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Lost Japan
is a 1993 book written by American Japonologist Alex Kerr. Background The book deals with Kerr's life in Japan and on aspects of Japanese culture by which he was fascinated. The text is a collection of personal essays in which he suggests that the current popularity of ikebana, Kabuki, and other famous Japanese arts and crafts represents the final efflorescence of a moribund culture. He wrote it in Japanese, and it was translated into English with the help of Bodhi Fishman and published as ''Lost Japan'' in 1996. The original Japanese version was published by Shinchosha in 1993; a paperback version has been published since 2000 by The Asahi Shimbun Company. The English translation was first published by Lonely Planet in 1996; in 2015 the book was reissued by Penguin UK with a new preface written by Alex. Translations have also been published in Traditional and Simplified Chinese characters, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. Reception The book won the Shincho Gakugei litera ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alex Kerr (Japanologist)
Alex Kerr (born June 16, 1952) is an American writer and Japanologist. Biography Originally from the Bethesda area in Montgomery County, Maryland, Kerr's father, a naval officer, was posted in Yokohama from 1964 to 1966. Kerr returned to the states and studied Japanese Studies at Yale University. After studying Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, Kerr moved back to Japan full-time in 1977. He lived in Kameoka, near Kyoto, working with the Oomoto Foundation, a Shintō organisation devoted to the practise and teaching of traditional Japanese arts. An expert on Japanese culture and art, he frequently writes and lectures in Japanese. Through his experiences in Japan, as related in his books, he has become an avid art collector and patron of Japan's traditional theatre and other arts. He also worked in business, working for Trammell Crow in the 1980s. Kerr currently has several residences. He lives in Bangkok, Thailand for half of the year, and Kyoto for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chiiori
is the name of an Edo period ''minka'' farmhouse in the Iya Valley, western Tokushima, Japan. Dating from around 1720, the house is believed to be the second oldest in Iya. (The oldest, nearby Kimura House, is designated an Important Cultural Property) Chiiori preserves its original structure, irori 囲炉裏 floor hearths, and pine floors blackened by hundreds of years of smoke from the irori. The house is unusual for farm houses in Japan because there are no ceilings (except over the small sleeping rooms). This was because for much of the Edo period, tobacco was a leading crop of Iya, and villagers used to hang the tobacco up in the rafters to smoke over the irori. Due to the lack of ceilings, Chiiori has a dramatic wide-open interior. Purchased by Alex Kerr in 1973, Chiiori features in Alex's book Lost Japan is a 1993 book written by American Japonologist Alex Kerr. Background The book deals with Kerr's life in Japan and on aspects of Japanese culture by which he was fasc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
All Souls College, Oxford
All Souls College (official name: College of the Souls of All the Faithful Departed) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Unique to All Souls, all of its members automatically become fellows (i.e., full members of the college's governing body). It has no undergraduate members, but each year, recent graduate and postgraduate students at Oxford are eligible to apply for a small number of examination fellowships through a competitive examination (once described as "the hardest exam in the world") and, for those shortlisted after the examinations, an interview.Is the All Souls College entrance exam easy now? , ''The Guardian'', 17 May 2010. The college entrance is on the north side of |
Osaka
is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2.7 million in the 2020 census, it is also the largest component of the Keihanshin Metropolitan Area, which is the second-largest metropolitan area in Japan and the 10th largest urban area in the world with more than 19 million inhabitants. Osaka was traditionally considered Japan's economic hub. By the Kofun period (300–538) it had developed into an important regional port, and in the 7th and 8th centuries, it served briefly as the imperial capital. Osaka continued to flourish during the Edo period (1603–1867) and became known as a center of Japanese culture. Following the Meiji Restoration, Osaka greatly expanded in size and underwent rapid industrialization. In 1889, Osaka was officially established as a municipality. The construc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nara, Nara
is the capital city of Nara Prefecture, Japan. As of 2022, Nara has an estimated population of 367,353 according to World Population Review, making it the largest city in Nara Prefecture and sixth-largest in the Kansai region of Honshu. Nara is a core city located in the northern part of Nara Prefecture bordering the Kyoto Prefecture. Nara was the capital of Japan during the Nara period from 710 to 794 as the seat of the Emperor before the capital was moved to Kyoto. Nara is home to eight temples, shrines, and ruins, specifically Tōdai-ji, Saidai-ji, Kōfuku-ji, Kasuga Shrine, Gangō-ji, Yakushi-ji, Tōshōdai-ji, and the Heijō Palace, together with Kasugayama Primeval Forest, collectively form the Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Etymology By the Heian period, a variety of different characters had been used to represent the name Nara: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and . A number of theories for the origin of the name "Nara" have been pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kyoto
Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the city had a population of 1.46 million. The city is the cultural anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area known as Greater Kyoto, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) home to a census-estimated 3.8 million people. Kyoto is one of the oldest municipalities in Japan, having been chosen in 794 as the new seat of Japan's imperial court by Emperor Kanmu. The original city, named Heian-kyō, was arranged in accordance with traditional Chinese feng shui following the model of the ancient Chinese capital of Chang'an/Luoyang. The emperors of Japan ruled from Kyoto in the following eleven centuries until 1869. It was the scene of several key events of the Muromachi period, Sengoku period, and the Boshin War, such as the Ōnin War, the Ho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trammell Crow
