National Diet Library
The National Diet Library is the national library of Japan and among the largest libraries in the world. It was established in 1948 for the purpose of assisting members of the National Diet of Japan in researching matters of public policy; the library is similar in scope to the United States Library of Congress. The National Diet Library consists of two main facilities in Tōkyō and Kyōtō, several other branch libraries throughout Japan; the National Diet Library is the successor of three separate libraries: the library of the House of Peers, the library of the House of Representatives, both of which were established at the creation of Japan's Imperial Diet in 1890. The Diet's power in prewar Japan was limited, its need for information was "correspondingly small"; the original Diet libraries "never developed either the collections or the services which might have made them vital adjuncts of genuinely responsible legislative activity". Until Japan's defeat, the executive had controlled all political documents, depriving the people and the Diet of access to vital information.
The U. S. occupation forces under General Douglas MacArthur deemed reform of the Diet library system to be an important part of the democratization of Japan after its defeat in World War II. In 1946, each house of the Diet formed its own National Diet Library Standing Committee. Hani Gorō, a Marxist historian, imprisoned during the war for thought crimes and had been elected to the House of Councillors after the war, spearheaded the reform efforts. Hani envisioned the new body as "both a'citadel of popular sovereignty'", the means of realizing a "peaceful revolution"; the Occupation officers responsible for overseeing library reforms reported that, although the Occupation was a catalyst for change, local initiative pre-existed the Occupation, the successful reforms were due to dedicated Japanese like Hani. The National Diet Library opened in June 1948 in the present-day State Guest-House with an initial collection of 100,000 volumes; the first Librarian of the Diet Library was the politician Tokujirō Kanamori.
The philosopher Masakazu Nakai served as the first Vice Librarian. In 1949, the NDL became the only national library in Japan. At this time the collection gained an additional million volumes housed in the former National Library in Ueno. In 1961, the NDL opened at its present location in Nagatachō, adjacent to the National Diet. In 1986, the NDL's Annex was completed to accommodate a combined total of 12 million books and periodicals; the Kansai-kan, which opened in October 2002 in the Kansai Science City, has a collection of 6 million items. In May 2002, the NDL opened a new branch, the International Library of Children's Literature, in the former building of the Imperial Library in Ueno; this branch contains some 400,000 items of children's literature from around the world. Though the NDL's original mandate was to be a research library for the National Diet, the general public is the largest consumer of the library's services. In the fiscal year ending March 2004, for example, the library reported more than 250,000 reference inquiries.
As Japan's national library, the NDL collects copies of all publications published in Japan. Moreover, because the NDL serves as a research library for Diet members, their staffs, the general public, it maintains an extensive collection of materials published in foreign languages on a wide range of topics; the NDL has eight major specialized collections: Modern Political and Constitutional History. The Modern Political and Constitutional History Collection comprises some 300,000 items related to Japan's political and legal modernization in the 19th century, including the original document archives of important Japanese statesmen from the latter half of the 19th century and the early 20th century like Itō Hirobumi, Iwakura Tomomi, Sanjō Sanetomi, Mutsu Munemitsu, Terauchi Masatake, other influential figures from the Meiji and Taishō periods; the NDL has an extensive microform collection of some 30 million pages of documents relating to the Occupation of Japan after World War II. This collection include the documents prepared by General Headquarters and the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, the Far Eastern Commission, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey Team.
The Laws and Preliminary Records Collection consists of some 170,000 Japanese and 200,000 foreign-language documents concerning proceedings of the National Diet and the legislatures of some 70 foreign countries, the official gazettes, judicial opinions, international treaties pertaining to some 150 foreign countries. The NDL maintains a collection of some 530,000 books and booklets and 2 million microform titles relating to the sciences; these materials include, among other things, foreign doctoral dissertations in the sciences, the proceedings and reports of academic societies, catalogues of technical standards, etc. The NDL has a collection of 440,000 maps of Japan and other countries, including the topographica
War
War is a state of armed conflict between states, governments and informal paramilitary groups, such as mercenaries and militias. It is characterized by extreme violence, aggression and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces. Warfare refers of wars in general. Total war is warfare, not restricted to purely legitimate military targets, can result in massive civilian or other non-combatant suffering and casualties; the scholarly study of war is sometimes called polemology, from the Greek polemos, meaning "war", -logy, meaning "the study of". While some scholars see war as a universal and ancestral aspect of human nature, others argue it is a result of specific socio-cultural or ecological circumstances; the English word war derives from the 11th century Old English words wyrre and werre, from Old French werre, in turn from the Frankish *werra deriving from the Proto-Germanic *werzō'mixture, confusion'. The word is related to the Old Saxon werran, Old High German werran, the German verwirren, meaning “to confuse”, “to perplex”, “to bring into confusion”.
