1.
Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto
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Higashiyama is one of the eleven wards in the city of Kyoto, in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. It was created in 1929 when it was split off from Shimogyō-ku, during the years 1931 to 1976 it also covered the area of present-day Yamashina-ku, which was an independent town until its merger into the city in 1931. The name literally means Eastern Mountain District, due to the restrictions against urban development, the population inside the ward is continually decreasing. Higashiyama-ku has the lowest population of all the wards in Kyoto, interposed between the Kamo River and the Higashiyama mountain range, Higashiyama-ku is roughly bounded by the Sanjō street in the north, and the Jūjō street in the south. Historically, this area lay outside the boundaries of the city of Kyoto. The western part consists mainly of residential areas, whereas the part is covered by forests. In the north, between the Kamo River and Higashi-oji street, there is a district, and in the south there is a semi-industrial zone. Many of the central to the development of 15th-century Japanese culture known as Higashiyama Bunka are found here or in Sakyō-ku. Other temples and shrines in the ward include Tōfuku-ji, Kennin-ji, Kōdai-ji, the Kyoto National Museum is also located inside Higashiyama-ku, as well as the Namikawa Cloisonne Museum. Kyoto Womens University Kyoto Kacho University Kacho College Educational Foundation Kyoto International School is in the ward, kyoto/Higashiyama travel guide from Wikivoyage Media related to Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto at Wikimedia Commons Official website
2.
Kyoto
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Kyoto is a city located in the central part of the island of Honshu, Japan. It has a close to 1.5 million. Kyoto is also known as the thousand-year capital, in Japanese, the city has been called Kyō, Miyako, or Kyō no Miyako. In the 11th century, the city was renamed Kyoto, after the Chinese word for capital city, after the city of Edo was renamed Tokyo in 1868, and the seat of the Emperor was transferred there, Kyoto was known for a short time as Saikyō. Obsolete spellings for the name include Kioto, Miaco and Meaco. Another term commonly used to refer to the city in the period was Keishi. His last choice for the site was the village of Uda, the new city, Heian-kyō, a scaled replica of the then Tang capital Changan, became the seat of Japans imperial court in 794, beginning the Heian period of Japanese history. The city suffered destruction in the Ōnin War of 1467–1477. Battles between samurai factions spilled into the streets, and came to involve the court nobility and religious factions as well, nobles mansions were transformed into fortresses, deep trenches dug throughout the city for defense and as firebreaks, and numerous buildings burned. The city has not seen such widespread destruction since, Hideyoshi also built earthwork walls called odoi encircling the city. Teramachi Street in central Kyoto is a Buddhist temple quarter where Hideyoshi gathered temples in the city, throughout the Edo period, the economy of the city flourished as one of three major cities in Japan, the others being Osaka and Edo. The Hamaguri rebellion of 1864 burnt down 28,000 houses in the city, the modern city of Kyoto was formed on April 1,1889. The construction of Lake Biwa Canal in 1890 is one taken to revive the city. The population of the city exceeded one million in 1932, stimson, Secretary of War in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, the city was removed from the list of targets and replaced by Nagasaki. The city was spared from conventional bombing as well, although small-scale air raids did result in casualties. As a result, the Imperial City of Kyoto is one of the few Japanese cities that still have an abundance of prewar buildings, however, modernization is continually breaking down the traditional Kyoto in favor of newer architecture, such as the Kyōto Station complex. Kyoto became a city designated by government ordinance on September 1,1956, in 1997, Kyoto hosted the conference that resulted in the protocol on greenhouse gas emissions that bears the citys name. Kyoto is located in a valley, part of the Yamashiro Basin, in the part of the mountainous region known as the Tamba highlands
3.
