Japan National Route 4
National Route 4 is a major national highway in eastern Honshū, Japan. It has the longest main line of any highway in Japan at 743.6 km. With its extensions included it is the second longest highway in Japan 854.9 km after National Route 58, 884.4 km long with its maritime sections included. The highway connects Aomori via Utsunomiya, Kōriyama and Morioka. From Saitama Prefecture to Iwate Prefecture, it parallels the Tōhoku Expressway. At its northern terminus it links with National Route 7. Total length: 743.6 km Origin point: Chūō, Tokyo End point: Aomori Highest elevation: 458 m at Jūsanbongi Pass, Iwate Major cities on its route: Kasukabe, Utsunomiya, Kōriyama, Sendai, Hiraizumi, Ninohe, Towada and Hiranai Tokyo Chūō - Chiyoda - Taito - Arakawa - Adachi Saitama Prefecture Sōka - Koshigaya - Kasukabe - Sugito - Satte - Kuki Ibaraki Prefecture Koga Tochigi Prefecture Nogi - Oyama - Shimotsuke - Kaminokawa, Utsunomiya - Takanezawa - Sakura - Yaita - Otawara - Nasushiobara - Nasu Fukushima Prefecture Nishigo - Shirakawa - Izumizaki - Yabuki - Kagamiishi - Sukagawa - Kōriyama - Motomiya - Ōtama - Nihonmatsu - Fukushima - Date - Koori - Kunimi Miyagi Prefecture Shiroishi - Zaō - Ōgawara - Murata - Shibata - Iwanuma - Natori - Taihaku-ku, Sendai - Wakabayashi-ku, Sendai - Miyagino-ku, Sendai - Izumi-ku, Sendai - Tomiya - Taiwa - Shiroishi - Ōhira - Ōsaki - Kurihara Iwate Prefecture Ichinoseki - Hiraizumi - Ōshū - Kanegasaki - Kitakami - Hanamaki - Shiwa - Yahaba - Morioka - Takizawa - Iwate - Ichinohe - Ninohe Aomori Prefecture Sannohe - Nanbu - Gonohe - Towada - Shichinohe - Tōhoku - Noheji - Hiranai - Aomori National Route 4 was established as the Ōshū Kaidō and Nikkō Kaidō as two of the five routes of the Edo period.
It was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu for government officials traveling through the area to connect Edo with Mutsu Province and the present-day city of Shirakawa, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. There were many roads that connected to the Ōshū Kaidō that are included in National Route 4. One such sub-route was the Sendaidō. From Sendai, the Matsumaedō connected Sendai with Hakodate, Hokkaidō. Though the Ōshū Kaidō has only 27 post stations, there were over 100 designated post stations when the subroutes are included; some sections and markers of the Ōshū Kaidō in their original state can still be found alongside National Route 4, the Hachinohe Expressway, Tōhoku Expressway. On December 4, 1952 First Class National Highway 4 was established; the route was reclassified as a General National Highway on April 1, 1965. in Tokyo Routes 1, 6, 14, 15, 17 and 20 in Saitama Prefecture National Route 298 at Sōka National Route 463 at Koshigaya National Route 16 at Kasukabe National Route 125 at Kuki in Ibaraki Prefecture Routes 125 and 354 at Koga in Tochigi Prefecture National Route 50 at Oyama National Route 352 at Shimotsuke Routes 119, 121 and 123 at Utsunomiya National Route 408 at Takanezawa National Route 293 at Sakura National Route 461 at Yaita Route 461 at Ōtawara National Route 400 at Nasushiobara in Fukushima Prefecture Routes 289 and 294 at Shirakawa National Route 118 at Sukagawa Routes 49 and 288 at Kōriyama National Route 459 at Nihonmatsu Routes 13, 114 and 115 at Fukushima National Route 399 at Date in Miyagi Prefecture Routes 113 and 457 at Shiroishi National Route 349 at Shibata Route 6 at Iwanuma National Route 286 at Taihaku-ku, Sendai Routes 45 and 48 at Miyagino-ku, Sendai Routes 47, 108 and 347 at Ōsaki National Route 398 at Kurihara in Iwate Prefecture Routes 284, 342 and 457 at Ichinoseki Routes 343 and 397 at Ōshū National Route 107 at Kitakami National Route 283 at Hanamaki Routes 46, 106, 396 and 455 at Morioka National Route 282 at Takizawa National Route 281 at Iwate in Aomori Prefecture National Route 104 at Sannohe Route 104 at Nanbu National Route 454 at Gonohe Routes 45 and 102 at Towada National Route 394 at Shichinohe National Route 279 at Noheji Routes 7 and 103 at the northern terminus in Aomori.