War must entail some degree of confrontation using weapons and other military technology and equipment by armed forces employing military tactics and operational art within a broad military strategy subject to military logistics. Studies of war by military theorists throughout military history have sought to identify the philosophy of war, to reduce it to a military science. Modern military science considers several factors before a national defence policy is created to allow a war to commence: the environment in the area of combat operations, the posture national forces will adopt on the commencement of a war, the type of warfare troops will be engaged in. Asymmetric warfare is a conflict between belligerents of drastically different levels of military capability and/or size. Biological warfare, or germ warfare, is the use of weaponized biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria and fungi. Chemical warfare involves the use of weaponized chemicals in combat. Poison gas as a chemical weapon was principally used during World War I, resulted in over a million estimated casualties, including more than 100,000 civilians.
Civil war is a war between forces belonging to political entity. Conventional warfare is declared war between states in which nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons are not used or see limited deployment. Cyberwarfare involves the actions by a nation-state or international organization to attack and attempt to damage another nation's information systems. Insurgency is a rebellion against authority, when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents. An insurgency can be fought via counter-insurgency warfare, may be opposed by measures to protect the population, by political and economic actions of various kinds aimed at undermining the insurgents' claims against the incumbent regime. Information warfare is the application of destructive force on a large scale against information assets and systems, against the computers and networks that support the four critical infrastructures. Nuclear warfare is warfare in which nuclear weapons are the primary, or a major, method of achieving capitulation.
Total war is warfare by any means possible, disregarding the laws of war, placing no limits on legitimate military targets, using weapons and tactics resulting in significant civilian casualties, or demanding a war effort requiring significant sacrifices by the friendly civilian population. Unconventional warfare, the opposite of conventional warfare, is an attempt to achieve military victory through acquiescence, capitulation, or clandestine support for one side of an existing conflict. War of aggression is a war for gain rather than self-defense. War of liberation, Wars of national liberation or national liberation revolutions are conflicts fought by nations to gain independence; the term is used in conjunction with wars against foreign powers to establish separate sovereign states for the rebelling nationality. From a different point of view, these wars are called insurgencies, rebellions, or wars of independence; the earliest recorded evidence of war belongs to the Mesolithic cemetery Site 117, determined to be 14,000 years old.
About forty-five percent of the skeletons there displayed signs of violent death. Since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, military activity has occurred over much of the globe; the advent of gunpowder and the acceleration of technological advances led to modern warfare. According to Conway W. Henderson, "One source claims that 14,500 wars have taken place between 3500 BC and the late 20th century, costing 3.5 billion lives, leaving only 300 years of peace." An unfavorable review of this estimate mentions the following regarding one of the proponents of this estimate: "In addition feeling that the war casualties figure was improbably high, he changed "approximately 3,640,000,000 human beings have been killed by war or the diseases produced by war" to "approximately 1,240,000,000 human beings...&c."" The lower figure is more plausible, but could be on the high side, considering that the 100 deadliest acts of mass violence between 480 BCE and 2002 CE claimed about 455 million human lives in total.
Primitive warfare is estimated to have accounted for 15
American and British English spelling differences
Many of the differences between American and British English date back to a time when spelling standards had not yet developed. For instance, some spellings seen as "American" today were once used in Britain and some spellings seen as "British" were once used in the United States. A "British standard" began to emerge following the 1755 publication of Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language, an "American standard" started following the work of Noah Webster and in particular his An American Dictionary of the English Language, first published in 1828. Webster's efforts at spelling reform were somewhat effective in his native country, resulting in certain well-known patterns of spelling differences between the American and British varieties of English. However, English-language spelling reform has been adopted otherwise, so modern English orthography varies somewhat between countries and is far from phonemic in any country. In the early 18th century, English spelling was inconsistent.
