1.
Tokyo Imperial Palace
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The Tokyo Imperial Palace is the primary residence of the Emperor of Japan. It is built on the site of the old Edo Castle, the total area including the gardens is 3.41 square kilometres. During the height of the 1980s Japanese property bubble, the grounds were valued by some to be more than the value of all of the real estate in the state of California. After the capitulation of the shogunate and the Meiji Restoration, the inhabitants, leaving the Kyoto Imperial Palace on 26 November 1868, the Emperor arrived at the Edo Castle, made it to his new residence and renamed it to Tōkei Castle. At this time Tōkyō had also been called Tōkei and he left for Kyōto again, and after coming back on 9 May 1869, it was renamed to Imperial Castle. Previous fires had destroyed the Honmaru area containing the old donjon, on the night of 5 May 1873, a fire consumed the Nishinomaru Palace, and the new imperial Palace Castle was constructed on the site in 1888. A non-profit Rebuilding Edo-jo Association was founded in 2004 with the aim of a historically correct reconstruction of at least the main donjon, a reconstruction blueprint had been made based on old documents. The Imperial Household Agency at the time had not indicated whether it would support the project, in the Meiji era, most structures from the Edo Castle disappeared. Some were cleared to make way for other buildings while others were destroyed by earthquakes, for example, the wooden double bridges over the moat were replaced with stone and iron bridges. The buildings of the Imperial Palace constructed in the Meiji era were constructed of wood and their design employed traditional Japanese architecture in their exterior appearance while the interiors were an eclectic mixture of then-fashionable Japanese and European elements. The ceilings of the chambers were coffered with Japanese elements, however, Western chairs, tables. The floors of the rooms had parquets or carpets while the residential spaces used traditional tatami mats. The main audience hall was the part of the palace. It was the largest building in the compound, guests were received there for public events. The floor space was more than 223 tsubo or approximately 737.25 m2, in the interior, the coffered ceiling was traditional Japanese-style, while the floor was parquetry. The roof was styled similarly to the Kyoto Imperial Palace, but was covered with copper plates rather than Japanese cypress shingles, in the late Taishō and early Shōwa period, more concrete buildings were added, such as the headquarters of the Imperial Household Ministry and the Privy Council. These structures exhibited only token Japanese elements, from 1888 to 1948, the compound was called Palace Castle. On the night of 25 May 1945, most structures of the Imperial Palace were destroyed in the Allied firebombing raid on Tokyo
2.
Tokyo City
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Tokyo City was a municipality in Japan and part of Tokyo-fu which existed from 1 May 1889 until its merger with its prefecture on 1 July 1943. The historical boundaries of Tokyo City are now occupied by the 23 Special Wards of Tokyo, the new merged government became what is now Tokyo, also known as the Tokyo Metropolis, or, ambiguously, Tokyo Prefecture. In 1868, the city of Edo, seat of the Tokugawa government, was renamed Tokyo. The extent of Tokyo Prefecture was initially limited to the former Edo city, in Tokyo Prefecture, this created 15 wards and six counties/districts. The Tokyo city council/assembly was first elected in May 1889, each ward also retained its own assembly. From 1926, the mayor was elected by the elected city council/assembly from its own ranks, the city hall of Tokyo was located in the Yūrakuchō district, on a site now occupied by the Tokyo International Forum. Tokyo became the second-largest city in the world upon absorbing several outlying districts in July 1932 and this system remained in place until 1947 when the current structure of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government was formed. Capital of Japan Politics of Tokyo City Steiner, Kurt, Local Government in Japan Historical Development of Japanese Local Governance
3.
Empire of Japan
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The Empire of Japan was the historical Japanese nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 to the enactment of the 1947 constitution of modern Japan. Imperial Japans rapid industrialization and militarization under the slogan Fukoku Kyōhei led to its emergence as a world power, after several large-scale military successes during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War, the Empire also gained notoriety for its war crimes against the peoples it conquered. A period of occupation by the Allies followed the surrender, Occupation and reconstruction continued well into the 1950s, eventually forming the current nation-state whose full title is the State of Japan or simply rendered Japan in English. The historical state is referred to as the Empire of Japan or the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan in English. In Japanese it is referred to as Dai Nippon Teikoku, which translates to Greater Japanese Empire and this is analogous to Großdeutsches Reich, a term that translates to Greater German Empire in English and Dai Doitsu Teikoku in Japanese. This meaning is significant in terms of geography, encompassing Japan, due to its name in kanji characters and its flag, it was also given the exonym Empire of the Sun. After two centuries, the policy, or Sakoku, under the shoguns of the Edo period came to an end when the country was forced open to trade by the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854. The following years saw increased trade and interaction, commercial treaties between the Tokugawa shogunate and Western countries were signed. In large part due to the terms of these Unequal Treaties, the Shogunate soon faced internal hostility, which materialized into a radical, xenophobic movement. In March 1863, the Emperor issued the order to expel barbarians, although the Shogunate had no intention of enforcing the order, it nevertheless inspired attacks against the Shogunate itself and against foreigners in Japan. The Namamugi Incident during 1862 led to the murder of an Englishman, Charles Lennox Richardson, the British demanded reparations but were denied. While attempting to exact payment, the Royal Navy was fired on from coastal batteries near the town of Kagoshima and they responded by bombarding the port of Kagoshima in 1863. For Richardsons death, the Tokugawa government agreed to pay an indemnity, shelling of foreign shipping in Shimonoseki and attacks against foreign property led to the Bombardment of Shimonoseki by a multinational force in 1864. The Chōshū clan also launched the coup known as the Kinmon incident. The Satsuma-Chōshū alliance was established in 1866 to combine their efforts to overthrow the Tokugawa bakufu, in early 1867, Emperor Kōmei died of smallpox and was replaced by his son, Crown Prince Mutsuhito. On November 9,1867, Tokugawa Yoshinobu resigned from his post and authorities to the Emperor, however, while Yoshinobus resignation had created a nominal void at the highest level of government, his apparatus of state continued to exist. On January 3,1868, Satsuma-Chōshū forces seized the palace in Kyoto. On January 17,1868, Yoshinobu declared that he would not be bound by the proclamation of the Restoration, on January 24, Yoshinobu decided to prepare an attack on Kyoto, occupied by Satsuma and Chōshū forces
4.
