Art museum
An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the display of art from the museum's own collection. It might be in public or private ownership and may be accessible to all or have restrictions in place. Although concerned with visual art, art galleries are used as a venue for other cultural exchanges and artistic activities, such as performance arts, music concerts, or poetry readings. Art museums frequently host themed temporary exhibitions which include items on loan from other collections. In distinction to a commercial art gallery, run by an art dealer, the primary purpose of an art museum is not the sale of the items on show. Throughout history and expensive works of art have been commissioned by religious institutions and monarchs and been displayed in temples and palaces. Although these collections of art were private, they were made available for viewing for a portion of the public. In classical times, religious institutions began to function as an early form of art gallery. Wealthy Roman collectors of engraved gems and other precious objects donated their collections to temples.
It is unclear. In Europe, from the Late Medieval period onwards, areas in royal palaces and large country houses of the social elite were made accessible to sections of the public, where art collections could be viewed. At the Palace of Versailles, entrance was restricted to people wearing the proper apparel – the appropriate accessories could be hired from shops outside; the treasuries of cathedrals and large churches, or parts of them, were set out for public display. Many of the grander English country houses could be toured by the respectable for a tip to the housekeeper, during the long periods when the family were not in residence. Special arrangements were made to allow the public to see many royal or private collections placed in galleries, as with most of the paintings of the Orleans Collection, which were housed in a wing of the Palais-Royal in Paris and could be visited for most of the 18th century. In Italy, the art tourism of the Grand Tour became a major industry from the 18th century onwards, cities made efforts to make their key works accessible.
The Capitoline Museums began in 1471 with a donation of classical sculpture to the city of Rome by the Papacy, while the Vatican Museums, whose collections are still owned by the Pope, trace their foundation to 1506, when the discovered Laocoön and His Sons was put on public display. A series of museums on different subjects were opened over subsequent centuries, many of the buildings of the Vatican were purpose-built as galleries. An early royal treasury opened to the public was the Grünes Gewölbe of the Kingdom of Saxony in the 1720s. Established museums open to the public began to be established from the 17th century onwards based around a collection of the cabinet of curiosities type; the first such museum was the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, opened in 1683 to house and display the artefacts of Elias Ashmole that were given to Oxford University in a bequest. In the second half of the eighteenth century, many private collections of art were opened to the public, during and after the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars many royal collections were nationalized where the monarchy remained in place, as in Spain and Bavaria.
In 1753, the British Museum was established and the Old Royal Library collection of manuscripts was donated to it for public viewing. In 1777, a proposal to the British government was put forward by MP John Wilkes to buy the art collection of the late Sir Robert Walpole who had amassed one of the greatest such collections in Europe, house it in a specially built wing of the British Museum for public viewing. After much debate, the idea was abandoned due to the great expense, twenty years the collection was bought by Tsaritsa Catherine the Great of Russia and housed in the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg; the Bavarian royal collection was opened to the public in 1779 and the Medici collection in Florence around 1789. The opening of the Musée du Louvre during the French Revolution in 1793 as a public museum for much of the former French royal collection marked an important stage in the development of public access to art by transferring the ownership to a republican state; the building now occupied by the Prado in Madrid was built before the French Revolution for the public display of parts of the royal art collection, similar royal galleries were opened to the public in Vienna and other capitals.