Kyoto Prefecture
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Kyoto Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan in the Kansai region of the island of Honshu. The capital is the city of Kyoto, until the Meiji Restoration, the area of Kyoto Prefecture was known as Yamashiro. For most of its history, the city of Kyoto was Japans Imperial capital, the citys history can be traced back as far as the 6th century. In 544, the Aoi Matsuri was held in Kyoto to pray for good harvest, Kyoto did not start out as Japans capital. A noteworthy earlier capital was Nara, in 741, Emperor Shōmu moved the capital briefly to Kuni-kyo, between the cities of Nara and Kyoto, in present-day Kyoto Prefecture. In 784, the capital was moved to Nagaokakyō, also in present-day Kyoto Prefecture, in 794, Emperor Kanmu moved the capital to Heian-kyo, and this was the beginning of the current-day city of Kyoto. Even today, almost all of the streets, houses, stores, temples and shrines in Kyoto exist where they were placed in this year, Imperial rule was briefly restored in 1333, but another samurai clan established a new shogunate in Kyoto three years later. In 1467, a civil war, the Ōnin no Ran, took place inside Kyoto. Japan plunged into the age of warring feudal lords, a new strong man, Tokugawa Ieyasu, established the shogunate at Edo in 1603. In the 15th century AD, tea-jars were brought by the shoguns to Uji in Kyoto from the Philippines which was used in the Japanese tea ceremony, the Meiji Restoration returned Japan to imperial rule in 1868. Emperor Meiji, who was now the absolute sovereign, went to stay in Tokyo during the next year, the imperial court has not returned to Kyoto since then. During the instigation of Fuhanken Sanchisei in 1868, the received its suffix fu. The subsequent reorganization of the old provincial system merged the former Tango Province, Yamashiro Province, although many Japanese major cities were heavily bombed by U. S. bombers during World War II, the old capital escaped such devastating bombing. Sixth Army was headquartered in Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture is almost in the center of Honshu and of Japan. It covers an area of 4,612.71 square kilometres, to the north, it faces the Sea of Japan and Fukui Prefecture. To the south, it faces Osaka and Nara Prefectures, to the east, it faces Mie and Shiga Prefectures. To the west, it faces Hyōgo Prefecture, the prefecture is separated in the middle by the Tanba Mountains. This makes its climate very different in the north and south, fifteen cities are located in Kyoto Prefecture, These are the towns and villages in each district, The city of Kyoto is famous for tourism
4.
Deity
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A deity is a concept conceived in diverse ways in various cultures, typically as a natural or supernatural being considered divine or sacred. A male deity is a god, while a female deity is a goddess, the Oxford reference defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. Various cultures have conceptualized a deity differently than a monotheistic God, a plain deity need not be omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, or eternal, however an almighty monotheistic God generally does have these attributes. Monotheistic religions typically refer to God in masculine terms, while other religions refer to their deities in a variety of ways – masculine, feminine, androgynous, some Avestan and Vedic deities were viewed as ethical concepts. In Indian religions, deities have been envisioned as manifesting within the temple of every living beings body, as sensory organs, but in Indian religions, all deities are also subject to death when their merit runs out. The English language word deity derives from Old French deité, the Latin deitatem or divine nature, deus is related through a common Proto-Indo-European language origin to *deiwos. Deva is masculine, and the feminine equivalent is devi. Etymologically, the cognates of Devi are Latin dea and Greek thea, in Old Persian, daiva- means demon, evil god, while in Sanskrit it means the opposite, referring to the heavenly, divine, terrestrial things of high excellence, exalted, shining ones. The closely linked term god refers to supreme being, deity, which states Douglas Harper, is derived from Proto-Germanic *guthan, from PIE *ghut-, guth in the Irish language means voice. The term *ghut- is also the source of Old Church Slavonic zovo, Sanskrit huta-, from the root *gheu- An alternate etymology for the term god traces it to the PIE root *ghu-to-, the term *gheu- is also the source of the Greek khein to pour. Originally the German root was a noun, but the gender of the monotheistic God shifted to masculine under the influence of Christianity. In contrast, all ancient Indo-European cultures and mythologies recognized both masculine and feminine deities, the term deity often connotes the concept of sacred or divine, as a god or goddess, in a polytheistic religion. However, there is no accepted consensus concept of deity across religions and cultures. Huw Owen states that the deity or god or its equivalent in other languages has a bewildering range of meanings. Some engravings or sketches show animals, hunters or rituals, the Venus of Willendorf, a female figurine found in Europe and dated to about 25,000 BCE has been interpreted as an exemplar of a prehistoric divine feminine. In Buddhist mythology, devas are beings inhabiting certain happily placed worlds of Buddhist cosmology and these beings are mortal and numerous. It is also common for iṣṭadevatās to be called deities, although the nature of Yidams is distinct from what is meant by the term. Buddhism does not believe in a creator deity, however, deities are an essential part of Buddhist cosmology, rebirth and Saṃsāra doctrines
5.