Chiyoda, Tokyo
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Chiyoda is a special ward located in central Tokyo, Japan. In English, it is called Chiyoda City, Chiyoda consists of the Imperial Palace and a surrounding radius of about a kilometer. As of May 2015, the ward has an population of 54,462. The total area is 11.66 km², of which the Imperial Palace, Hibiya Park, National Museum of Modern Art, often called the political center of the country, Chiyoda, literally meaning field of a thousand generations, inherited the name from the Chiyoda Castle. Akihabara, a known for being an otaku cultural center. The Chiyoda ward was created on March 15,1947 by the unification of Kanda Ward and it has been a site of a number of historical events. In 1860, the assassination of Ii Naosuke took place outside the Sakurada Gate of the Imperial Palace, in 1932, assassins attacked and killed prime minister Inukai Tsuyoshi. In 1936, an attempted coup détat, the February 26 Incident, in 1960, Socialist Party leader Inejirō Asanuma was assassinated in Hibiya Hall. In 1995, members of Aum Shinrikyo carried out the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, Chiyoda is located at the very heart of former Tokyo City in eastern mainland Tokyo. The central area of the ward is occupied by the Imperial Palace. The east side of the ward, bordering Chūō, is the location of Tokyo Station, the south side, bordering Minato, encompasses Hibiya Park and the National Diet Building. It is almost exclusively occupied by administrations and agencies, the west and northwest are primarily upper class residential, the Yasukuni Shrine is also there. To the north and northeast are several neighborhoods and the Akihabara commercial district. Chiyoda is run by an elected mayor and a city assembly of 25 elected members. The current mayor is Masami Ishikawa, an independent, for the Metropolitan Assembly, Chiyoda forms a single-member electoral district. In the 2013 election, no Democrat contested the seat and Uchida won back the district against a Communist, the Tokyo Fire Department has its headquarters in Ōtemachi in Chiyoda. For the national House of Representatives, Chiyoda, together with Minato and Shinjuku, the district is currently represented by Liberal Democrat Miki Yamada. The ward is home to the Diet of Japan, the Supreme Court of Japan
5.
St. Luke's International Hospital
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St. Lukes International Hospital is a general and teaching hospital located in the Tsukiji district of Chūō, Tokyo, Japan. First opened in 1902, as a medical facility by the Episcopal Church in the United States. St. Lukes Hospital, initially a modest wooden-framed structure comprising two wards and five rooms, was first opened 1902 in Tsukiji on the edge of the foreign settlement. The hospital was transformed in the years of the 20th century through the work of Rudolf Teusler into the largest and most modern medical facility in Japan. The hospital was all but destroyed in the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, an early grant from the Rockefeller Foundation also supported the establishment of a public health institute. In 1927 St. Lukes College of Nursing became the first college of nursing established in Japan, the hospital was able to remain open and continue its work throughout the Second World War, its staff of 40 doctors and 130 nurses remaining at their posts. At the end of the war the center was requisitioned by the United States Army for a period of eleven years becoming the 49th Army General Hospital. St. Lukes continued to medical services to the Japanese community from barracks facilities rented from the city of Tokyo throughout the post war years of occupation. The College of Nursing sharing facilities during this period with the Red Cross School of Nursing, St. Lukes buildings and facilities have been expanded and continually upgraded over many years, but remain located in the same area of Tsukiji in central Tokyo as the original hospital. St. Lukes retains its founders strong links with the Anglican Church in Japan, the interior of the historic hospital chapel in the 1933 main building, was designed by architect John Van Wie Bergamini. The chapel remains one of the few original Anglican church structures in central Tokyo built prior to the Second World War, the hospital has 539 beds and sees 2,550 outpatients on an average day. In various well-known hospital rankings, St. Lukes International Hospital falls within the top ten hospitals in Japan, sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, in which victims were treated at St. Lukes Official website
6.
Tokyo
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Tokyo, officially Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan and one of its 47 prefectures. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous area in the world. It is the seat of the Emperor of Japan and the Japanese government, Tokyo is in the Kantō region on the southeastern side of the main island Honshu and includes the Izu Islands and Ogasawara Islands. Formerly known as Edo, it has been the de facto seat of government since 1603 when Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu made the city his headquarters. It officially became the capital after Emperor Meiji moved his seat to the city from the old capital of Kyoto in 1868, Tokyo Metropolis was formed in 1943 from the merger of the former Tokyo Prefecture and the city of Tokyo. The Tokyo metropolitan government administers the 23 Special Wards of Tokyo, the metropolitan government also administers 39 municipalities in the western part of the prefecture and the two outlying island chains. The population of the wards is over 9 million people. The prefecture is part of the worlds most populous metropolitan area with upwards of 37.8 million people, the city hosts 51 of the Fortune Global 500 companies, the highest number of any city in the world. Tokyo ranked third in the International Financial Centres Development IndexEdit, the city is also home to various television networks such as Fuji TV, Tokyo MX, TV Tokyo, TV Asahi, Nippon Television, NHK and the Tokyo Broadcasting System. Tokyo ranked first in the Global Economic Power Index and fourth in the Global Cities Index. The city is considered a world city – as listed by the GaWCs 2008 inventory – and in 2014. In 2015, Tokyo was named the Most Liveable City in the world by the magazine Monocle, the Michelin Guide has awarded Tokyo by far the most Michelin stars of any city in the world. Tokyo ranked first in the world in the Safe Cities Index, the 2016 edition of QS Best Student Cities ranked Tokyo as the 3rd-best city in the world to be a university student. Tokyo hosted the 1964 Summer Olympics, the 1979 G-7 summit, the 1986 G-7 summit, and the 1993 G-7 summit, and will host the 2020 Summer Olympics, Tokyo was originally known as Edo, which means estuary. During the early Meiji period, the city was also called Tōkei, some surviving official English documents use the spelling Tokei. However, this pronunciation is now obsolete, the name Tokyo was first suggested in 1813 in the book Kondō Hisaku, written by Satō Nobuhiro. When Ōkubo Toshimichi proposed the renaming to the government during the Meiji Restoration, according to Oda Kanshi, Tokyo was originally a small fishing village named Edo, in what was formerly part of the old Musashi Province. Edo was first fortified by the Edo clan, in the twelfth century
7.
Yuriko, Princess Mikasa
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She is the second daughter of Viscount Masanari Takagi. Princess Mikasa graduated from Gakushuin Womens Academy in 1941, the engagement of Takahito, Prince Mikasa and Yuriko Takagi was announced on 29 March 1941 and the engagement ceremony was held on 3 October 1941. The wedding ceremony took place on 22 October 1941, Princess Mikasa frequently visited her husband who was hospitalized during his final months. On 22 October 2016, they celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary in his hospital room, Prince Mikasa died on 27 October 2016, with Princess Yuriko at his side. The Princess hosted her husbands funeral ceremony as the chief mourner, the Prince and Princess had five children, of whom two are still living. In addition to their five children, they had nine grandchildren, the couples two daughters left the Imperial Family upon marriage. All of their sons predeceased them, yoshihito, Prince Katsura, created Katsura-no-miya on 1 January 1988. Princess Mikasa is honorary president of various organisations, especially those concerned with the preservation of traditional Japanese culture. She also plays an role in the Japanese Red Cross Society. In 1948, the Princess became President of the Imperial Gift Foundation Boshi-Aiiku-kai and she has participated on several formal occasions in Tokyo and other parts of Japan and she associates with charities that are concerned with mother and child health. Born as a daughter of Viscount Masanari Takagi, she was styled as The Honourable Yuriko Takagi, after her marriage, she is styled as Her Imperial Highness The Princess Mikasa. Honorary Vice-President of the Japanese Red Cross Society and their Imperial Highnesses Prince and Princess Mikasa and their family at the Imperial Household Agency website Japan Red Cross Society | At a glance
8.