Edo Five Routes, the five centrally administered routes, or kaidō, that connected the capital of Japan at Edo with the outer provinces during the Edo period. Tōhoku Expressway, an expressway managed by the East Nippon Expressway Company that parallels Route 4 from Tokyo to Aomori. Media related to Route 4 at Wikimedia Commons
Aomori Station
Aomori Station is a railway station in the city of Aomori, Aomori Prefecture, jointly operated by East Japan Railway Company and the third-sector railway operator Aoimori Railway. Aomori Station is served by the following lines: Ōu Main Line Tsugaru-Kaikyō Line Aoimori Railway Line Aomori Station has three island platforms connected to the station building by a footbridge; the station has a View Plaza travel agency. Super Hakucho and Hakucho services reverse through the Ōu Main Line to terminate at Shin-Aomori; the following Limited express services stop at Aomori Station: Hakuchō Tsugaru The following overnight sleeping car services used to operate to and from Aomori Station. Akebono Nihonkai The station opened on 1 September 1891. With the privatization of Japanese National Railways on 1 April 1987, the station came under the control of JR East. Aomori Bay Bridge Aomori Station building "Lovina" A-Factory Station square building "Auga" Aomori Citizens Library Aomori station square police box JR Bus Tohoku Aomori office Odashima Building Towada Kanko Bus Aomori ticket counter Aomori Prefectural Office Aomori City Hall Buses serving the station are operated by the following operators.
Aomori City Bus Kōnan Bus Company JR Bus Tohoku Company Towada-Kanko Electric Railway Shimokita Kotsu Asunaro. List of railway stations in Japan JR East station information Aoimori Railway station information
Ennin
Ennin, better known in Japan by his posthumous name, Jikaku Daishi, was a priest of the Tendai school of Buddhism in Japan, its third Zasu. Ennin was instrumental in expanding the Tendai Order's influence, bringing back crucial training and resources from China esoteric Buddhist training, Pure Land teachings, he was born into the Mibu family in present-day Tochigi Prefecture and entered the Buddhist priesthood at Enryaku-ji on Mt. Hiei near Kyoto at the age of 14. In 838, Ennin was in the party which accompanied Fujiwara no Tsunetsugu's diplomatic mission to the Tang dynasty Imperial court; the trip to China marked the beginning of a set of adventures. He studied under two masters and spent some time at Wutaishan, a mountain range famous for its numerous Buddhist temples in Shanxi Province in China, he went to Chang'an the capital of China, where he was ordained into both mandala rituals. He wrote of his travels by ship while sailing along the Grand Canal of China. Ennin was in China when the anti-Buddhist Emperor Wuzong of Tang took the throne in 840, he lived through the Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution of 842–846.
As a result of the persecution, he was deported from China, returning to Japan in 847. In 847 he returned to Japan and in 854, he became the third abbot of the Tendai sect at Enryakuji, where he built buildings to store the sutras and religious instruments he brought back from China, his dedication to expanding the monastic complex and its courses of study assured the Tendai school a unique prominence in Japan. While his chief contribution was to strengthen the Tendai tantric Buddhist tradition, the Pure Land recitation practices that he introduced helped to lay a foundation for the independent Pure Land movements of the subsequent Kamakura period. Ennin founded the temple of Ryushakuji at Yamadera, he wrote more than one hundred books. His diary of travels in China, Nittō Guhō Junrei Kōki, was translated into English by Professor Edwin O. Reischauer under the title Ennin's Diary: The Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law. Sometimes ranked among the best travelogues in world literature, it is a key source of information on life in Tang China and Silla Korea and offers a rare glimpse of the Silla personality Jang Bogo.
