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Tomu Uchida
, born Tsunejirō Uchida on 26 April 1898, was a Japanese film director. The stage name "Tomu" translates to “spit out dreams”. Early career Uchida started out at the Taikatsu studio in the early 1920s, but came to prominence at Nikkatsu, adapting literary works with the screenwriter Yasutarō Yagi in a realist style. His 1929 film ''A Living Puppet'' (''Ikeru ningyo'') was selected as the fourth best film of the year by the film journal, ''Kinema Junpo''. Many of his 1930s films featured the actor Isamu Kosugi. One such work, ''Policeman'' (''Keisatsukan''), has been called "a tremendously stylish gangster movie about the love-hate relationship between a cop and a criminal, once childhood friends". It is Uchida’s only surviving complete silent film. Uchida borrows from Hollywood gangster films and expressionist techniques in a story of a young policeman tracking down an old friend who is now a criminal. His work from the 1920 and 1930s possess a leftist social commentary and ...
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Okayama
is the capital city of Okayama Prefecture in the Chūgoku region of Japan. The city was founded on June 1, 1889. , the city has an estimated population of 720,841 and a population density of 910 persons per km2. The total area is . The city is the site of Kōraku-en, known as one of the top three traditional gardens in Japan, and Okayama Castle, which is ranked among the best 100 Japanese castles. The city is famous as the setting of the Japanese fable "Momotarō". Okayama joined the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities in 2016. History Sengoku period to Teisho period Before the Muromachi period, Okayama was one corner of a farm region and included a small castle built by the Kanemitsu. In the Sengoku period, Ukita Naoie attacked Okayama and attacked the castle for the transportation resources and extensive farmland in the region. Naoie remodeled the castle, built the old Sanyo road to the central part of the castle town, and called in craftsmen both from inside and outs ...
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Seppuku
, sometimes referred to as hara-kiri (, , a native Japanese kun reading), is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. It was originally reserved for samurai in their code of honour but was also practised by other Japanese people during the Shōwa period (particularly officers near the end of World War II) to restore honour for themselves or for their families. As a samurai practice, ''seppuku'' was used voluntarily by samurai to die with honour rather than fall into the hands of their enemies (and likely be tortured), as a form of capital punishment for samurai who had committed serious offences, or performed because they had brought shame to themselves. The ceremonial disembowelment, which is usually part of a more elaborate ritual and performed in front of spectators, consists of plunging a short blade, traditionally a ''tantō'', into the belly and drawing the blade from left to right, slicing the belly open. If the cut is deep enough, it can sever the abdominal ...
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A Living Puppet
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the double-storey a and single-storey ɑ. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. In English grammar, " a", and its variant " an", are indefinite articles. History The earliest certain ancestor of "A" is aleph (also written 'aleph), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet, which consisted entirely of consonants (for that reason, it is also called an abjad to distinguish it fro ...
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History Of Crab Temple
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of these events. Historians seek knowledge of the past using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, art and material artifacts, and ecological markers. History is not complete and still has debatable mysteries. History is also an Discipline (academia), academic discipline which uses narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze past events, and investigate their patterns of cause and effect. Historians often debate which narrative best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians also debate the historiography, nature of history as an end in ...
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Brooklyn Academy Of Music
The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) is a performing arts venue in Brooklyn, New York City, known as a center for progressive and avant-garde performance. It presented its first performance in 1861 and began operations in its present location in 1908. The Academy is incorporated as a New York State not-for-profit corporation. It has 501(c)(3) status. Katy Clark became president in 2015 and left the institution in 2021. David Binder became artistic director in 2019. History 19th and early 20th centuries On October 21, 1858, a meeting was held at the Polytechnic Institute to measure support for establishing "a hall adapted to Musical, Literary, Scientific and other occasional purposes, of sufficient size to meet the requirements of our large population and worth in style and appearance of our city."
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Kinema Jumpo
, commonly called , is Japan's oldest film magazine and began publication in July 1919. It was first published three times a month, using the Japanese ''Jun'' (旬) system of dividing months into three parts, but the postwar ''Kinema Junpō'' has been published twice a month. The magazine was founded by a group of four students, including Saburō Tanaka, at the Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Technical High School at the time). In that first month, it was published three times on days with a "1" in them. These first three issues were printed on art paper and had four pages each. ''Kinejun'' initially specialized in covering foreign films, in part because its writers sided with the principles of the Pure Film Movement and strongly criticized Japanese cinema. It later expanded coverage to films released in Japan. While long emphasizing film criticism, it has also served as a trade journal, reporting on the film industry in Japan and announcing new films and trends.加藤幹郎 ...