Yasuko Konoe
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Yasuko Konoe, formerly Princess Yasuko of Mikasa, is the first child and first daughter of Takahito, Prince Mikasa and Yuriko, Princess Mikasa. She married Tadateru Konoe on 16 December 1966, as a result, she gave up her imperial title and left the Japanese Imperial Family, as required by law. During her childhood, Konoe attended Gakushuin Elementary School and then Gakushuin Womens Secondary School and she later completed her studies by graduating from the Department of Japanese Language and Literature, Faculty of Letters, Gakushuin University. Princess Yasuko married Tadateru Konoe on 16 December 1966, upon her marriage, she left the Imperial Family and took the surname of her husband. Tadateru Konoe is the brother of former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa. He is currently President of the Japanese Red Cross Society and they have a son named, Tadahiro. Through Tadahiro and his wife, Keiko Kuni, Konoe has three grandchildren, two boys and one girl. 26 April 1944 –16 December 1966, Her Imperial Highness Princess Yasuko of Mikasa 16 December 1966 – present, Mrs. Tadateru Konoe Grand Cordon of the Order of the Precious Crown
9.
Prince Tomohito of Mikasa
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Prince Tomohito of Mikasa was a member of the Imperial House of Japan and the eldest son of Takahito, Prince Mikasa and Yuriko, Princess Mikasa. Prince Tomohito was the first member of the Imperial House of Japan with a full beard since Emperor Meiji and he died of cancer on 6 June 2012, aged 66. Prince Tomohito graduated from the Department of Political Studies in the Faculty of Law of Gakushuin University in 1968, from 1968 –1970, he studied at Magdalen College, University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. The Prince became engaged to Miss Nobuko Asō on 21 May 1980 and she is the third daughter of the late Takakichi Asō, chairman of Asō Cement Co. and his wife, Kazuko, the daughter of former Prime Minister, Shigeru Yoshida. She is also the sister of former Prime Minister and current Deputy Prime Minister Tarō Asō, the couple married on 7 November 1980. Miss Asō was given the title HIH Princess Tomohito of Mikasa, the Prince and Princess had two daughters, Princess Akiko Princess Yōko The family lives in a compound within the Akasaka Estate complex, in Azabo Minato, Tokyo. In October 2009, his wife separated her residence from him, for the 1972 Sapporo Winter Olympics, Prince Tomohito served as a committee member on the organizing committee from 1970 until 1972. He was also on the committee for the 1975 Okinawa World Fair and he was also noted for his support of organizations which promoted the welfare of people with physical or mental disabilities through sporting activities, such as ski, bowling, dancing and rugby. He traveled extensively abroad with the princess on charity, and support missions that concerned matters of illness, the Prince often gave lectures and contributed articles to national newspapers and magazines, and had also authored seven books. In February 1994, the Prince and Princess visited Norway to attend the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, in April 1998, the Prince and Princess visited Turkey to attend the opening ceremony of the Turkey-Japan Foundation Cultural Centre. They had previously visited Turkey in 1990 as part of the celebrations for the 100th anniversary of Japan-Turkey relations, in June 1998, Prince Tomohito visited Australia for fundraising activities for a medical science foundation to commemorate the Australian Nobel Prize winner Dr. Howard Walter Florey. In December of the year, he visited Thailand to attend the 13th Asian Games. In April 2003, Prince Tomohito visited Norway accompanied by his daughter and he appeared on the radio as a DJ in his younger days. The Prince was first diagnosed with cancer in 1991, but later went into remission and he was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx in 2003, and immediately began treatment for it. In September 2006, he fractured his jaw, which had weakened by his chemotherapy treatments. In 2007, the Prince made an announcement that he was suffering from alcoholism. In March 2008, his cancer spread to his pharynx, on 6 June 2012, the Prince died from multiple organ failure at a Tokyo hospital, aged 66. He had been hospitalized for some time, as a result of his cancer diagnosis
10.
Yoshihito, Prince Katsura
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Yoshihito, Prince Katsura was a member of the Imperial House of Japan and the second son of Takahito, Prince Mikasa and Yuriko, Princess Mikasa. He was a first cousin of Emperor Akihito, originally known as Prince Yoshihito of Mikasa, he received the title Prince Katsura and authorization to start a new branch of the Imperial Family on 1 January 1988 at age 39. He died of an attack on 8 June 2014, aged 66. The Prince graduated from the Department of Political Studies in the Faculty of Law of Gakushuin University in 1971, between 1971 and 1973 he studied at the Graduate School of the Australian National University, in Canberra, Australia. After his return to Japan, he worked as an administrator at the Japan Broadcasting Corporation from 1974 to 1985, in 1982, the Prince returned to Australia as part of the Japanese delegation in honor of the tenth anniversary of the Australia-Japan Society. He also visited New Zealand to strengthen ties and friendly diplomatic relations, in July 1997, Prince Katsura again visited Australia, to help promote an exhibition of the traditional sport of sumo, with exhibition matches held in Sydney and Melbourne. Prince Katsura suffered a series of strokes in May 1988 and had surgery for acute subdural hematoma, finally he became paralyzed from the waist down, forcing him to use a wheelchair. Despite this, he remained active in life and appeared regularly at award ceremonies, diplomatic events. However, he had been hospitalized on and off since 2008 due to sepsis, in early 2014, the Prince was diagnosed with an unspecified illness that affected and deteriorated his heart. In the early morning hours of 8 June 2014, he suffered a heart attack. On 17 June 2014, the funeral service for Prince Katsura. About 560 dignitaries including the members of Imperial Family attended the funeral, Prince and Princess Mikasa, Prince Katsuras parents, acted out the duty of chief mourners and his niece, Princess Akiko, hosted the ceremony. Prince Katsura never married and left no legitimate children, as his brothers only had daughters themselves, his death marked the end of his fathers branch of the Imperial Family and also his own branch. As a result, the number of households in the Imperial family dropped to four, excluding those led by Emperor Akihito and he was survived by his parents
11.
Masako Sen
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Masako Sen, formerly Princess Masako of Mikasa, is the fourth child and second daughter of Takahito, Prince Mikasa and Yuriko, Princess Mikasa. She married Soshitsu Sen on 14 October 1983, as a result, she gave up her imperial title and left the Japanese Imperial Family, as required by law. For her early education as a child, Sen attended Gakushuin Elementary School and she later enrolled in the Department of Japanese Language and Literature, Faculty of Letters, Gakushuin University. After completing three years, she was sent to a school in Switzerland and moved to Paris for studying in the University of Sorbonne. Princess Masako married Soshitsu Sen on 14 October 1983, upon her marriage, she left the Imperial Family and took the surname of her husband. Soshitsu Sen is the son of Soshitsu Sen XV, and currently the sixteenth hereditary grand master of the Urasenke
12.
