was a period of knightly courts, of violent feuds, of lavish luxury, of a type of life and civilization completely different from that of the neighboring continent, while, in 895,… Read More »
In 1616, Ieyasu died leaving his son Hidetada heir to the office of shōgun and the country framed in the most rigid administrative and feudal system. According to this system, the shōgun was the head of all the daimyō or feudal lords and, nominally, mandatary of the emperor, but, practically, absolute lord. His fiefdoms constituted… Read More »
According to Sunglassestracker, the Japanese political system continued to be characterized by strong instability, the result of internal party struggles and the resistance of the powerful bureaucratic elite, reluctant to undergo a downsizing of its role. From 2005 to 2009 the clashes between the different currents of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, in power almost… Read More »
According to Sportsqna, Japan lived with intransigence and with the gloomy awareness of the inevitability of loss, in an almost mythological feeling of nature. From the restless teenagers of Goddo supiido yu! Burakku empororu (1976, known as God speed you! Black emperor) to the Taiwanese itinerant healers of Tabi suru Pao janghu (1995, The itinerant… Read More »
One of the most relevant data of the cinema scene of the seventies and eighties is the great growth of a particular sector of cinema which for twenty years represented the backbone of the Japanese entertainment industry: erotic themed cinema (pinku eiga, pink film) and the more properly porno (roman porno). The Nikkatsu production house… Read More »
In the last twenty years of the 20th century, the great economic and social development of Japan and the consequent formation of a mass culture and of an audience on whose choices the mass media play a decisive role have significantly affected literary production in terms both quantitative and qualitative. The wave of ferment, enthusiasm… Read More »
In ancient Japan did not have an official name. In the first literary productions of the country (VIII century AD) there are many expressions with which the writers of the time designate their land. Such are, for example, Aki – tsu – shima(“dragonfly island”, from the shape they believed their homeland territory to have), Mizuho – no – kuni (“the land rich in ears of rice”), Yamato (“the… Read More »
In the drama, the first effects of the new currents were in the improved condition of the artists, no longer despised, but appreciated, and in the various kinds of reforms made to the theater: abbreviation of shows, more rational construction of halls, suppression of tea rooms, immoral traditional accessory of old theaters, etc. The production… Read More »
Agriculture and livestock. – The cultivated lands in Japan amounted to 6 million and 41,111 hectares in 1938 (15.8% of the total area) and occupied over 14 million individuals out of the 29 million active population, feeding 80-90% of all residents and providing a large number of products, which are the basis of the country’s… Read More »
Forestry. – The considerable extension of the country and the presence of high mountain ranges, with the influence they exert on the climate and soil of the various parts of the Empire, account for the great variety of the Japanese forest flora, which, in the abundant rains and in the climate, generally temperate, finds very… Read More »
From the emperor Richū (400-405) to the emperor Senkwa (536-539), the chronicles record a series of fratricidal struggles for the succession to the throne upon the death of the various sovereigns. Which, however, seem to have reigned with clemency and with awareness of the needs of the people. Only two are pointed to the execration… Read More »
Paper was invented in China about 100 years AD. C. and introduced in Japan under the empress Suiko (593-628 AD). For its manufacture, the paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera) was first used, followed by other botanical species such as mitsumata (Edgeworthia chrysantha), k ō zo (Broussonetia kashinoki), etc. Factories of these ancient Japanese papers still exist in the provinces… Read More »
History recalls some industry cultivated in ancient times by the Japanese, a family industry that only served to meet the most immediate needs of life. Over the centuries, the frequent relations with China introduced, together with many other cultural elements, also the arts and empirical knowledge that were the fruit of that millenary civilization. During… Read More »
In Japan the literary prizes are numerous and play a very important function in defining the genres to which they belong, in guaranteeing the visibility of the authors and in the construction of their symbolic legitimacy. In 2007 Ōe Kenzaburō published Rōtashi Anaberu Rii sōkedachitsu mimakaritsu (trad. It. The eternal virgin, 2011), characterized by an intricate network of… Read More »
Since the 1980s, Japanese literature has experienced decades of great transformation, characterized by contiguity and interchange with other media: manga, anime, cinema, television dorama, Internet. A change so great that writers and critics have repeatedly proclaimed that “modern Japanese literature has come to an end” or “that the history of literature ended in the 1980s”, when serious and committed novels… Read More »
It is not right to see in Japanese art – as it has often been done – exclusively a derivation of Chinese art. On the contrary, in the Japanese Empire periods characterized by the influence of the Asian continent alternated with others that were absolutely independent: and schools of both directions subsisted together, proceeding along… Read More »
Abenomics Following the electoral victory of December 2012, the new prime minister Shinzō Abe has launched an ambitious plan of economic policies regarding monetary, fiscal and structural reforms – the so-called ‘three arrows’ – which has taken the name of Abenomics. In fact, for almost twenty years the growth of Japan had been blocked by a… Read More »
In a country which, across about 30 ° of latitude, extends from the tropic almost to the rigid zone, it is natural that the climate presents differences, sometimes considerable, in the various regions. The predominant factor in the Japanese climate is the monsoon regime. During the cold season, the anticyclonic area that forms, due to… Read More »