In Great Britain, the corresponding Royal Collection remained in the private hands of the monarch and the first purpose-built national art galleries were the Dulwich Picture Gallery, founded in 1814 and the National Gallery opened to the public a decade in 1824. University art museums and galleries constitute collections of art developed and maintained by all kinds of schools, community colleges and universities; this phenomenon exists in the East, making it a global practice. Although overlooked, there are over 700 university art museums in the US alone; this number, compared to other kinds of art museums, makes university art museums the largest category of art museums in the country. While the first of these collections can be traced to learning collections developed in art academies in Western Europe, they are now associated with and housed in centers of higher education of all types; the word gallery being an archite
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
Kiyonori Kikutake
Kiyonori Kikutake was a prominent Japanese architect known as one of the founders of the Japanese Metabolist group. He was the tutor and employer of several important Japanese architects, such as Toyo Ito, Shōzō Uchii and Itsuko Hasegawa. Kikutake was born in 1928 in Kurume and graduated from Waseda University in 1950. Kikutake is best known for his "Marine City" project of 1958, which formed part of the Metabolist Manifesto launched at the World Design Conference in Tokyo in 1960 under the leadership of Kenzo Tange. He, along with fellow member Kisho Kurokawa was invited to exhibit work at the "Visionary Architecture" exhibition in New York of 1961, through which the Metabolists gained international recognition. Kikutake continued his practice until his death in 2011, producing several key public buildings throughout Japan, as well as lecturing internationally, he was the President and Honorary President of the Japan Institute of Architects. Kikutake was the recipient of numerous awards both in his native Japan and internationally.
These include the Japan Academy of the UIA Auguste Perret Prize. Sky House, Tokyo, 1958 Marine City, 1958 Tatebayashi Civic Centre, Gumma, 1963 Administrative building of Izumo Shrine, Shimane, 1963 Pacific Hotel Chigasaki, Kanagawa, 1966 Miyakonojo Civic Hall, Miyazaki, 1966 Expo Tower, Expo'70, Osaka, 1969 Matsumi Tower, Ibaraki, 1976 Tanabe Art Museum, Shimane, 1979 Hotel Seiyo Ginza, Tokyo, 1987 Edo-Tokyo Museum, Tokyo, 1993 Hotel Sofitel Tokyo, Tokyo, 1994 Kitaya Inari Shrine, Tokyo, 1997 Shimane Art Museum, Shimane, 1999 National Showa Memorial Museum, Tokyo, 1999 Kyushu National Museum, Fukuoka, 2005 Kisho Kurokawa, "The Origin and History of the Metabolist Movement" - Charles Jencks, Kisho Kurokawa. Studio Vista, 1976 Botond Bognar, "Beyond the Bubble: Contemporary Japanese Architecture".
Dazaifu, Fukuoka
Dazaifu is a city located in Fukuoka Prefecture, part of the greater Fukuoka metropolitan area. Nearby cities include Chikushino. Although mountainous, it does have arable land used for paddy fields and market gardening; as of October 2018, the city has an estimated population of 72,231 with 29,355 households and a population density of 2,440 persons per km². The total area is 29.58 km². The city was founded on April 1, 1982, although it has been important for more than a thousand years, it was a administrative capital of Fukuoka at around 663 CE. Dazaifu was the imperial office governing Kyūshū after it was moved from present-day Fukuoka City in 663. According to the Taiho Code of 701, an attempt by the Yamato state to exert further control over its territories, Dazaifu was given two principal administrative functions: to supervise the affairs of Tsukushi and to receive foreign emissaries. Dazaifu hosted foreign embassies from Korea. Kōrokan, a guesthouse for foreign embassies, was established.
The Korokan featured in contemporary literature, such as the Man'yōshū, as a place of departure for ocean voyages. From the Nara period through the Heian period and until the Kamakura period, Dazaifu was one of the military and administrative centers of Japan. Government records indicate that the disastrous Japanese smallpox epidemic that took place from 735 to 737 first took hold in Dazaifu. In the Heian period, Dazaifu was a place of exile for high-ranking courtiers. Nobles exiled, his grave is at Dazaifu Tenman-gū. Dazaifu was sometimes attacked by rebels. At other times the head of Dazaifu himself raised a rebellion. In 739 the powerful nobleman Fujiwara Hirotsugu was appointed to Dazaifu, he soon organised a rebellion. After three months, the uprising was suppressed by 17,000 court troops. In 939 another nobleman, Fujiwara Sumitomo, rebelled against the court. Allying himself with pirates, in 941 he landed in Kyushu, he defeated the troops guarding Dazaifu and burned the state buildings. Due to this and other developments, Dazaifu never regained its earlier prestige.