Sakanoue no Tamuramaro
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Sakanoue no Tamuramaro was a general and shogun of the early Heian period of Japan. He was the son of Sakanoue no Karitamaro, serving Emperor Kanmu, he was appointed shogun and given the task of conquering the Emishi, a people native to the north of Honshū, which he subjugated. However, many Emishi remained in the Tōhoku region as subjects of the expanding Japanese Empire, after Emperor Kammus death, the general continued to serve Emperor Heizei and Emperor Saga as Major Counselor and Minister of War. He was the man to be given the title of shogun. The first to receive this title was Ōtomo no Otomaro and these annual matsuri are called the Nebuta festival in Aomori City and Neputa festival in Hirosaki City. They feature a number of gigantic, specially-constructed, illuminated paper floats and these huge festival structures are colorfully painted with mythical figures, and teams of men carry them through the streets as crowds shout encouragement. Aomoris great nebuta lanterns are said to back to Tamuramaros innovative strategy in that early ninth century campaign. Until the mid-1990s the prize awarded for the best float of the parades was called the Tamuramaro Prize, however, there is no historical record that Tamuramaro went farther north than Iwate Prefecture. Tamuramaros name is linked with payments for construction projects at Kiyomizu Temple in the late 8th century and his bow, arrows, quiver and sword were placed in his coffin by order of the Emperor. According to the Shoku Nihongi, an historical record, The Sakanoue clan is descended from Emperor Ling of Han China. The Sakanoue clans family tree shows that Tamuramaro is a 14th-generation descendant of Ling. 000261°N135. 787655°E /35.000261,135.787655
6.
Kanji
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Kanji, or kanji, are the adopted logographic Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana and katakana. The Japanese term kanji for the Chinese characters literally means Han characters and is using the same characters as the Chinese word hànzì. Chinese characters first came to Japan on official seals, letters, swords, coins, mirrors, the earliest known instance of such an import was the King of Na gold seal given by Emperor Guangwu of Han to a Yamato emissary in 57 AD. Chinese coins from the first century AD have been found in Yayoi-period archaeological sites, however, the Japanese of that era probably had no comprehension of the script, and would remain illiterate until the fifth century AD. The earliest Japanese documents were written by bilingual Chinese or Korean officials employed at the Yamato court. For example, the correspondence from King Bu of Wa to Emperor Shun of Liu Song in 478 has been praised for its skillful use of allusion. Later, groups of people called fuhito were organized under the monarch to read, during the reign of Empress Suiko, the Yamato court began sending full-scale diplomatic missions to China, which resulted in a large increase in Chinese literacy at the Japanese court. The Japanese language had no form at the time Chinese characters were introduced. Chinese characters also came to be used to write Japanese words, around 650 CE, a writing system called manyōgana evolved that used a number of Chinese characters for their sound, rather than for their meaning. Manyōgana written in cursive style evolved into hiragana, or onna-de, that is, ladies hand, major works of Heian-era literature by women were written in hiragana. Katakana emerged via a path, monastery students simplified manyōgana to a single constituent element. Thus the two writing systems, hiragana and katakana, referred to collectively as kana, are descended from kanji. Katakana are mostly used for representing onomatopoeia, non-Japanese loanwords, the names of plants and animals, and for emphasis on certain words. In 1946, following World War II and under the Allied Occupation of Japan and this was done with the goal of facilitating learning for children and simplifying kanji use in literature and periodicals. The number of characters in circulation was reduced, and formal lists of characters to be learned during each grade of school were established, some characters were given simplified glyphs, called shinjitai. Many variant forms of characters and obscure alternatives for common characters were officially discouraged and these are simply guidelines, so many characters outside these standards are still widely known and commonly used, these are known as hyōgaiji. The kyōiku kanji are 1,006 characters that Japanese children learn in elementary school, originally the list only contained 881 characters. This was expanded to 996 characters in 1977 and it was not until 1982 the list was expanded to its current size
7.
