1.
Chiba Prefecture
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Chiba Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region and the Greater Tokyo Area. The sixth most populous prefecture, and 27th largest by area, Chiba is on the east coast of Honshu and largely consists of the Bōsō Peninsula. The name of Chiba Prefecture in Japanese is formed from two kanji characters, the first, 千, means thousand and the second, 葉 means leaves. The name first appears as an ancient kuni no miyatsuko, or regional command office, the name was adopted by a branch of the Taira clan, which moved to the area in present-day Chiba City in the late Heian period. The branch of the Taira adopted the name and became the Chiba clan and this compound is used in terms such as the Keiyō Line, Keiyō Road, Keiyō Rinkai Railway Rinkai Main Line, and the Keiyō Industrial Zone. Chiba Prefecture was settled in times, as evidenced by the Jōmon period remains in every part of the region. The prefecture holds the largest kaizuka sea shell mounds in Japan, evidence of a population in the prefecture that relied on the rich marine products of the Pacific Ocean. Kofun burial mounds are found across the prefecture, with the largest group being in Futtsu along Tokyo Bay, in the Asuka period, under the Taika Reform of 645, the administrative structure of present-day Chiba Prefecture changed significantly. Awa Province at the south of Chiba Prefecture, was separated from Kazusa Prefecture in 718 and these administrative units existed until they were abolished and merged into Chiba Prefecture after the Meiji restoration. The central government established a provincial temple in each province. The imperial court gradually extended its authority over the three provinces in the Nara and Heian periods, shōen feudal estates were established across the three provinces, and the region became an important source of tax revenue, agricultural and other products to the capital in Kyoto. As the Heian period progressed, however, the provincial governors came to exert military power independent of the central government in Kyoto. The Chiba clan broke entirely with the court and was instrumental in the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate. Chiba Prefecture was established on June 15,1873 with the merger of Kisarazu Prefecture, the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake caused widespread destruction in Chiba Prefecture, notably in the southernmost part of the Bōsō Peninsula, where 1,300 residents were killed. Koreans in several neighborhoods of Yachiyo were killed, and a tower was erected in 1972 near Yachiyodai Station to memorialize those killed in the incident, the militarization of Chiba Prefecture dates to the Russo-Japanese War. Coastal fortifications were built along Tokyo Bay as far south as Tateyama to protect the capital of the Japanese Empire from attack, after the United States took control of Saipan the northern part of the prefecture, most notably the city of Chiba and Chōshi, were firebombed. Much of the north of the prefecture was destroyed. Operation Coronet, one of two parts of Operation Downfall, was the land invasion of Tokyo in March 1946 by the United States
2.
Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. 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 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
3.
Prunus mume
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Prunus mume is an Asian tree species classified in the Armeniaca section of the genus Prunus subgenus Prunus. Its common names include Chinese plum and Japanese apricot, the flower is usually called plum blossom. This distinct tree species is related to both the plum and apricot trees, although generally referred to as a plum in English, it is more closely related to the apricot. In Chinese, Japanese and Korean cooking, the fruit of the tree is used in juices, as a flavouring for alcohol, as a pickle and it is also used in traditional medicine. The trees flowering in winter and early spring is highly regarded as a seasonal symbol. Prunus mume originated in the south of mainland China around the Yangtze River and was introduced to Japan, Korea, Taiwan. It can be found in forests, stream sides, forested slopes along trails and mountains, sometimes at altitudes up to 1, 700–3,100 metres. Prunus mume is a tree that starts to flower in mid-winter. It can grow to 4–10 metres tall, the flowers are 2–2.5 centimetres in diameter and have a strong fragrant scent. They have colors in varying shades of white, pink, the leaves appear shortly after the petals fall, are oval-shaped with a pointed tip, and are 4–8 cm long and 2. 5–5 cm wide. The fruit ripens in summer, around June and July in East Asia, and coincides with the rainy season of East Asia. The drupe is 2–3 centimetres in diameter with a running from the stalk to the tip. The skin turns yellow, sometimes with a red blush, as it ripens, the tree is cultivated for its fruit and flowers. The plant is known by a number of different names in English, including Chinese plum, an alternative name is ume, from Japanese, or mume, from the scientific name. Another alternative name is mei, from the Chinese name, the flower is known as the meihua in Chinese, which came to be translated as plum blossom or sometimes as flowering plum. The term winter plum may be used too, specifically with regard to the depiction of the flower with its early blooming in Chinese painting, in Chinese it is called méi and the fruit is called méizi. The Japanese name is ume, while the Korean name is maesil, the Japanese and Korean terms derive from Middle Chinese, in which the pronunciation is thought to have been muəi. The Vietnamese name is mai or mơ, ornamental tree varieties and cultivars of P. mume have been cultivated for planting in various gardens throughout East Asia, and for cut blossoming branches used in flower arrangements
4.