With the invasions of the Mongols and the decline of imperial authority, Dazaifu became less politically significant. In the Muromachi period the political center of Kyūshū was moved to Hakata. In medieval times, Dazaifu was the base of the Shōni clan; the Shōni were expelled by the Ōuchi clan. In the Edo period, Dazaifu was a part of the Kuroda han until its abolition in 1873; the Kyushu National Museum opened on October 16, 2005. A wood and glass building in a hilly landscape, it hosts collections of Japanese artifacts related to the history of Kyūshū. Kōmyōzen-ji is a Zen temple famous for its stone garden, it was built during the Kamakura period just next to Dazaifu Tenman-gū. Another temple, Kanzeon-ji, was built in the 8th century, it was once the chief Buddhist temple on Kyūshū and houses a number of historical and religious treasures. All three are within walking distance of Nishitetsu Dazaifu Station; the ruins of the medieval Dazaifu Administrative Buildings located within walking distance of Dazaifu Station, are today a public park.
There is small museum about Sugawara no Michizane, who died in exile in Dazaifu in 903. The starbucks coffeeshop in Dazaifu has a unique design by Kengo Kuma. There are several universities in the city: Chikushi Jogakuen University Fukuoka International University Fukuoka University of Economics Fukuoka Social Medical Welfare UniversityArea primary and junior high schools are administered by the Dazaifu Board of Education. Dazaifu Minami Elementary School Dazaifu Higashi Elementary School Dazaifu Nishi Elementary School Dazaifu Elementary School Mizuki Nishi Elementary School Mizuki Elementary School Kokubu Elementary School Gakugyouin Junior High School Dazaifu Higashi Junior High School Dazaifu Nishi Junior High School Dazaifu Junior High SchoolThe prefecture operates senior high schools Chikushidai High School Fukuoka Prefectural Dazaifu High School Dazaifu Dazaifu Line Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric and Käthe Roth.. Japan encyclopedia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-01753-5.
Integrated Authority File
The Integrated Authority File or GND is an international authority file for the organisation of personal names, subject headings and corporate bodies from catalogues. It is used for documentation in libraries and also by archives and museums; the GND is managed by the German National Library in cooperation with various regional library networks in German-speaking Europe and other partners. The GND falls under the Creative Commons Zero licence; the GND specification provides a hierarchy of high-level entities and sub-classes, useful in library classification, an approach to unambiguous identification of single elements. It comprises an ontology intended for knowledge representation in the semantic web, available in the RDF format; the Integrated Authority File became operational in April 2012 and integrates the content of the following authority files, which have since been discontinued: Name Authority File Corporate Bodies Authority File Subject Headings Authority File Uniform Title File of the Deutsches Musikarchiv At the time of its introduction on 5 April 2012, the GND held 9,493,860 files, including 2,650,000 personalised names.
There are seven main types of GND entities: LIBRIS Virtual International Authority File Information pages about the GND from the German National Library Search via OGND Bereitstellung des ersten GND-Grundbestandes DNB, 19 April 2012 From Authority Control to Linked Authority Data Presentation given by Reinhold Heuvelmann to the ALA MARC Formats Interest Group, June 2012
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
Fukuoka
Fukuoka is the capital city of Fukuoka Prefecture, situated on the northern shore of Japanese island Kyushu. It is the most populous city on the island, followed by Kitakyushu, it is the largest city and metropolitan area west of Keihanshin. The city was designated on April 1972, by government ordinance. Greater Fukuoka, with a population of 2.5 million people, is part of the industrialized Fukuoka–Kitakyushu zone. As of 2015, Fukuoka is Japan's sixth largest city. In July 2011, Fukuoka surpassed the population of Kyoto. Since the founding of Kyoto in 794, this marks the first time that a city west of the Kinki region has a larger population than Kyoto. In ancient times, the area near Fukuoka, the Chikushi region, was thought by some historians to have been more influential than the Yamato region. Exchanges from the continent and the Northern Kyushu area date as far back as Old Stone Age, it has been thought. Several Kofun exist. Fukuoka was sometimes called the Port of Dazaifu, 15 km southeast from Fukuoka.
