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Gai-Jin (novel)
''Gai-Jin'' (Japanese for "foreigner") is a 1993 novel by James Clavell, chronologically the third book in his Asian Saga, although it was the last to be published. Taking place about 20 years after the events of ''Tai-Pan'', it chronicles the adventures of Malcolm Struan, the son of Culum and Tess Struan, in Japan. The story delves deeply into the political situation in Japan and the hostility Westerners faced there, and is loosely based on the Namamugi Incident and the subsequent Anglo-Satsuma War. Plot summary The story opens with a fictional rendition of the Namamugi Incident. On September 14, 1862, Phillip Tyrer, John Canterbury, Angelique Richaud, and Malcolm Struan are riding on the Tōkaidō, when they are attacked by Shorin Anato and Ori Ryoma, both Satsuma samurai and ''rōnin'' shishi in the ''sonnō jōi'' movement, cells of revolutionary xenophobic idealists. Canterbury is killed, Malcolm seriously wounded, and Tyrer receives a minor arm injury; only Angeliq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gaijin
is a Japanese word for foreigners and non-Japanese citizens in Japan, specifically being applied to foreigners of non-Japanese ethnicity and those from the Japanese diaspora who are not Japanese citizens. The word is composed of two kanji: and . Similarly composed words that refer to foreign things include and . The word is typically used to refer to foreigners of non-East Asian ethnicities. Some feel the word has come to have a negative or pejorative connotation, while other observers maintain it is neutral. is a more neutral and somewhat more formal term widely used in the Japanese government and in media. ''Gaijin'' does not specifically mean a foreigner that is also a white person; instead, the term ''hakujin'' (白人, "white person") can be considered as a type of foreigner, and ''kokujin'' (黒人, "black person") would be the black equivalent. Etymology and history The word ''gaijin'' can be traced in writing to the 13th-century ''Heike Monogatari'': Here, ''gaijin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shishi (organization)
, sometimes known as , were a group of Japanese political activists of the late Edo period. While it is usually applied to the anti-shogunate, pro-''sonnō jōi'' (尊皇攘夷; "Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarian ) samurai primarily from the southwestern clans of Satsuma, Chōshū, and Tosa, the term ''shishi'' is also used by some with reference to supporters of the shogunate, such as the ''Shinsengumi''. There were many different varieties of ''shishi''. Some, such as the assassins Kawakami Gensai, Nakamura Hanjirō, Okada Izō, and Tanaka Shinbei, opted for a more violent approach in asserting their views. Kawakami Gensai, in particular, is recalled as the assassin of Sakuma Shōzan, a renowned pro-Western thinker of the time. Several assaults on westerners in Japan have been attributed to the ''shishi'' and associated ''rōnin'' warriors. In a 2013 article, these assassins have been called "early terrorists" (german: frühe Terroristen) since they opted to spread ter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Swire & Sons Limited
Swire Group () is a Hong Kong- and London-based British conglomerate. Many of its core businesses can be found within the Asia Pacific region, where traditionally Swire's operations have centred on Hong Kong and mainland China. Within Asia, Swire's activities come under the group's publicly quoted arm, Swire Pacific Limited. Elsewhere in the world, many businesses are held directly by the parent company, John Swire & Sons Limited, in Australia, Papua New Guinea, East Africa, Sri Lanka, the US and UK. Swire controls a large property empire in Asia – mainly Hong Kong. The current chairman is Barnaby Swire. Taikoo () meaning Archean, is the Chinese name of Swire. It serves as the brand name for businesses such as Taikoo Sugar and Taikoo Shing. History The Swire Group's privately owned parent company is London-based John Swire & Sons Limited. The Swire Group, started by John Swire (1787–1847) in 1816, had its beginnings as a modest Liverpool import-export company based ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Samuel Swire