Narcissus (plant)
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Narcissus /nɑːrˈsɪsəs/ is a genus of predominantly spring perennial plants in the Amaryllidaceae family. Various common names including daffodil, daffadowndilly, narcissus, and jonquil are used to all or some members of the genus. Narcissus has conspicuous flowers with six petal-like tepals surmounted by a cup- or trumpet-shaped corona, the flowers are generally white or yellow, with either uniform or contrasting coloured tepals and corona. Narcissus were well known in ancient civilisation, both medicinally and botanically, but formally described by Linnaeus in his Species Plantarum, the genus is generally considered to have about ten sections with approximately 50 species. The number of species has varied, depending on how they are classified, the genus arose some time in the Late Oligocene to Early Miocene epochs, in the Iberian peninsula and adjacent areas of southwest Europe. The exact origin of the name Narcissus is unknown, but it is linked to a Greek word for intoxicated. The English word daffodil appears to be derived from asphodel, with which it was commonly compared, the species are native to meadows and woods in southern Europe and North Africa with a center of diversity in the Western Mediterranean, particularly the Iberian peninsula. Both wild and cultivated plants have naturalised widely, and were introduced into the Far East prior to the tenth century, Narcissi tend to be long-lived bulbs, which propagate by division, but are also insect-pollinated. Known pests, diseases and disorders include viruses, fungi, the larvae of flies, mites and nematodes, some Narcissus species have become extinct, while others are threatened by increasing urbanisation and tourism. Today narcissi are popular as cut flowers and as plants in private. The long history of breeding has resulted in thousands of different cultivars, for horticultural purposes, narcissi are classified into divisions, covering a wide range of shapes and colours. Like other members of their family, narcissi produce a number of different alkaloids, which provide protection for the plant. This property has been exploited for use in traditional healing and has resulted in the production of galantamine for the treatment of Alzheimers dementia. Long celebrated in art and literature, narcissi are associated with a number of themes in different cultures, ranging from death to good fortune, the daffodil is the national flower of Wales and the symbol of cancer charities in many countries. The appearance of the flowers in spring is associated with festivals in many places. Narcissus is a genus of perennial herbaceous bulbiferous geophytes, dying back after flowering to a storage bulb. They regrow in the year from brown-skinned ovoid bulbs with pronounced necks. Dwarf species such as N. asturiensis have a height of 5–8 cm
5.
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
6.
Sake
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Sake, also spelled saké in English, is a Japanese rice wine made by fermenting rice that has been polished to remove the bran. The brewing process for sake differs from the process for beer in that, for beer, like other rice wines, when sake is brewed, these conversions occur simultaneously. Furthermore, the alcohol content differs between sake, wine, and beer, Wine generally contains 9%–16% ABV, while most beer contains 3%–9%, and undiluted sake contains 18%–20%. In the Japanese language, the word sake can refer to any alcoholic drink, under Japanese liquor laws, sake is labelled with the word seishu, a synonym less commonly used in conversation. The origin of sake is unclear, the making of Chinese alcoholic beverages predates recorded history. The earliest reference to the use of alcohol in Japan is recorded in the Book of Wei in the Records of the Three Kingdoms and this 3rd-century Chinese text speaks of the Japanese drinking and dancing. Alcoholic beverages are mentioned several times in the Kojiki, Japans first written history, bamforth places the probable origin of true sake (which is made from rice, water, and kōji mold in the Nara period. In the Heian period, sake was used for ceremonies, court festivals. Sake production was a government monopoly for a time, but in the 10th century, temples and shrines began to brew sake. The Tamon-in Diary, written by abbots of Tamon-in from 1478 to 1618, the diary shows that pasteurization and the process of adding ingredients to the main fermentation mash in three stages were established practices by that time. In the 16th century, the technique of distillation was introduced into the Kyushu district from Ryukyu, the brewing of shōchū, called Imo—sake started, and was sold at the central market in Kyoto. The work of writers was widely disseminated throughout Europe at the beginning of the 19th century. During the Meiji Restoration, laws were written that allowed anybody with the money and know-how to construct, around 30,000 breweries sprang up around the country within a year. However, as the years went by, the government levied more and more taxes on the sake industry, most of the breweries that grew and survived this period were set up by wealthy landowners. Landowners who grew rice crops would have left over at the end of the season and, rather than letting these leftovers go to waste. The most successful of these family breweries still operate today, during the 20th century, sake-brewing technology grew by leaps and bounds. The government opened the sake-brewing research institute in 1904, and in 1907 the very first government-run sake-tasting competition was held, yeast strains specifically selected for their brewing properties were isolated and enamel-coated steel tanks arrived. The government started hailing the use of tanks as easy to clean, lasting forever