Norihito, Prince Takamado
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Norihito, Prince Takamado was a member of the Imperial House of Japan and the third son of Takahito, Prince Mikasa and Yuriko, Princess Mikasa. He was a first cousin of Emperor Akihito, and was seventh in line to the Chrysanthemum Throne, the Prince was a graduate of the Department of Law of Gakushuin University in 1978. He studied abroad from 1978 to 1981 at Queens University Faculty of Law in Kingston, Ontario, after his return to Japan, he served as administrator of the Japan Foundation from 1981-2002. The Prince became engaged to Miss Hisako Tottori, eldest daughter of Mr. Shigejirō Tottori, on 17 September 1984 and they married on 6 December 1984. He was born as Prince Norihito of Mikasa, and received the title Prince Takamado, Princess Ayako Prince Takamado was honorary president of various charitable organizations involved with sponsorship of international exchange especially involving music, dance, and sports. He was often dubbed The Sports Prince in Japan and he supported a number of foreign language speech contests. He was also much involved in environmental issues and environmental education. The Prince was an member of A. V. Edo-Rhenania Tokyo, a Roman Catholic student fraternity that is affiliated with the Cartellverband der katholischen deutschen Studentenverbindungen, Prince and Princess Takamado were the most widely traveled couple in the Japanese Imperial Family, visiting 35 countries together in 15 years to represent Japan on various functions. The Prince’s last visits included Egypt and Morocco in May 2000, Hawaii in July 2001, the latter was in order to attend the Opening Ceremony of the 2002 FIFA World Cup Korea-Japan. The sudden death of one of the youngest and most active members of the Japanese Imperial Family shocked the nation, the Prince Takamado Cup, Japans national youth football cup tournament, is named after him. I. H. Prince Takamado Memorial Collection BBC News |Japanese royals make symbolic trip to Seoul Royal Ontario Museum |Prince Takamado Gallery of Japan
13.
Dynasty
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A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family, usually in the context of a feudal or monarchical system but sometimes also appearing in elective republics. The dynastic family or lineage may be known as a house, historians periodize the histories of many sovereign states, such as Ancient Egypt, the Carolingian Empire and Imperial China, using a framework of successive dynasties. As such, the dynasty may be used to delimit the era during which the family reigned and to describe events, trends. The word dynasty itself is often dropped from such adjectival references, until the 19th century, it was taken for granted that a legitimate function of a monarch was to aggrandize his dynasty, that is, to increase the territory, wealth, and power of his family members. The longest-surviving dynasty in the world is the Imperial House of Japan, dynasties throughout the world have traditionally been reckoned patrilineally, such as under the Frankish Salic law. Succession through a daughter when permitted was considered to establish a new dynasty in her husbands ruling house, however, some states in Africa, determined descent matrilineally, while rulers have at other times adopted the name of their mothers dynasty when coming into her inheritance. It is also extended to unrelated people such as poets of the same school or various rosters of a single sports team. The word dynasty derives via Latin dynastia from Greek dynastéia, where it referred to power, dominion and it was the abstract noun of dynástēs, the agent noun of dynamis, power or ability, from dýnamai, to be able. A ruler in a dynasty is referred to as a dynast. For example, following his abdication, Edward VIII of the United Kingdom ceased to be a member of the House of Windsor. A dynastic marriage is one that complies with monarchical house law restrictions, the marriage of Willem-Alexander, Prince of Orange, to Máxima Zorreguieta in 2002 was dynastic, for example, and their eldest child is expected to inherit the Dutch crown eventually. But the marriage of his younger brother Prince Friso to Mabel Wisse Smit in 2003 lacked government support, thus Friso forfeited his place in the order of succession, lost his title as a Prince of the Netherlands, and left his children without dynastic rights. In historical and monarchist references to formerly reigning families, a dynast is a member who would have had succession rights, were the monarchys rules still in force. Even since abolition of the Austrian monarchy, Max and his descendants have not been considered the rightful pretenders by Austrian monarchists, nor have they claimed that position. The term dynast is sometimes used only to refer to descendants of a realms monarchs. The term can therefore describe overlapping but distinct sets of people, yet he is not a male-line member of the royal family, and is therefore not a dynast of the House of Windsor. Thus, in 1999 he requested and obtained permission from Elizabeth II to marry the Roman Catholic Princess Caroline of Monaco. Yet a clause of the English Act of Settlement 1701 remained in effect at that time and that exclusion, too, ceased to apply on 26 March 2015, with retroactive effect for those who had been dynasts prior to triggering it by marriage to a Catholic
14.
Imperial House of Japan
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Under the present Constitution of Japan, the Emperor is the symbol of the State and of the unity of the people. Other members of the family perform ceremonial and social duties. The duties as an Emperor are passed down the line to their children, the Japanese monarchy is the oldest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world. The imperial house recognizes 125 monarchs beginning with the legendary Emperor Jimmu and continuing up to the current emperor, Akihito, see its family tree. Historical evidence for the first 29 emperors is marginal by modern standards, in English, shinnō and ō are both translated as prince as well as shinnōhi, naishinnō, ōhi and joō as princess. There are currently 19 members of the Imperial Family, The Emperor was born at Tokyo Imperial Palace on 23 December 1933 and he was married on 10 April 1959 to Michiko Shōda. Emperor Akihito succeeded his father as emperor on 7 January 1989 and he became heir apparent upon his fathers accession to the throne. Crown Prince Naruhito was married on 9 June 1993 to Masako Owada, the Crown Princess was born on 9 December 1963, the daughter of Hisashi Owada, a former vice minister of foreign affairs and former permanent representative of Japan to the United Nations. The Crown Prince and Crown Princess have one daughter, The Princess Toshi The Prince Akishino, the Emperors second son and his childhood title was Prince Aya. He received the title Prince Akishino and permission to start a new branch of the family upon his marriage to Kiko Kawashima on 29 June 1990. The Princess Akishino was born on 11 September 1966, the daughter of Tatsuhiko Kawashima and his childhood title was Prince Yoshi. He received the title Prince Hitachi and permission to set up a new branch of the family on 1 October 1964. The Princess Hitachi was born on 19 July 1940, the daughter of former Count Yoshitaka Tsugaru, Prince and Princess Hitachi have no children. The Princess Mikasa is the widow of the Prince Mikasa, the son of Emperor Taishō and Empress Teimei. The Princess was born on 4 June 1923, the daughter of Viscount Masanori Takagi. Princess Mikasa has two daughters and three sons with the late Prince Mikasa, Princess Tomohito of Mikasa is the widow of Prince Tomohito of Mikasa, the eldest son of the Prince and Princess Mikasa and a first cousin of Emperor Akihito. The Princess was born on 9 April 1955, the daughter of Takakichi Asō, chairman of Asō Cement Co. and his wife, Kazuko, the Princess was born 10 July 1953, the eldest daughter of Shigejiro Tottori. She married the prince on 6 December 1984, originally known as Prince Norihito of Mikasa, he received the title Prince Takamado and permission to start a new branch of the imperial family on 1 December 1984
15.
