|
Japanese Castle
are fortresses constructed primarily of wood and stone. They evolved from the wooden stockades of earlier centuries, and came into their best-known form in the 16th century. Castles in Japan were built to guard important or strategic sites, such as ports, river crossings, or crossroads, and almost always incorporated the landscape into their defenses. Though they were built to last and used more stone in their construction than most Japanese buildings, castles were still constructed primarily of wood, and many were destroyed over the years. This was especially true during the Sengoku period (1467–1603), when many of these castles were first built. However, many were rebuilt, either later in the Sengoku period, in the Edo period (1603–1867) that followed, or more recently, as national heritage sites or museums. Today there are more than one hundred castles extant, or partially extant, in Japan; it is estimated that once there were five thousand. Some castles, such as the ones a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Himeji Castle The Keep Towers
260px, Himeji City Hall is a city located in Hyōgo Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 525,682 in 227,099 households and a population density of 980 persons per km². The total area of the city is . Geography Himeji is located in the central western part of the Harima Plain in the western part of Hyogo Prefecture, and is the central city of the Harima region of the prefecture. The Ichikawa River is located in the central eastern part of the city, and the Senba River and Noda River are located in the center. The Ieshima Islands in the Seto Inland Sea are within the city limits and are located off the coast of Harima Bay. The city is surrounded by the mountains and the sea. Neighbouring municipalities Hyōgo Prefecture * Kakogawa * Takasago * Kasai * Tatsuno * Shisō * Taishi * Kamikawa * Ichikawa Climate Himeji has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification ''Cfa'') with hot summers and cool winters. Sum ... [...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] |
Ainu People
The Ainu are the indigenous people of the lands surrounding the Sea of Okhotsk, including Hokkaido Island, Northeast Honshu Island, Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands, the Kamchatka Peninsula and Khabarovsk Krai, before the arrival of the Yamato Japanese and Russians. These regions are referred to as in historical Japanese texts. Official estimates place the total Ainu population of Japan at 25,000. Unofficial estimates place the total population at 200,000 or higher, as the near-total assimilation of the Ainu into Japanese society has resulted in many individuals of Ainu descent having no knowledge of their ancestry. As of 2000, the number of "pure" Ainu was estimated at about 300 people. In 1966, there were about 300 native Ainu speakers; in 2008, however, there were about 100. Names This people's most widely known ethnonym, "Ainu" ( ain, ; ja, アイヌ; russian: Айны) means "human" in the Ainu language, particularly as opposed to , divine beings. Ainu also i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chashi
is the Japanese term for the hilltop fortifications of the Ainu. The word is of Ainu origin, from チャシ (''casi'', ), which means palisade or palisaded compound; a rival theory relates this to the Korean term 잣 (''cas'', ''jat'', ) of roughly the same meaning. Over 520 ''chashi'' have been identified in Hokkaidō, mostly in the eastern regions of the island; others are known from southern Sakhalin and the Kurils; similar phenomena such as the ''ostrogu'' of Kamchatka and the ''gorodische'' of northeast Asia may have developed independently. A few, including the Tōya ''casi'' of present-day Kushiro, date to the Muromachi period; the remainder date largely to the early seventeenth century. As such their construction may be related to increased competition for resources as a result of "intensification of trade" with the Japanese. Form The early Dutch explorer Maarten Gerritsz Vries described the ''chashi'' he encountered in eastern Hokkaidō in 1643:These forts were made ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kōgoishi
Kōgoishi (神篭石 or 神籠石) are earthenwork structures, on a stone foundation, constructed in Japan during the Asuka period, particularly in areas around Fukuoka, on the island of Kyūshū. The name "''kōgoishi''" means "stones of divine protection," a name given them by the Meiji period archaeologist Tsuboi Shōgorō, who conjectured that they served as spiritual or practical protection for sacred sites. ''Kōgoishi'' date to the 6th or 7th century CE, and are found predominantly in northern Kyūshū and on the shores of the Inland Sea. The longest one to be found, at 2.3 km in length, lies near the summit of Mount Kōra Mount is often used as part of the name of specific mountains, e.g. Mount Everest. Mount or Mounts may also refer to: Places * Mount, Cornwall, a village in Warleggan parish, England * Mount, Perranzabuloe, a hamlet in Perranzabuloe parish, C ... ( :ja:高良山), near Fukuoka. The stones there are roughly one meter long, 50 cm high and 70 cm thick. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Topography
Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the land forms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps. Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary science and is concerned with local detail in general, including not only relief, but also natural, artificial, and cultural features such as roads, land boundaries, and buildings. In the United States, topography often means specifically ''relief'', even though the USGS topographic maps record not just elevation contours, but also roads, populated places, structures, land boundaries, and so on. Topography in a narrow sense involves the recording of relief or terrain, the three-dimensional quality of the surface, and the identification of specific landforms; this is also known as geomorphometry. In modern usage, this involves generation of elevation data in digital form (DEM). It is often considered to include the graphic representation of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