Hiragana
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Hiragana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and in some cases rōmaji. It is a lettering system. The word hiragana literally means ordinary or simple kana, Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems. With one or two exceptions, each sound in the Japanese language is represented by one character in each system. Because the characters of the kana do not represent single consonants, words that do have common kanji renditions may also sometimes be written instead in hiragana, according to an individual authors preference, for example to impart an informal feel. Hiragana is also used to write furigana, a reading aid that shows the pronunciation of kanji characters, There are two main systems of ordering hiragana, the old-fashioned iroha ordering and the more prevalent gojūon ordering. Of the 50 theoretically possible combinations, yi and wu do not exist in the language, wo is usually pronounced as a vowel in modern Japanese, and is preserved in only one use, as a particle. Romanization of the kana does not always follow the consonant-vowel scheme laid out in the table. For example, ち, nominally ti, is very often romanised as chi in an attempt to represent the actual sound in Japanese. These basic characters can be modified in various ways, by adding a dakuten marker, a voiceless consonant is turned into a voiced consonant, k→g, ts/s→z, t→d, h→b and ch/sh→j. Hiragana beginning with an h can also add a handakuten marker changing the h to a p, a small version of the hiragana for ya, yu or yo may be added to hiragana ending in i. This changes the i vowel sound to a glide to a, u or o, for example, き plus ゃ becomes きゃ. Addition of the small y kana is called yōon, a small tsu っ, called a sokuon, indicates that the following consonant is geminated. In Japanese this is an important distinction in pronunciation, for example, the sokuon also sometimes appears at the end of utterances, where it denotes a glottal stop, as in いてっ. However, it cannot be used to double the na, ni, nu, ne, no syllables consonants – to double these, Hiragana usually spells long vowels with the addition of a second vowel kana, for example, おかあさん. In informal writing, small versions of the five vowel kana are used to represent trailing off sounds. Standard and voiced iteration marks are written in hiragana as ゝ and ゞ respectively, the following table shows the complete hiragana together with the Hepburn romanization and IPA transcription in the gojūon order. Hiragana with dakuten or handakuten follow the gojūon kana without them, obsolete and normally unused kana are shown in gray
8.