Empress Teimei
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Empress Teimei was the wife of Emperor Taishō of Japan. Born Sadako Kujō, she was the mother of Emperor Shōwa and her posthumous name, Teimei, means enlightened constancy. Sadako Kujō was born on 25 June 1884 in Tokyo, as the daughter of Duke Michitaka Kujō. She married then-Crown Prince Yoshihito on 25 May 1900, the couple lived in the newly constructed Akasaka Palace in Tokyo, outside of the main Tokyo Imperial Palace complex. When she gave birth to a son, Prince Hirohito in 1901 and she became Empress when her husband ascended to the throne on 30 July 1912. Given her husbands physical and mental condition, she exerted a strong influence on imperial life. After the death of Emperor Taishō on 25 December 1926, her title became that of Dowager Empress and she openly objected to Japans involvement in World War II, which might have caused conflict with her son, Hirohito. From 1943, she worked behind the scenes with her third son Prince Takamatsu to bring about the downfall of Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō. She was a Buddhist adherent who had the faith of the Lotus Sutra and prayed with the Shinto ritual ceremonies of the Tokyo Imperial Palace. She died on 17 May 1951 at Omiya Palace in Tokyo, aged 66, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. ISBN 978-0-06-019314-0, OCLC247018161 Fujitani, Takashi, splendid Monarchy, Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan. ISBN 978-0-520-20237-5, OCLC 246558189—Reprint edition,1998, ISBN 0-520-21371-8 Hoyt, Edwin P. Hirohito, The Emperor and the Man
16.
Shinto
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Shinto practices were first recorded and codified in the written historical records of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki in the 8th century. Still, these earliest Japanese writings do not refer to a unified Shinto religion, practitioners express their diverse beliefs through a standard language and practice, adopting a similar style in dress and ritual, dating from around the time of the Nara and Heian periods. The word Shinto was adopted, originally as Jindō or Shindō, from the written Chinese Shendao, the oldest recorded usage of the word Shindo is from the second half of the 6th century. Kami are defined in English as spirits, essences or gods, Kami and people are not separate, they exist within the same world and share its interrelated complexity. Shinto is the largest religion in Japan, practiced by nearly 80% of the population, Shinto has 81,000 shrines and 85,000 priests in the country. According to Inoue, In modern scholarship, the term is used with reference to kami worship and related theologies, rituals. In these contexts, Shinto takes on the meaning of Japans traditional religion, as opposed to religions such as Christianity, Buddhism, Islam. Shinto religious expressions have been distinguished by scholars into a series of categories, Shrine Shinto and it consists in taking part in worship practices and events at local shrines. Before the Meiji Restoration, shrines were disorganized institutions usually attached to Buddhist temples, the current successor to the imperial organization system, the Association of Shinto Shrines, oversees about 80,000 shrines nationwide. Folk Shinto includes the folk beliefs in deities and spirits. Practices include divination, spirit possession, and shamanic healing, some of their practices come from Buddhism, Taoism or Confucianism, but most come from ancient local traditions. Sect Shinto is a designation originally created in the 1890s to separate government-owned shrines from local organised religious communities. These communities originated especially in the Edo period, the basic difference between Shrine Shinto and Sect Shinto is that sects are a later development and grew self-consciously. They can identify a founder, a set of teachings. Sect Shinto groups are thirteen, and usually classified under five headings, pure Shinto sects, Confucian sects, mountain worship sects, purification sects, and faith-healing sects. Koshintō, literally Old Shinto, is a reconstructed Shinto from before the time of Buddhism, today based on Ainu religion and it continues the restoration movement begun by Hirata Atsutane. Many other sects and schools can be distinguished, Kami or shin is defined in English as god, spirit, spiritual essence, all these terms meaning the energy generating a thing. Since the Japanese language does not distinguish between singular and plural, kami refers to the divinity, or sacred essence, that manifests in multiple forms, rocks, trees, rivers, animals, places, and even people can be said to possess the nature of kami
17.
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
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Imperial Japanese Army
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The Imperial Japanese Army or IJA, literally Army of the Greater Japanese Empire, was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan, from 1871 to 1945. Later an Inspectorate General of Military Aviation became the agency with oversight of the army. During the Meiji Restoration, the forces loyal to Emperor Meiji were samurai drawn primarily from the loyalist daimyōs of Satsuma. This central army, the Imperial Japanese Army, became even more essential after the abolition of the han system in 1871. One of the differences between the samurai and the peasant class was the right to bear arms, this ancient privilege was suddenly extended to every male in the nation. In 1878, the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office, based on the German General Staff, was established directly under the Emperor and was given broad powers for military planning and strategy. The Japanese invasion of Taiwan under Qing rule in 1874 was an expedition by Japanese military forces in response to the Mudan Incident of December 1871. The Paiwan people, who are indigenous peoples of Taiwan, murdered 54 crewmembers of a merchant vessel from the Ryukyu Kingdom on the southwestern tip of Taiwan. 12 men were rescued by the local Chinese-speaking community and were transferred to Miyako-jima in the Ryukyu Islands and it marked the first overseas deployment of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy. Not surprisingly, the new led to a series of riots from disgruntled samurai. One of the riots, led by Saigō Takamori, was the Satsuma Rebellion. Thenceforth, the military existed in an intimate and privileged relationship with the imperial institution, top-ranking military leaders were given direct access to the Emperor and the authority to transmit his pronouncements directly to the troops. The sympathetic relationship between conscripts and officers, particularly junior officers who were mostly from the peasantry, tended to draw the military closer to the people. In time, most people came to look more for guidance in matters more to military than to political leaders. By the 1890s, the Imperial Japanese Army had grown to become the most modern army in Asia, well-trained, well-equipped, however, it was basically an infantry force deficient in cavalry and artillery when compared with its European contemporaries. The Sino-Japanese War would come to symbolize the weakness of the military of the Qing dynasty and this was the result by Japans 120, 000-strong western-style conscript army of two armies and five divisions, which was well-equipped and well-trained when compared with their Qing counterparts. The Treaty of Shimonoseki made the Qing defeat official, with a shift in regional dominance in Asia from China to Japan. In 1899–1900, Boxer attacks against foreigners in China intensified eventually resulting in the siege of the legations in Beijing
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Major
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Major is a military rank of commissioned officer status, with corresponding ranks existing in many military forces throughout the world. When used unhyphenated, in conjunction with no other indicators, major is one rank senior to that of an army captain and it is considered the most junior of the field officer ranks. Majors are typically assigned as specialised executive or operations officers for battalion-sized units of 300 to 1,200 soldiers, in some militaries, notably France and Ireland, the rank of major is referred to as commandant, while in others it is known as captain-major. The rank of major is used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures, such as the Pennsylvania State Police, New York State Police, New Jersey State Police. As a police rank, major roughly corresponds to the UK rank of superintendent, the term major can also be used with a hyphen to denote the leader of a military band such as in pipe-major or drum-major. Historically, the rank designation develops in English in the 1640s, taken from French majeur, in turn a shortening of sergent-majeur, which at the time designated a higher rank than at present
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Imperial General Headquarters
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The Imperial General Headquarters as part of the Supreme War Council was established in 1893 to coordinate efforts between the Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy during wartime. In terms of function, it was equivalent to the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Imperial General Staff Headquarters was completely independent of the government of the Empire of Japan, including the Cabinet. Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi was allowed to attend meetings by the order of Emperor Meiji during the First Sino-Japanese War. However, Prime Minister Katsura Taro, despite his background, was denied entry to meetings during the subsequent Russo-Japanese War. Reaching agreement between the Army and Navy on strategic planning was often difficult, the final decisions of Liaison Conferences were formally disclosed and approved at Imperial Conferences over which Emperor Hirohito presided in person at the Tokyo Imperial Palace. During the Pacific War, and after the firebombing of Tokyo, with the surrender of Japan, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers ordered the Imperial General Headquarters abolished on 13 September 1945. Imperial General Headquarters comprised Army and Navy Sections, the Army Section comprised the Chief of Army General Staff and his chief of Army Operations, and the Army Minister. The Navy Section comprised Chief of Navy General Staff, his chief of Navy Operations, and the Navy Minister. In addition, the Inspector-General of Military Training, whose rank was almost on-par with that of the Chiefs of the General Staff, relations between the Japanese Army and Navy were never cordial, and often marked by deep hostility. The Army saw the Soviet Union as Japans greatest threat and for the most part supported the Hokushin-ron concept that Japans strategic interests were on the Asian continent. Hirohito, the Emperor of Japan, was defined as the Head of State and this includes some 61 divisions,59 brigades, and 51 air squadrons. Only a fraction of Japans military,11 to 14 divisions and the South Seas Detachment, were available for the December 1941 operations in South-East Asia, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. ISBN 978-0-06-019314-0, OCLC247018161 Jansen, Marius B, ISBN9780674003347, OCLC44090600 Keene, Donald. Emperor of Japan, Meiji and His World, 1852-1912, ISBN 978-0-231-12340-2, OCLC46731178 Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric and Käthe Roth
21.