Edwin O. Reischauer, Ennin's Diary: The Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law. Edwin O. Reischauer, Ennin's Travels in T'ang China. Retracing the steps of Ennin, a travelog of a partial retracing of Ennin's journey made in 2006, with photographs
Asamushi-Onsen Station
Asamushi-Onsen Station is a railway station on the Aoimori Railway Line in the city of Aomori, Aomori Prefecture, operated by the third sector railway operator Aoimori Railway Company. Asamushi-Onsen Station is served by the Aoimori Railway Line, is 104.7 kilometers from the terminus of the line at Metoki Station. It is 722.0 kilometers from Tokyo. Asamushi-Onsen Station has an island platform and a side platform serving three tracks, connected the station building by a footbridge; the station building is attended. The station opened on September 1891, as Asamushi Station on the Nippon Railway, it became a station on the Tōhoku Main Line of the Japanese Government Railways, the pre-war predecessor to the Japanese National Railways, after the nationalization of the Nippon Railway on November 1, 1906. Scheduled freight services were discontinued in February 1962; the station was renamed Asamushi-Onsen on November 1, 1986. With the privatization of JNR on April 1, 1987, it came under the operational control of East Japan Railway Company.
The section of the Tōhoku Main Line including this station was transferred to Aoimori Railway on December 4, 2010. Aomori City Bus For Aomori Station via Nonai Asamushi Post Office Asamushi hot spring Asamushi Aquarium List of railway stations in Japan JTB Timetable December 2010 issue Official website
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asian continent and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea in the south; the kanji that make up Japan's name mean "sun origin", it is called the "Land of the Rising Sun". Japan is a stratovolcanic archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands; the four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido and Shikoku, which make up about ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area and are referred to as home islands. The country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions, with Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one; the population of 127 million is the world's tenth largest. 90.7 % of people live in cities. About 13.8 million people live in the capital of Japan. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world with over 38 million people. Archaeological research indicates; the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD.
Influence from other regions China, followed by periods of isolation from Western Europe, has characterized Japan's history. From the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shōguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a long period of isolation in the early 17th century, ended in 1853 when a United States fleet pressured Japan to open to the West. After nearly two decades of internal conflict and insurrection, the Imperial Court regained its political power in 1868 through the help of several clans from Chōshū and Satsuma – and the Empire of Japan was established. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victories in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism; the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the Japanese surrender. Since adopting its revised constitution on May 3, 1947, during the occupation led by SCAP, the sovereign state of Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with an Emperor and an elected legislature called the National Diet.
Japan is a member of the ASEAN Plus mechanism, UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the G20, is considered a great power. Its economy is the world's third-largest by nominal GDP and the fourth-largest by purchasing power parity, it is the world's fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer. Japan benefits from a skilled and educated workforce. Although it has renounced its right to declare war, Japan maintains a modern military with the world's eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a developed country with a high standard of living and Human Development Index, its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, but is experiencing issues due to an aging population and low birthrate. Japan is renowned for its historical and extensive cinema, influential music industry, video gaming, rich cuisine and its major contributions to science and modern technology; the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, pronounced Nihon or Nippon and means "the origin of the sun".
The character nichi means "sun" or "day". The compound therefore means "origin of the sun" and is the source of the popular Western epithet "Land of the Rising Sun"; the earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, the Old Book of Tang. At the end of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan requested that Nihon be used as the name of their country; this name may have its origin in a letter sent in 607 and recorded in the official history of the Sui dynasty. Prince Shōtoku, the Regent of Japan, sent a mission to China with a letter in which he called himself "the Emperor of the Land where the Sun rises"; the message said: "Here, I, the emperor of the country where the sun rises, send a letter to the emperor of the country where the sun sets. How are you". Prior to the adoption of Nihon, other terms such as Yamato and Wakoku were used; the term Wa is a homophone of Wo 倭, used by the Chinese as a designation for the Japanese as early as the third century Three Kingdoms period.
Another form of Wa, Wei in Chinese) was used for an early state in Japan called Nakoku during the Han dynasty. However, the Japanese disliked some connotation of Wa 倭, it was therefore replaced with the substitute character Wa, meaning "togetherness, harmony"; the English word Japan derives from the historical Chinese pronunciation of 日本. The Old Mandarin or early Wu Chinese pronunciation of Japan was recorded by Marco Polo as Cipangu. In modern Shanghainese, a Wu dialect, the pronunciation of characters 日本; the old Malay word for Japan, Japun or Japang, was borrowed from a southern coastal Chinese dialect Fukienese or Ningpo – and this Malay word was encountered by Portuguese traders in Southeast Asia in the 16th century. These Early Portuguese traders brought the word
Tsugaru-jamisen
Tsugaru-jamisen or Tsugaru-shamisen refers to both the Japanese genre of shamisen music originating from Tsugaru Peninsula in present-day Aomori prefecture and the instrument it is performed with. It is performed throughout Japan. Tsugaru-jamisen is considered the most recognized genre of shamisen music, has enjoyed multiple periods of popularity in Japan. While it is clear that the instrument originated from China through Okinawa in the 16th century CE, the specific developers of tsugaru-jamisen are not known with certainty because written records of its development were not kept nor was it formally recognized by the Japanese government. What is known is that tsugaru-jamisen originated from a small peninsula due west of present-day Aomori Prefecture called Tsugaru. In addition, some researchers have conjectured on the style's origins based on available evidence. There is some consensus that the style was developed by homeless and blind individuals called bosama. One scholar, Daijō Kazuo, proposed that the genre originated from a bosama named Nitabō on the basis of interviews of musicians and their families.