These differences became noticeable after the publishing of influential dictionaries. Today's British English spellings follow Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language, while many American English spellings follow Webster's An American Dictionary of the English Language. Webster was a proponent of English spelling reform for reasons both nationalistic. In A Companion to the American Revolution, John Algeo notes: "it is assumed that characteristically American spellings were invented by Noah Webster, he was influential in popularizing certain spellings in America, but he did not originate them. Rather he chose existing options such as center and check for the simplicity, analogy or etymology". William Shakespeare's first folios, for example, used spellings like center and color as much as centre and colour. Webster did attempt to introduce some reformed spellings, as did the Simplified Spelling Board in the early 20th century, but most were not adopted. In Britain, the influence of those who preferred the Norman spellings of words proved to be decisive.
Spelling adjustments in the United Kingdom had little effect on today's American spellings and vice versa. For the most part, the spelling systems of most Commonwealth countries and Ireland resemble the British system. In Canada, the spelling system can be said to follow both British and American forms, Canadians are somewhat more tolerant of foreign spellings when compared with other English-speaking nationalities. Australian spelling has strayed from British spelling, with some American spellings incorporated as standard. New Zealand spelling is identical to British spelling, except in the word fiord. There is an increasing use of macrons in words that originated in Māori and an unambiguous preference for -ise endings. Most words ending in an unstressed -our in British English end in -or in American English. Wherever the vowel is unreduced in pronunciation, e.g. contour, velour and troubadour the spelling is consistent everywhere. Most words of this kind came from Latin, they were first adopted into English from early Old French, the ending was spelled -or or -ur.
After the Norman conquest of England, the ending became -our to match the Old French spelling. The -our ending was not only used in new English borrowings, but was applied to the earlier borrowings that had used -or. However, -or was still sometimes found, the first three folios of Shakespeare's plays used both spellings before they were standardised to -our in the Fourth Folio of 1685. After the Renaissance, new borrowings from Latin were taken up with their original -or ending and many words once ending in -our went back to -or. Many words of the -our/or group do not have a Latin counterpart; some 16th- and early 17th-century British scholars indeed insisted that -or be used for words from Latin and -our for French loans. Webster's 1828 dictionary had only -or and is given much of the credit for the adoption of this form in the United States. By contrast, Johnson's 1755 dictionary used -our for all words still so spelled in Britain, but for words where the u has since been dropped: ambassadour, governour, inferiour, superiour.
Johnson, unlike Webster, was not an advocate of spelling reform, but chose the spelling best derived, as he saw it, from among the variations in his sources. He preferred French over Latin spellings because, as he put it, "the French supplied us". English speakers who moved to America took these preferences with them, H. L. Mencken notes that "honor appears in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, but it seems to have got there rather by accident than by design. In Jefferson's original draft it is spelled "honour". In Britain, examples of color, behavior and neighbor appear in Old Bailey court records from the 17th and 18th centuries, whereas there are thousands of examples of their -our counterparts. One notable exception is honor. Honor and honour were frequent in Br
World War II
World War II known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries; the major participants threw their entire economic and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China, it included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, the only use of nuclear weapons in war. Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with China by 1937, though neither side had declared war on the other. World War II is said to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom.
From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Finland and the Baltic states. Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, the fall of France in mid 1940, the war continued between the European Axis powers and the British Empire. War in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the long Battle of the Atlantic followed. On 22 June 1941, the European Axis powers launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the largest land theatre of war in history; this Eastern Front trapped most crucially the German Wehrmacht, into a war of attrition. In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States as well as European colonies in the Pacific. Following an immediate U. S. declaration of war against Japan, supported by one from Great Britain, the European Axis powers declared war on the U.
S. in solidarity with their Japanese ally. Rapid Japanese conquests over much of the Western Pacific ensued, perceived by many in Asia as liberation from Western dominance and resulting in the support of several armies from defeated territories; the Axis advance in the Pacific halted in 1942. Key setbacks in 1943, which included a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy, Allied victories in the Pacific, cost the Axis its initiative and forced it into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and turned toward Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in Central China, South China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands; the war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945.
Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, the Soviet entry into the war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria, Japan announced its intention to surrender on 15 August 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies. Tribunals were set up by fiat by the Allies and war crimes trials were conducted in the wake of the war both against the Germans and the Japanese. World War II changed the political social structure of the globe; the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The Soviet Union and United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century long Cold War. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia.
Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic expansion. Political integration in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities and create a common identity; the start of the war in Europe is held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred and the two wars merged in 1941; this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935; the British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the fo
Military
A military is a heavily-armed, highly-organised force intended for warfare known collectively as armed forces. It is officially authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct military uniform, it may consist of one or more military branches such as an Army, Air Force and in certain countries and Coast Guard. The main task of the military is defined as defence of the state and its interests against external armed threats. Beyond warfare, the military may be employed in additional sanctioned and non-sanctioned functions within the state, including internal security threats, population control, the promotion of a political agenda, emergency services and reconstruction, protecting corporate economic interests, social ceremonies and national honor guards. A nation's military may function as a discrete social subculture, with dedicated infrastructure such as military housing, utilities, hospitals, legal services, food production and banking services.
In broad usage, the terms "armed forces" and "military" are treated as synonymous, although in technical usage a distinction is sometimes made in which a country's armed forces may include both its military and other paramilitary forces. There are various forms of irregular military forces; the profession of soldiering as part of a military is older than recorded history itself. Some of the most enduring images of classical antiquity portray the power and feats of its military leaders; the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC was one of the defining points of Pharaoh Ramses II's reign, his monuments commemorate it in bas-relief. A thousand years the first emperor of unified China, Qin Shi Huang, was so determined to impress the gods with his military might that he had himself buried with an army of terracotta soldiers; the Romans paid considerable attention to military matters, leaving to posterity many treatises and writings on the subject, as well as a large number of lavishly carved triumphal arches and victory columns.
Issue: Possibly cognate with Thousand, cf. Latin and Romance language root word "mil-")The first recorded use of the word military in English, spelled militarie, was in 1582, it comes from the Latin militaris through French, but is of uncertain etymology, one suggestion being derived from *mil-it- – going in a body or mass. The word is now identified as denoting someone, skilled in use of weapons, or engaged in military service, or in warfare; as a noun, the military refers to a country's armed forces, or sometimes, more to the senior officers who command them. In general, it refers to the physicality of armed forces, their personnel and the physical area which they occupy; as an adjective, military referred only to soldiers and soldiering, but it soon broadened to apply to land forces in general, anything to do with their profession. The names of both the Royal Military Academy and United States Military Academy reflect this. However, at about the time of the Napoleonic Wars,'military' began to be used in reference to armed forces as a whole, in the 21st century expressions like'military service','military intelligence', and'military history' encompass naval and air force aspects.
As such, it now connotes any activity performed by armed force personnel. Military history is considered to be the history of all conflicts, not just the history of the state militaries, it differs somewhat from the history of war, with military history focusing on the people and institutions of war-making, while the history of war focuses on the evolution of war itself in the face of changing technology and geography. Military history has a number of facets. One main facet is to learn from past accomplishments and mistakes, so as to more wage war in the future. Another is to create a sense of military tradition, used to create cohesive military forces. Still, another may be to learn to prevent wars more effectively. Human knowledge about the military is based on both recorded and oral history of military conflicts, their participating armies and navies and, more air forces. There are two types of military history, although all texts have elements of both: descriptive history, that serves to chronicle conflicts without offering any statements about the causes, nature of conduct, the ending, effects of a conflict.
Despite the growing importance of military technology, military activity depends above all on people. For example, in 2000 the British Army declared: "Man is still the first weapon of war." The military organization is characterized by a strict hierarchy divided by military rank, with ranks grouped as officers, non-commissioned officers, personnel at the lowest rank. While senior officers make strategic decisions, subordinated military personnel fulfil them. Although rank titles vary by military branch and country, the rank hierarchy is common to all state armed forces worldwide. In addition to their rank, personnel occupy one of many trade roles, which are grouped according to
Demobbed (2000 film)
Demobbed is a cult Russian comedy film by Roman Kachanov, offering an absurdistic view on the Russian army by the eyes of a conscript. The brutal rituals of Dedovshchina, a major problem within Russian society, is shown not as a tragedy, but as an idylically insane process of resocialization. Several stars of the Soviet cinema cast in the roles of senior officers. Three young Russians from different walks of life involutarily enter the military to escape their past. 2000 — Demobbed — FIPRESCI Special Mention: «For its humour and for the ironic look on Russian society which allows to overcome tragedies of everyday life and might open doors to the new cinema. 2000 – Russian Guild of Film Critics Best Screenplay. 2000 — Kinotavr Special Jury Prize Demobbed on IMDb FIPRESCI-Awards-2000
Demobilization of United States armed forces after World War II
The Demobilization of United States armed forces after the Second World War began with the defeat of Germany in May 1945 and continued through 1946. The United States had more than 12 million men and women in the armed forces at the end of World War II of whom 7.6 million were stationed abroad. The American public demanded a rapid demobilization and soldiers protested the slowness of the process. Military personnel were returned to the United States in Operation Magic Carpet. By June 30, 1947, the number of active duty soldiers, sailors and airmen in the armed forces had been reduced to 1,566,000. In 1945 as the defeat of Germany and Japan neared, U. S. military personnel numbered 12,209,238 divided among the services as follows: This total represented wartime expansion of the U. S. military from the 334,000 it had numbered in 1939. One hundred thousand men were being drafted per month to replace soldiers in the army who were killed and injured or who were discharged for medical problems; as early as mid-1943, the United States Army had recognized that, once victory was won, bringing the troops home would be a priority.