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Widescreen
Widescreen images are displayed within a set of aspect ratios (relationship of image width to height) used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio provided by 35 mm film. For television, the original screen ratio for broadcasts was in fullscreen 4:3 (1.33:1). Largely between the 1990s and early 2000s, at varying paces in different nations, 16:9 (1.78:1) widescreen TV displays came into increasingly common use. They are typically used in conjunction with high-definition television (HDTV) receivers, or Standard-Definition (SD) DVD players and other digital television sources. With computer displays, aspect ratios wider than 4:3 are also referred to as widescreen. Widescreen computer displays were previously made in a 16:10 aspect ratio (e.g. 1680 × 1050), but now are usually 16:9 (e.g. 1920 × 1080). Film History Widescreen was ...
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High And Low (1963 Film)
is a 1963 Japanese police procedural crime film directed by Akira Kurosawa, starring Toshiro Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai and Kyōko Kagawa. The film is loosely based on the 1959 novel '' King's Ransom'' by Ed McBain (Evan Hunter). Plot A wealthy executive named Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune) is in a struggle to gain control of a company called National Shoes. One faction wants the company to make cheap, low quality shoes for the impulse market as opposed to the sturdy and high quality shoes currently being produced. Gondo believes that the long-term future of the company will be best served by well made shoes with modern styling, though this plan is unpopular because it means lower profits in the short term. He has secretly set up a leveraged buyout to gain control of the company, mortgaging all he has. Just as he is about to put his plan into action, he receives a phone call from someone claiming to have kidnapped his son, Jun. Gondo is prepared to pay the ransom, but the call is dis ...
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Tsutomu Minakami
, also known as Tsutomu Minakami, was a Japanese writer of novels, biographies, and plays. Mizukami's major works include '' The Temple of the Wild Geese'', ''Kiga kaikyō'' and '' Bamboo Dolls of Echizen''. His writings earned him, among other awards, the Tanizaki Prize and the Naoki Prize. Biography Mizukami was born in Wakasa, Fukui Prefecture, to a poor family. In 1929, he became a novice in a Zen temple in Kyoto, moving between the branch temples. Disillusioned by the conduct of the temple's head priest, he left the temple in 1936, the same year in which he finished Middle School. Mizukami entered Ritsumeikan University in 1937, but unable to keep up with his schedule while working, he withdrew already half a year later. After World War II, during which he worked in a variety of jobs, he studied under writer Kōji Uno, and in 1948 published the autobiographical novel ''Furaipan no uta'' (lit. "Song of the frying pan"). The novel was a moderate success, but the attention re ...
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A Fugitive From The Past
, also titled ''Straits of Hunger'' or ''Hunger Straits'', is a 1965 Japanese crime drama film directed by Tomu Uchida and starring Rentarō Mikuni, Sachiko Hidari and Ken Takakura. It is based on the 1962 novel ''Kiga kaikyō'' by Tsutomu Minakami. Plot In 1947, two ex-convicts on parole murder pawnbroker Sasada and his family in Iwanai, Hokkaido island, take his money and set fire to the house to cover the tracks. They escape together with a third man, Inukai, to Shimokita peninsula. The murderers' dead bodies later wash up on the shore after the Tōya Maru ferry accident, but policeman Yumisaka becomes suspicious because they are not listed as passengers. He believes that the missing Inukai killed his two accomplices while crossing the strait between the islands. Meanwhile, Inukai is sheltered by a prostitute, Yae, and gives her a large sum of money in return, which enables her to start a new life. When Yumisaka questions Yae, she pretends that her customer was not Inukai. H ...
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The Mad Fox
''The Mad Fox'', (also titled '' Love, Thy Name Be Sorrow'' or ''Koiya koi nasuna koi'') is a 1962 film directed by Tomu Uchida. It is based upon a 1734 bunraku play. It is noted for its use of bunraku and kabuki aesthetics, including joshikimaku (a type of curtain), masks, costumes and highly saturated colours, a break from Uchida's previous work. Plot Sometime in the Heian period, the well renowned fortune teller Kamo no Yasunori is told by an oracle that he should adopt a girl who was born at a certain time. His two disciples, Abe no Yasuna and Absiya Doman, separately set out to find this girl. Yasunori finds identical twin girls born at the right time, daughters of the lord of Izumi and returns with the older one, Sakaki. Ten years later strange omens appear. Upon consulting his oracle book, ''The Golden Crow'', Yasunori reveals that the country is about to be thrown into turmoil with the crown prince, who lacks an heir, being cursed, but also something else he can tell o ...
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