Dazaifu was an administrative capital in 663 A. D. but a historian proposed. Ancient texts, such as the Kojiki and archaeology confirm this was a critical place in the founding of Japan; some scholars claim that it was the first place outsiders and the Imperial Family set foot, but like many early Japan origin theories, it remains contested. Central Fukuoka is sometimes still referred as Hakata, the name of the central ward. In 923, the Hakozaki-gū in Fukuoka was transferred from Daibu-gū in Daibu, 16 km northeast from Dazaifu, the origin of Usa Shrine and established as a branch of the Usa Shrine at Fukuoka. In Ooho, 15 km south from Dazaifu, there are remains of a big ward office with a temple, because in ancient East Asia, an emperor must have three great ministries. In fact, there is a record in Chinese literature that a king of Japan sent a letter in 478 to ask the Chinese emperor's approval for employing three ministries. In addition, remains of the Korokan were found in Fukuoka underneath a part of the ruins of Fukuoka Castle.
Kublai Khan of the Mongol Empire turned his attention towards Japan starting in 1268, exerting a new external pressure on Japan with which it had no experience. Kublai Khan first sent an envoy to Japan to make the Shogunate acknowledge Khan's suzerainty; the Kamakura shogunate refused. Mongolia sent envoys thereafter, each time urging the Shogunate to accept their proposal, but to no avail. In 1274, Kublai Khan mounted an invasion of the northern part of Kyushu with a fleet of 900 ships and 33,000 troops, including troops from Goryeo on the Korean Peninsula; this initial invasion was compromised by a combination of incompetence and severe storms. After the invasion attempt of 1274, Japanese samurai built a stone barrier 20 km in length bordering the coast of Hakata Bay in what is now the city of Fukuoka; the wall, 2–3 metres in height and having a base width of 3 metres, was constructed between 1276 and 1277, was excavated in the 1930s. Kublai sent another envoy to Japan in 1279. At that time, Hōjō Tokimune of the Hōjō clan was the Eighth Regent.
Not only did he decline the offer, but he beheaded the five Mongolian emissaries after summoning them to Kamakura. Infuriated, Kublai organized another attack on Fukuoka Prefecture in 1281, mobilizing 140,000 soldiers and 4,000 ships; the Japanese defenders, numbering around 40,000, were no match for the Mongols and the invasion force made it as far as Dazaifu, 15 km south of the city of Fukuoka. However, the Japanese were again aided by severe weather, this time by a typhoon that struck a crushing blow to the Mongolian troops, thwarting the invasion, it was this typhoon that came to be called the Kamikaze, was the origin of the term Kamikaze used to indicate suicide attacks by military aviators of the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels during World War II. Fukuoka was the residence of the powerful daimyō of Chikuzen Province, played an important part in the medieval history of Japan; the renowned temple of Tokugawa Ieyasu in the district was destroyed by fire during the Boshin War of 1868.
The modern city was formed on April 1, 1889, with the merger of the former cities of Hakata and Fukuoka. Hakata was the port and merchant district, was more associated with the area's culture and remains the main commercial area today. On the other hand, the Fukuoka area was home to many samurai, its name has been used since Kuroda Nagamasa, the first daimyō of Chikuzen Province, named it after his birthplace in Okayama Prefecture and the "old Fukuoka" is the main shopping area, now called Tenjin; when Hakata and Fukuoka decided to merge, a meeting was held to decide the name for the new city. Hakata was chosen, but a group of samurai crashed the meeting and forced those present to choose Fukuoka as the name for the merged city. However, Hakata is still used to refer to the Hakata area of the city and, most famously, to refer to the city's train station, Hakata Station, dialect, Hakata-ben. 1903: Fukuoka Medical College, a campus associated with Kyoto Imperial University, is founded. In 1911, the college is established as a separate entity.
1910: Fukuoka streetcar service begins. 1929: Flights commence along the Fukuoka-Osaka-Tokyo route. 1945: Fukuoka was firebombed on 19 June, with the attack destroying 21.5 percent of the city's urban area. 1947: First Fukuoka Marathon. 1951: F