US soldiers were scattered across 55 theaters of war worldwide. Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall established committees to address the logistical problem. Organization of the operation was given to the War Shipping Administration, it coordinated Operation Magic Carpet. On May 10, 1945, two days after the unconditional surrender of Germany to the allies on V-E Day, the War Department announced a point system for the demobilization and discharge of Army and Army Air Force enlisted personnel; the point system, called the Advanced Service Rating Score, had the objective of achieving equity in the demobilization. Soldiers were given one point for each month of military service and one additional point was given for each month of overseas service; each battle star or decoration earned a soldier 5 points. Soldiers were awarded 12 points per dependent child up to a maximum of three children. A total of 85 points was needed for eligibility. Soldiers who had earned that number of points were to be demobilized as soon as transport back to the United States was available.
Women in the Women's Army Corps were eligible for demobilization with 44 points. The War Department projected demobilizing 2 million soldiers in the 12 months following the victory in Europe: 50 percent of this total were in Europe, 33 percent in the Pacific, 17 percent had returned to the U. S. after an overseas assignment. The U. S. Navy, including the Marine Corps, postponed demobilization until the defeat of Japan; the great majority of Navy and Marine Corps personnel were located in the Pacific region. Some soldiers in designated specialties were declared ineligible for demobilization despite having accumulated 85 points. Officers were not included in the point system for demobilization. On V-E day, 3 million American army men were in Europe. Additional replacement soldiers were in the pipeline to be assigned to Europe although overall force levels had been declining for several months as the war wound down. Army and Army Air Force units in Europe were classified into four categories for the purpose of occupation, redeployment, or demobilization.
Category I consisted of units to remain in Europe. The occupying force for Germany would consist of eight divisions and a total occupying force of 337,000 personnel to be reduced further in June 1946. Category II consisted of units to be re-deployed to the Pacific. About one million soldiers were slated to be sent to the Pacific, including 13 infantry and 2 armored divisions. 400,000 soldiers were to go directly from Europe to the Pacific to arrive between September 1945 and January 1946. About 200,000 air force personnel were to go to the Pacific, either from Europe or the United States. Category III units were to be reorganized and retrained before being reclassified into Category I or II. Category IV units were to be returned to the U. S. to be inactivated or disbanded and personnel discharged. Category IV units consisted of soldiers; the total number of soldiers in Europe to be discharged was planned to be 2.25 million between the end of the war in Europe and December 1946. As departures of soldiers from Europe was to be by units, a massive reshuffling of personnel took place to get soldiers eligible for demobilization into units designated for return to the U.
S. and deactivation. Turnover of personnel in one typical unit, the 28th Infantry Division, was 20 percent for enlisted men in one week and 46 percent for officers in 40 days; this impacted unit cohesion. The demobilization proceeded rapidly. Assembly areas to accommodate 310,000 soldiers were established in France; the soldiers lived in tent cities. In May 1945, 90,000 soldiers were repatriated, but others would have to wait months for transport as the war in the Pacific had first priority for ships and aircraft. Elaborate schemes of education and travel were attempted by the military to maintain morale during the waiting period. Upon arrival in the U. S. soldiers would undergo final out-processing at a number of designated military bases. When Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, the demand for rapid demobilization from soldiers, their families, Congress became unstoppable and all previous plans became moot. Conscription was reduced to 50,000 men per month, less than the military's requiremen
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