According to his research, Nitabō acquired and modified a shamisen in 1877 for which he adopted a different playing style. Nitabō rounded off the plectrum of the instrument such. In addition, he adopted a playing style with the shamisen held upright, included the area around the bridge as the playing area, incorporated beating and slapping the strings in contrast to exclusive use of the plectrum. However, other scholars, such as Gerald Groemer, argue that due to a lack of documentation, the account advanced by Kazuo may not be accurate. Nitabō had multiple blind students, such as Kinobo and Chōsakubo, who contributed to the development of the style. Nitabō's last student, Shirakawa Gunpachirō, performed outside of the Tsugaru region as a part of a folk performance troupe. Gunpachirō performed in professional settings, such as in concert halls in Tokyo; as a result of his successes, tsugaru-jamisen became popular in the 1920s, but its popularity waned with the onset of the Second Sino-Japanese War in the decade.
During 1955-1965, many performers of the genre moved to urban centers in Japan such as Tokyo. This migration was part of a larger movement due to a boom in the traditional arts in Japan. Tsugaru-jamisen enjoyed another bout of popularity when Gunpachirō performed with enka star Michiya Mihashi at the Nihon Theater in Tokyo in 1959; as a result of this mass exposure to the genre, younger practitioners of the genre began to emerge. Takahashi Chikuzan, a bosama, was a regarded practitioner of the genre and began touring Japan in 1964. Tsugaru-jamisen is played on a larger shamisen called futazao with a thicker neck and thicker strings than those used for most other styles. Tsugaru-shamisen is easy to recognize by its percussive quality and the lilt of the rhythms performed. Unlike most other Japanese music, some Tsugaru-shamisen pieces are in triple time, though the three beats are not accentuated in the manner of Western music. Tsugaru-shamisen has a large and growing repertory. Interviews with noted performers such as Takahashi Chikuzan and Yamada Chisato and recordings issued by stars of the past allow one to produce the following table.
Most of the titles given below exist in two versions: as a solo shamisen piece. Younger performers have been attempting to combine Tsugaru-shamisen playing styles or motives with jazz and other forms of more commercial music. With the exception of arrangements classified as shin min’yō, these pieces are considered to be traditional. A. Kudoki bushi “Suzuki Mondo” Now played “Jonkara kudoki” Now played B. Tsugaru mitsumono “Tsugaru jongara bushi” shin bushi naka bushi kyū bushi shin kyū bushi “Tsugaru yosare bushi” shin bushi kyū bushi “Tsugaru ohara bushi” shin bushi kyū bushi C. Tsugaru itsutsumono “Tsugaru aiya bushi” “Tsugaru san-sagari” D. Kyū min’yō “Yasaburō bushi” “Tsugaru jinku” “Dodarebachi” “Ajigasawa jinku” “Tosa no sunayama” “Tsugaru ondo” “Torajōsama” "Tanto Bushi" Others E. Shin min’yō “Waiha bushi” “Ringo bushi” Others F. Kyokubiki. All songs of B, C, D, E, as well as free improvisation entitled by performers. “Iwaki” “Arashi” Others, etc. G. Gassō or kyoku-awase. Most versions of “Jonkara bushi.
The Tsugaru-shamisen is characterized by styles. In acrobatic technique, improvising is the feature; the player will strike the strings and skin hard and fast with the bachi. They use only left index and ring finger traditionally, the scale is pentatonic. A technique unique to the Tsugaru-shamisen style in recent years is the tremolo played with the back of the bachi without hitting the skin. Group A presents songs that are only heard tod