Fred Trammell Crow (June 10, 1914 – January 14, 2009) was an American real estate developer from Dallas, Texas. He is credited with the creation of several major real estate projects, including the Dallas Market Center, Peachtree Center in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco, California.William Bragg Ewald, Jr"How Trammell Crow hit the real estate jackpot" ''Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce'', December 15, 2005 Biography A native of Dallas, Crow as a child and later as an adolescent earned money through a series of odd jobs, including plucking chickens, cleaning bricks, and unloading boxcars, from the age of ten until his father forbade it. He was the fifth of eight children reared in East Dallas. His father, Jefferson Crow, worked as a bookkeeper for Collett Munger – one of Dallas' early real estate developers and the builder of the Munger Place subdivision. After completing Woodrow Wilson High School in 1932 Crow was unable to attend college at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ōsaka Tenmangū Shrine
is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2.7 million in the 2020 census, it is also the largest component of the Keihanshin Metropolitan Area, which is the second-largest metropolitan area in Japan and the 10th largest urban area in the world with more than 19 million inhabitants. Osaka was traditionally considered Japan's economic hub. By the Kofun period (300–538) it had developed into an important regional port, and in the 7th and 8th centuries, it served briefly as the imperial capital. Osaka continued to flourish during the Edo period (1603–1867) and became known as a center of Japanese culture. Following the Meiji Restoration, Osaka greatly expanded in size and underwent rapid industrialization. In 1889, Osaka was officially established as a municipality. The constructi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Calligraphy
also called is a form of calligraphy, or artistic writing, of the Japanese language. Written Japanese was originally based on Chinese characters only, but the advent of the hiragana and katakana Japanese syllabaries resulted in intrinsically Japanese calligraphy styles. Styles The term shodō (書道, "way of writing") is of Chinese origin, and is widely used to describe the art of Chinese calligraphy during the medieval Tang dynasty. Early Japanese calligraphy was originated from Chinese calligraphy. Many of its principles and techniques are very similar, and it recognizes the same basic writing styles: * seal script (篆書 ''tensho'') (pinyin: ''zhuànshū''). The seal script (tensho) was commonly used throughout the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BC) and the following Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) of China. After this time period, tensho style fell out of popularity in favor of reisho. However, tensho was still used for titles of published works or inscriptions. The c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Onnagata
(also ) are male actors who play female roles in kabuki theatre. History The modern all-male kabuki was originally known as ("male kabuki") to distinguish it from earlier forms. In the early 17th century, shortly after the emergence of the genre, many kabuki theaters had an all-female cast (), with women playing men's roles as necessary. ("adolescent-boy kabuki"), with a cast composed entirely of attractive young men playing both male and female roles, and frequently dealing in erotic themes, originated circa 1612. Both and (or ), actors specializing in adolescent female roles (and usually adolescents themselves), were the subject of much appreciation by both male and female patrons, and were often prostitutes. All-male casts became the norm after 1629, when women were banned from appearing in kabuki due to the prevalent prostitution of actresses and violent quarrels among patrons for the actresses' favors. This ban failed to stop the problems, since the young male () acto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nakamura Jakuemon IV
(20 August 192022 February 2012) was a Japanese kabuki actor most known for onnagata (also ) are male actors who play female roles in kabuki theatre. History The modern all-male kabuki was originally known as ("male kabuki") to distinguish it from earlier forms. In the early 17th century, shortly after the emergence of the g ... performance. Biography In 1991 the Japanese government designated him as a Living National Treasure. Filmography *1954 '' The Woman in the Rumor(Uwasa no Onna)'' as Dr. Matoba Further reading *''Beautiful boys/outlaw bodies: devising Kabuki female-likeness'', 2005, By Katherine Mezur *''Nakamura Jakuemon IV: The Art of Onnagata Acting'', 2005, by Rei Sasaguchi References External links * (Japanese)biography {{DEFAULTSORT:Nakamura, Jakuemon Kabuki actors 1920 births 2012 deaths Deaths from pneumonia in Japan Cross-gender male actors ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minami-za
is the primary kabuki theatre in Kyoto, Japan. It was founded in 1610 as . The current building, with a 1,086 seat capacity, was built in 1929. History The Minami-za is one of the earliest of the seven officially-licensed kabuki theatres built in the early Edo period (1615-1623) in the Shijo Kawara area in Kyoto; the theatre pre-dates those of Tokyo and Osaka. The current Minami-za theatre was built in 1929 in the architectural style of the Momoyama period, with a gabled roof and a traditional turret marking the official approval of the government. In 1991, after the end of the Shōwa period Shōwa may refer to: * Hirohito (1901–1989), the 124th Emperor of Japan, known posthumously as Emperor Shōwa * Showa Corporation, a Japanese suspension and shock manufacturer, affiliated with the Honda keiretsu Japanese eras * Jōwa (Heian ..., the interior was drastically refurbished and modern stage mechanism was installed. In 1996, the Minami-za was registered as a Japanese Tan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