Second Sino-Japanese War
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The Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan from July 7,1937 to September 9,1945. The First Sino-Japanese War was fought from 1894 to 1895, China fought Japan, with some economic help from Germany, the Soviet Union and the United States. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the war merged into the conflict of World War II as a major front of what is broadly known as the Pacific War. Many scholars consider the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 to have been the beginning of World War II, the Second Sino-Japanese War was the largest Asian war in the 20th century. The war was the result of a decades-long Japanese imperialist policy to expand its influence politically and militarily in order to access to raw material reserves, food. The period after World War One brought about increasing stress on the Japanese polity, leftists sought universal suffrage and greater rights for workers. Increasing textile production from Chinese mills was adversely affecting Japanese production, the Depression brought about a large slowdown in exports. All of this contributed to militant nationalism, culminating in the rise to power of a militarist fascist faction and this faction was led at its height by the Imperial Rule Assistance Associations Hideki Tojo cabinet under the edict from Emperor Shōwa. Before 1937, China and Japan fought in small, localized engagements, the last of these incidents was the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of 1937, which is traditionally seen as the beginning of total war between the two countries. Since 2017 the Chinese Government has regarded the invasion of Manchuria by the Kwantung Army in 1931, initially the Japanese scored major victories, such as the Battle of Shanghai, and by the end of 1937 captured the Chinese capital of Nanjing. After failing to stop the Japanese in Wuhan, the Chinese central government was relocated to Chongqing in the Chinese interior, by 1939, after Chinese victories in Changsha and Guangxi, and with Japans lines of communications stretched deep into the Chinese interior, the war reached a stalemate. The Japanese were also unable to defeat the Chinese communist forces in Shaanxi, on December 7,1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and the following day the United States declared war on Japan. The United States began to aid China via airlift matériel over the Himalayas after the Allied defeat in Burma that closed the Burma Road, in 1944 Japan launched the invasion, Operation Ichi-Go, that conquered Henan and Changsha. However, this failed to bring about the surrender of Chinese forces, in 1945, the Chinese Expeditionary Force resumed its advance in Burma and completed the Ledo Road linking India to China. At the same time, China launched large counteroffensives in South China and retook the west Hunan, the remaining Japanese occupation forces formally surrendered on September 9,1945 with the following International Military Tribunal for the Far East convened on April 29,1946. China was recognized as one of the Big Four of Allies during the war, in the Chinese language, the war is most commonly known as the War of Resistance Against Japan, and also known as the Eight Years War of Resistance, simply War of Resistance. It is also referred to as part of the Global Anti-Fascist War, which is how World War 2 is perceived by the Communist Party of China, in Japan, nowadays, the name Japan–China War is most commonly used because of its perceived objectivity. In Japan today, it is written as 日中戦争 in shinjitai, the word incident was used by Japan, as neither country had made a formal declaration of war
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World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and 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, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even 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 simultaneously and 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 forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
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Akihito
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Akihito is the reigning Emperor of Japan. He is the 125th emperor of his line according to Japans traditional order of succession, Akihito succeeded his father Shōwa and acceded to the Chrysanthemum Throne on 7 January 1989. There has been ongoing coverage of his possible abdication due to age,31 December 2018 and 1 January 2019 has been mentioned as possible dates of such abdication. In Japan, the Emperor is never referred to by his given name, in writing, the Emperor is also referred to formally as The Reigning Emperor. The Era of Akihitos reign bears the name Heisei, and according to custom he will be renamed Emperor Heisei by order of the Cabinet after his death, at the same time, the name of the next era under his successor will also be established. Akihito was born in the Tokyo Imperial Palace, Tokyo City, Japan, and is the elder son and the fifth child of the Emperor Shōwa and Empress Kōjun. Titled Prince Tsugu as a child, he was raised and educated by his private tutors, unlike his predecessors in the Imperial family, he did not receive a commission as an army officer, at the request of his father, Hirohito. During the American firebombing raids on Tokyo in March 1945, Akihito and his younger brother, during the American occupation of Japan following World War II, Prince Akihito was tutored in the English language and Western manners by Elizabeth Gray Vining. He briefly studied at the Department of Political Science at Gakushuin University in Tokyo, Akihito was heir-apparent to the Chrysanthemum Throne from the moment of his birth. His formal Investiture as Crown Prince was held at the Tokyo Imperial Palace on 10 November 1952, in June 1953 Akihito represented Japan at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in London. Crown Prince Akihito and Crown Princess Michiko made official visits to thirty-seven countries, upon the death of Emperor Hirohito on 7 January 1989, his eldest son the Crown Prince Akihito succeeded to the throne, with an enthronement ceremony taking place on 12 November 1990. In 1998, during a visit to the United Kingdom. Emperor Akihito underwent surgery for cancer on 14 January 2003. Since succeeding to the throne, Emperor Akihito has made an effort to bring the Imperial family closer to the Japanese people, the Emperor and Empress of Japan have made official visits to eighteen countries and to all forty-seven Prefectures of Japan. The Emperor and Empress also made a visit on Wednesday,30 March 2011 to a temporary shelter housing refugees of the disaster and this kind of event is also extremely rare, though in line with the Emperors attempts to bring the Imperial family closer to the people. Later in 2011 he was admitted to suffering from pneumonia. In February 2012 it was announced that the Emperor would be having a coronary examination, however, senior officials within the Imperial Household Agency have denied that there is any official plan for the monarch to abdicate. A potential abdication by the Emperor would require an amendment to the Imperial Household Act, on 8 August 2016, the Emperor gave a rare televised address, where he emphasized his advanced age and declining health, this address is interpreted as an implication of his intention to abdicate
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Hirohito