John Samuel Swire (1825-1898) was a British businessman. He grew his family business, the Swire Group, and expanded the cotton and sugar trade with China. He established the Taikoo Sugar Refinery in Hong Kong and The China Navigation Company on the Yangtze river. He was the instigator and founding chairman of the China and Japan Conference (later known as the Far Eastern Freight Conference). This shipping cartel existed from 1879 to 2008 and was a major component of the shipping industry from the Far East to Europe. Early life John Samuel Swire was born on 24 December 1825 in Liverpool, England.Swire, John Samuel alled the Senior(1825-1898), merchant and shipowner in ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' His father, John Swire, was the founder of the Swire Group. His mother was Maria Louisa Roose. He had a younger brother, William Hudson Swire, born in 1830. They inherited the family business when their father died in 1847, when Swire was twenty-two years old. Later in his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Blake Glover
Thomas Blake Glover (6 June 1838 – 16 December 1911) was a Scottish merchant in the Bakumatsu and Meiji period in Japan. Early life (1838–1858) Thomas Blake Glover was born at 15 Commerce Street, Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire (council area), Aberdeenshire in northeast Scotland on 6 June 1838, the fifth of eight children, to Thomas Berry Glover (1806-1878), a coastguard officer from Vauxhall, London and Mary Findlay (1807-1887) from the parish of Fordyce, Banffshire. Thomas Blake Glover spent the first six years of his life in Fraserburgh, which was fast expanding as a fishing and trading port. In 1844, the family moved first to coast guard, coastguard stations at Grimsby, then Collieston in Aberdeenshire, then finally to the Bridge of Don, by Aberdeen, Thomas senior having by this time been promoted to Chief Coastguard Officer. Young Thomas was educated first at the recently opened parish school in Fraserburgh, then in primary schools in Grimsby, Collieston, and finally at t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Keswick
William Keswick (15 April 1834 – 9 March 1912) was a British Conservative politician and businessman, patriarch of the Keswick family, an influential shipping family in Hong Kong associated with Jardine Matheson Holdings. Biography Keswick was born in 1834 in Dumfriesshire in the Scottish Lowlands. His grandmother, Jean Jardine Johnstone, was an older sister of Dr. William Jardine, co-founder of Jardine Matheson. His father Thomas Keswick, from Dumfriesshire had married Jardine's niece and daughter of Jean, Margaret Johnstone, and entered the Jardine business. The company operated as merchant traders and had a major influence in the First and Second Opium Wars although the company stopped this trading in 1870 to pursue a broad range of trades including shipping, railways, textiles and property development. William arrived in China and Hong Kong in 1855, the first of six generations of the Keswick family to be associated with Jardines. He established a Jardine Matheson office ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jardine Matheson Holdings
Jardine Matheson Holdings Limited (also known as Jardines) is a Hong Kong-based Bermuda-domiciled British multinational conglomerate. It has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and secondary listings on the Singapore Exchange and Bermuda Stock Exchange. The majority of its business interests are in Asia, and its subsidiaries include Jardine Pacific, Jardine Motors, Hongkong Land, Jardine Strategic Holdings, DFI Retail Group, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Jardine Cycle & Carriage and Astra International. It set up the Jardine Scholarship in 1982 and Mindset, a mental health-focused charity, in 2002. Jardines was one of the original Hong Kong trading houses or Hongs that date back to Imperial China. 58 per cent of the company's profits were earned in China in 2019. The company is controlled by the Keswick family, who are descendants of co-founder William Jardine's older sister, Jean Johnstone. Jardine Matheson is a ''Fortune'' Global 500 company. In 2013, bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bombardment Of Kagoshima
The Bombardment of Kagoshima, also known as the , was a military engagement fought between Britain and the Satsuma Domain in Kagoshima from 15 to 17 August 1863. The British were attempting to extract compensation and legal justice from ''daimyo'' Shimazu Tadayoshi for the 1862 Namamugi Incident, when a Royal Navy fleet commanded by Sir Augustus Leopold Kuper was fired on from Satsuma coastal batteries near Kagoshima. The British responded by bombarding the city in retaliation, but were unable to gain a conclusive victory and retreated two days later. The Satsuma declared victory and after negotiations fulfilled some British demands for the Namamugi Incident. Background On 14 September 1862, a confrontation occurred in Japan between a British merchant, Charles Lennox Richardson, and the entourage of Shimazu Hisamitsu, father and regent of Satsuma ''daimyo'' Shimazu Tadayoshi. After Richardson ignored warnings to stay out the entourage's way while travelling on a road near Ka ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tai-pan