Romanization of Japanese
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The romanization of Japanese is the application of the Latin script to write the Japanese language. This method of writing is referred to in English as rōmaji. There are several different romanization systems, the three main ones are Hepburn romanization, Kunrei-shiki romanization, and Nihon-shiki romanization. Variants of the Hepburn system are the most widely used, Japanese is normally written in a combination of logographic characters borrowed from Chinese and syllabic scripts which also ultimately derive from Chinese characters. It is also used to transliterate Japanese terms in text written in English on topics related to Japan, such as linguistics, literature, history, and culture. Rōmaji is the most common way to input Japanese into word processors and computers, all Japanese who have attended elementary school since World War II have been taught to read and write romanized Japanese. The word rōmaji literally means Roman letters, and in Japan it is often used to refer to the Latin alphabet itself than to any specific form of romanized Japanese. The earliest Japanese romanization system was based on the Portuguese orthography and it was developed around 1548 by a Japanese Catholic named Yajiro. Jesuit priests used the system in a series of printed Catholic books so that missionaries could preach and teach their converts without learning to read Japanese orthography. The most useful of these books for the study of early modern Japanese pronunciation and early attempts at romanization was the Nippo jisho, in general, the early Portuguese system was similar to Nihon-shiki in its treatment of vowels. The latter continued to be printed and read after the suppression of Christianity in Japan, the Hepburn system included representation of some sounds that have since changed. The Nihon-shiki romanization was an outgrowth of that movement, several Japanese texts were published entirely in rōmaji during this period, but it failed to catch on. Today, the use of Nihon-shiki for writing Japanese is advocated by the Oomoto sect, during the Allied occupation of Japan, the government of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers made it official policy to romanize Japanese. However, that failed and a more moderate attempt at Japanese script reform followed. Hepburn romanization generally follows English phonology with Romance vowels and it is an intuitive method of showing Anglophones the pronunciation of a word in Japanese. It was standardized in the USA as American National Standard System for the Romanization of Japanese, Hepburn is the most common romanization system in use today, especially in the English-speaking world. The Revised Hepburn system of romanization uses a macron to indicate long vowels. For example, the name じゅんいちろう, is written with the kana characters ju-n-i-chi-ro-u, without the apostrophe, it would not be possible to distinguish this correct reading from the incorrect ju-ni-chi-ro-u
9.
Buddhism
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Buddhism is a religion and dharma that encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and spiritual practices largely based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. Buddhism originated in India sometime between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE, from where it spread through much of Asia, two major extant branches of Buddhism are generally recognized by scholars, Theravada and Mahayana. Buddhism is the worlds fourth-largest religion, with over 500 million followers or 7% of the global population, Buddhist schools vary on the exact nature of the path to liberation, the importance and canonicity of various teachings and scriptures, and especially their respective practices. In Theravada the ultimate goal is the attainment of the state of Nirvana, achieved by practicing the Noble Eightfold Path, thus escaping what is seen as a cycle of suffering. Theravada has a following in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Mahayana, which includes the traditions of Pure Land, Zen, Nichiren Buddhism, Shingon, rather than Nirvana, Mahayana instead aspires to Buddhahood via the bodhisattva path, a state wherein one remains in the cycle of rebirth to help other beings reach awakening. Vajrayana, a body of teachings attributed to Indian siddhas, may be viewed as a branch or merely a part of Mahayana. Tibetan Buddhism, which preserves the Vajrayana teachings of eighth century India, is practiced in regions surrounding the Himalayas, Tibetan Buddhism aspires to Buddhahood or rainbow body. Buddhism is an Indian religion attributed to the teachings of Buddha, the details of Buddhas life are mentioned in many early Buddhist texts but are inconsistent, his social background and life details are difficult to prove, the precise dates uncertain. Some hagiographic legends state that his father was a king named Suddhodana, his mother queen Maya, and he was born in Lumbini gardens. Some of the stories about Buddha, his life, his teachings, Buddha was moved by the innate suffering of humanity. He meditated on this alone for a period of time, in various ways including asceticism, on the nature of suffering. He famously sat in meditation under a Ficus religiosa tree now called the Bodhi Tree in the town of Bodh Gaya in Gangetic plains region of South Asia. He reached enlightenment, discovering what Buddhists call the Middle Way, as an enlightened being, he attracted followers and founded a Sangha. Now, as the Buddha, he spent the rest of his teaching the Dharma he had discovered. Dukkha is a concept of Buddhism and part of its Four Noble Truths doctrine. It can be translated as incapable of satisfying, the unsatisfactory nature, the Four Truths express the basic orientation of Buddhism, we crave and cling to impermanent states and things, which is dukkha, incapable of satisfying and painful. This keeps us caught in saṃsāra, the cycle of repeated rebirth, dukkha
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