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Emperor Shōwa was the 124th Emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession, reigning from December 25,1926, until his death on January 7,1989. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Akihito, upon his death, although better known outside Japan by his personal name Hirohito, in Japan, he is now referred to primarily by his posthumous name Emperor Shōwa. The word Shōwa is the name of the era that corresponded with the Emperors reign, the name Hirohito means abundant benevolence. He was the head of state under the Constitution of the Empire of Japan during Japans imperial expansion, militarization, born in Tokyos Aoyama Palace, Hirohito was the first son of Crown Prince Yoshihito and Crown Princess Sadako. He was the grandson of Emperor Meiji and Yanagihara Naruko and his childhood title was Prince Michi. At the age of 3, Hirohito and his brother Chichibu were returned to court when Kawamura died – first to the mansion in Numazu, Shizuoka. In 1908, he began studies at the Gakushūin. When his grandfather, Emperor Meiji, died on July 30,1912, Hirohitos father, Yoshihito, assumed the throne, in 1914, he was promoted to the ranks of lieutenant in the army and sub-lieutenant in the navy, then to captain and lieutenant in 1916. He was formally proclaimed Crown Prince and heir apparent on November 2,1916, Hirohito attended Gakushūin Peers School from 1908 to 1914 and then a special institute for the crown prince from 1914 to 1921. In 1920, Hirohito was promoted to the rank of Major in the army, in 1921, Hirohito took a six-month tour of Western Europe, including the United Kingdom, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium. After his return to Japan, he became Regent of Japan on November 29,1921, in 1923, he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the army and Commander in the navy, and to army Colonel and Navy Captain in 1925. The Washington Naval Treaty was signed on February 6,1922, Japan withdrew troops from the Siberian Intervention on August 28,1922. The Great Kantō earthquake devastated Tokyo on September 1,1923, on December 27,1923, Daisuke Namba attempted to assassinate Hirohito in the Toranomon Incident but his attempt failed. During interrogation, he claimed to be a communist and was executed, the General Election Law was passed on May 5,1925, giving all men above age 25 the right to vote. Prince Hirohito married his distant cousin Princess Nagako Kuni, the eldest daughter of Prince Kuniyoshi Kuni and they had two sons and five daughters. On December 25,1926, Hirohito assumed the throne upon his father, Yoshihitos, the Crown Prince was said to have received the succession. The Taishō eras end and the Shōwa eras beginning were proclaimed, the deceased Emperor was posthumously renamed Emperor Taishō within days. Following Japanese custom, the new Emperor was never referred to by his name, but rather was referred to simply as His Majesty the Emperor
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Semitic languages
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The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family originating in the Middle East. The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen School of History, the most widely spoken Semitic languages today are Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya, Hebrew, Aramaic and Maltese. Among them are the Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Maltese is the only Semitic language written in the Latin script and the only Semitic language to be an official language of the European Union. The Semitic languages are notable for their nonconcatenative morphology and that is, word roots are not themselves syllables or words, but instead are isolated sets of consonants. Words are composed out of not so much by adding prefixes or suffixes. For example, in Arabic, the root meaning write has the form k-t-b, the similarity of the Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic languages was accepted by Jewish and Islamic scholars since medieval times. Almost two centuries later, Hiob Ludolf described the similarities between these three languages and the Ethiopian Semitic languages, however, neither scholar named this grouping as Semitic. Viewed from this too, with respect to the alphabet used. Previously these languages had been known as the Oriental languages in European literature. In the 19th century, Semitic became the name, however. There are several locations proposed as sites for prehistoric origins of Semitic-speaking peoples, Mesopotamia, The Levant, Mediterranean, the Arabian Peninsula. Both the Near East and North Africa saw an influx of Muslim Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula, followed later by non-Semitic Muslim Iranian and Turkic peoples. The Arabs spread their Central Semitic language to North Africa where it gradually replaced Coptic and many Berber languages, with the patronage of the caliphs and the prestige of its liturgical status, Arabic rapidly became one of the worlds main literary languages. Its spread among the masses took much longer, however, as many of the populations outside the Arabian Peninsula only gradually abandoned their languages in favour of Arabic. As Bedouin tribes settled in conquered areas, it became the language of not only central Arabia, but also Yemen, the Fertile Crescent. Most of the Maghreb followed, particularly in the wake of the Banu Hilals incursion in the 11th century, and Arabic became the native language of many inhabitants of al-Andalus. After the collapse of the Nubian kingdom of Dongola in the 14th century, Arabic began to spread south of Egypt into modern Sudan, soon after, the Beni Ḥassān brought Arabization to Mauritania. Meanwhile, Semitic languages were diversifying in Ethiopia and Eritrea, where, under heavy Cushitic influence, they split into a number of languages, including Amharic, Arabic languages and dialects are currently the native languages of majorities from Mauritania to Oman, and from Iraq to the Sudan
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Kikuko, Princess Takamatsu
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Kikuko, Princess Takamatsu, born Kikuko Tokugawa, known informally as Princess Kikuko, was a member of the Japanese Imperial Family. The Princess was the widow of Prince Takamatsu, the son of Emperor Taishō. She was, therefore, a sister-in-law of Emperor Shōwa and an aunt of the present emperor and she was mainly known for philanthropic activities, particular her patronage of cancer research organizations. At the time of her death, Princess Takamatsu was the oldest member of the Imperial Family, born in Tokyo on 26 December 1911, she was the second daughter of Yoshihisa Tokugawa a peer and wife Princess Mieko of Arisugawa. Her paternal grandfather was Yoshinobu Tokugawa, Japans last shogun, Lady Kikuko Tokugawa received her primary and secondary education at the then-girls department of the Gakushuin. At age eighteen, she engaged to Prince Takamatsu, who was then third-in-line to the Chrysanthemum throne. On 4 February 1930, she married Prince Takamatsu at the Tokyo Imperial Palace, the Prince and Princess returned to Japan in June 1931 and took up residence in Takanawa in Minato, Tokyo. A photo of them on the Chichibu Maru which left San Francisco on May 28,1931 can be seen at The Passionist Historical Archives website, following her mothers death from bowel cancer in 1933, Princess Takamatsu became champion of cancer research. Using money donated by the public, she established the Princess Takamatsu Cancer Research Fund in 1968, organizing symposia and she also served as president of an organization extending relief to Hansens disease patients. The Princess also served as the president of the Saiseikai Imperial Gift Foundation Inc. Tofu Kyokai Foundation, Shadan Houjin Tokyo Jikeikai, Nichifutsu Kyokai, and Nichifutsu Kaikan, in 1991, Princess Takamatsu and an aide discovered a twenty-volume diary, written in Prince Takamatsus own hand between 1934 and 1947. Despite opposition from the Imperial Household Agency, she gave the diary to the magazine Chūōkōron which published excerpts in 1995, after the death of her sister-in-law, Empress Kōjun, in 2000, Princess Takamatsu became the oldest member of the Imperial Family. In an article she wrote for a magazine, she argued that having a female tennō was not unnatural since women had assumed the throne in the past, most recently in the eighteenth century. Princess Takamatsu died of sepsis at St. Lukes Medical Center in Tokyo on 18 December 2004 and she had been in and out of the hospital with various ailments during the last decade of her life. Her funeral was held on 27 December at Toshimagaoka cemetery in Tokyos Bunkyō Ward, Kikuko was styled as Her Imperial Highness The Princess Takamatsu. Prior to her marriage, as a daughter of a peer she was styled as Lady Kikuko Tokugawa. com Japanese Princess buried