A tai-pan (,Andrew J. Moody, "Transmission Languages and Source Languages of Chinese Borrowings in English", ''American Speech'', Vol. 71, No. 4 (Winter, 1996), pp. 414-415. literally "top class"汉英词典 — ''A Chinese-English Dictionary'' 1988 新华书店北京发行所发行 (Beijing Xinhua Bookshop).), sometimes spelt taipan, is a foreign-born senior business executive or entrepreneur operating in China or Hong Kong. History In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ''tai-pans'' were foreign-born businessmen who headed large ''Hong'' trading houses such as Jardine, Matheson & Co., Swire and Dent & Co., amongst others. The first recorded use of the term in English is in the ''Canton Register'' of 28October 1834.''Oxford English Dictionary'' (2nd edn, 1989). Historical variant spellings include ''taepan'' (first appearance), ''typan'', and ''taipan''. The term also refers to the Chinese-Filipino business oligarchs who own or having involvement in various bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shōgun (novel)
''Shōgun'' is a 1975 novel by James Clavell. It is the first novel (by internal chronology) of the author's Asian Saga. A major best-seller, by 1990 the book had sold 15 million copies worldwide. Premise Beginning in feudal Japan some months before the critical Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, ''Shōgun'' gives an account of the rise of the ''daimyō'' "Toranaga" (based upon the actual Tokugawa Ieyasu). Toranaga's rise to the shogunate is seen through the eyes of the English sailor John Blackthorne, called ''Anjin'' ("Pilot") by the Japanese, whose fictional heroics are loosely based on the historical exploits of William Adams. The book is divided into six sections, preceded by a prologue in which Blackthorne is shipwrecked near Izu, then alternating between locations in Anjiro, Mishima, Osaka, Yedo, and Yokohama. Plot John Blackthorne, an English pilot serving on the Dutch warship ''Erasmus'', is the first Englishman to reach Japan. England (and Holland) seek to disrupt Port ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shogunate
, officially , was the title of the military dictators of Japan during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868. Nominally appointed by the Emperor, shoguns were usually the de facto rulers of the country, though during part of the Kamakura period, shoguns were themselves figureheads, with real power in hands of the Shikken of the Hōjō clan. The office of shogun was in practice hereditary, though over the course of the history of Japan several different clans held the position. The title was originally held by military commanders during Heian period in the eighth and ninth centuries. When Minamoto no Yoritomo gained political ascendency over Japan in 1185, the title was revived to regularize his position, making him the first shogun in the usually understood sense. The shogun's officials were collectively referred to as the ; they were the ones who carried out the actual duties of administration, while the Imperial court retained only nominal authority.Beasley, William G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daimyō
were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji era, Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and nominally to the Emperor of Japan, emperor and the ''kuge''. In the term, means 'large', and stands for , meaning 'private land'. From the ''shugo'' of the Muromachi period through the Sengoku period, Sengoku to the ''daimyo'' of the Edo period, the rank had a long and varied history. The backgrounds of ''daimyo'' also varied considerably; while some ''daimyo'' clans, notably the Mōri clan, Mōri, Shimazu clan, Shimazu and Hosokawa clan, Hosokawa, were cadet branches of the Imperial family or were descended from the ''kuge'', other ''daimyo'' were promoted from the ranks of the samurai, notably during the Edo period. ''Daimyo'' often hired samurai to guard their land, and they paid the samurai in land or food as relatively few could aff ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