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Centenarian
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A centenarian is a person who lives to or beyond the age of 100 years. Because life expectancies worldwide are less than 100, the term is associated with longevity. A supercentenarian is a person who has lived to the age of 110 or more, there has only been one known case of a person of 120 years of age or older. In 2012, the United Nations estimated that there were 316,600 living centenarians worldwide, as life expectancy is increasing across the world, and the world population has also increased rapidly, the number of centenarians is expected to increase quickly in the future. According to the UK ONS, one-third of babies born in 2013 in the UK are expected to live to 100. The United States currently has the greatest number of known centenarians of any nation with 53,364 according to the 2010 Census, in 2010,82. 8% of US centenarians were female. Japan has the second-largest number of centenarians, with an estimated 51,376 as of September 2012, Japan started recording its centenarians in 1963. The number of Japanese centenarians in that year was 153, but surpassed the 10,000 mark in 1998,20,000 in 2003, and 40,000 in 2009. According to a 1998 United Nations demographic survey, Japan is expected to have 272,000 centenarians by 2050, the incidence of centenarians in Japan was one per 3,522 people in 2008. In Japan, the number of centenarians is highly skewed towards females, Japan in fiscal year 2016 had 57,525 female centenarians, while males were 8,167, a ratio of 7,1. The increase of centenarians was even more skewed at 11.6,1, the total number of living centenarians in the world remains uncertain. It was estimated by the Population Division of the United Nations as 23,000 in 1950,110,000 in 1990,150,000 in 1995,209,000 in 2000,324,000 in 2005 and 455,000 in 2009. The following table gives estimated centenarian populations by country, including both the latest and the earliest known estimates, where available, in many countries, people receive a gift or congratulations on their 100th birthday. In the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms, the British monarch sends greetings on the 100th birthday, the practice was formalised from 1917, under the reign of King George V, who also sent congratulations on the attainment of a 60th Wedding anniversary. NBCs Today Show has also named new centenarians on air since 1983, Centenarians born in Ireland receive a €2,540 Centenarians Bounty and a letter from the President of Ireland, even if they are resident abroad. Japanese centenarians receive a cup and a certificate from the Prime Minister of Japan upon their 100th birthday. Swedish centenarians receive a telegram from the King and Queen of Sweden, Centenarians born in Italy receive a letter from the President of Italy. In Japan, a National Respect for the Aged Day has been celebrated every September since 1966, an aspect of blessing in many cultures is to offer a wish that the recipient lives to 100 years old
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Nobuhito, Prince Takamatsu
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Nobuhito, Prince Takamatsu was the third son of Emperor Taishō and Empress Teimei and a younger brother of Emperor Shōwa. He became heir to the Takamatsu-no-miya, one of the four shinnōke or branches of the family entitled to inherit the Chrysanthemum throne in default of a direct heir. From the mid-1920s until the end of World War II, Prince Takamatsu pursued a career in the Japanese Imperial Navy, following the war, the prince became patron or honorary president of various organizations in the fields of international cultural exchange, the arts, sports, and medicine. He is mainly remembered for his activities as a member of the Imperial House of Japan. Prince Nobuhito was born at the Aoyama Palace in Tokyo to then-Crown Prince Yoshihito, like his elder brothers, Prince Hirohito and Prince Yasuhito, he attended the boys elementary and secondary departments of the Peers School. When Prince Arisugawa Takehito, the head of the collateral imperial house of Arisugawa-no-miya, died without a male heir. The name of the reverted to the original Takamatsu-no-miya. The new Prince Takamatsu was a cousin, four times removed of Prince Takehito. Prince Takamatsu attended the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy from 1922 to 1925 and he received a commission as an ensign on 1 December 1925 and took up duties aboard the battleship Fusō. He was promoted to sub-lieutenant the following year after completing the course of study at the Torpedo School, the prince studied at the Naval Aviation School at Kasumigaura in 1927 and the Naval Gunnery School at Yokosuka in 1930 -1931. In 1930, he was promoted to lieutenant and attached to the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff in Tokyo and he became a squadron commander of cruiser Takao, two years later and subsequently was reassigned to the Fusō. Prince Takamatsu graduated from the Naval Staff College in 1936, after having promoted to lieutenant commander on 15 November 1935. He was promoted to the rank of commander on 15 November 1940, from 1936 to 1945, he held various staff positions in the Naval General Staff Office in Tokyo. On 4 February 1930, Prince Takamatsu married Kikuko Tokugawa, the daughter of Yoshihisa Tokugawa. The bride was a granddaughter of Yoshinobu Tokugawa, the last Shōgun of the Tokugawa shogunate, Prince and Princess Takamatsu had no children. From the 1930s, Prince Takamatsu expressed grave reservations regarding Japanese aggression in Manchuria, in 1991, his wife Kikuko, Princess Takamatsu and an aide discovered a twenty-volume diary, written in Prince Takamatsus own hand between 1934 and 1947. Despite opposition from the entrenched bureaucrats of the Imperial Household Agency and he urged Emperor Shōwa to seek peace after the Japanese naval defeat at the Battle of Midway in 1942, an intervention which apparently caused a severe rift between the brothers. He also served as a patron of the Japanese Red Cross Society and was a contributor of the NBTHK
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Yasuhito, Prince Chichibu
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Yasuhito, Prince Chichibu, also known as Prince Yasuhito, was the second son of Emperor Taishō, a younger brother of the Emperor Hirohito and a general in the Imperial Japanese Army. As a member of the Imperial House of Japan, he was the patron of several sporting, medical, as with other Japanese imperial princes of his generation, he was an active-duty career officer in the Imperial Japanese Army. Like all members of the family, he was exonerated from criminal prosecutions before the Tokyo tribunal by Douglas MacArthur. Born at Aoyama Detached Palace in Tokyo, the son of Crown Prince Yoshihito and Crown Princess Sadako. He and his brother were separated from their parents and entrusted to the care of a respected ex-naval officer, Count Sumiyoshi Kawamura. After Kawamura died in 1904, the young princes rejoined their parents at the Tōgū-gosho on the grounds of the Akasaka estate and he attended the elementary and secondary departments of the Gakushuin Peers School along with Crown Prince Hirohito, and his younger brother, Prince Nobuhito. Prince Chichibu enrolled in the Central Military Preparatory School in 1917, on 26 May 1922, Emperor Taishō granted his second son the title Chichibu no miya and the authorization to start a new branch of the imperial family. In 1925, the Prince went to Great Britain to study at Magdalen College, while in Great Britain King George V decorated Prince Chichibu with the Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order. Prince Chichibu had a reputation as an outdoorsman and alpinist during his stay in Europe and he returned to Japan in January 1927 following the death of Emperor Taishō, who for some time had suffered from debilitating physical and mental ill-health. Until the birth of his nephew Crown Prince Akihito in December 1933, although technically born a commoner, the new princess was a scion of the Matsudaira of Aizu, a cadet branch of the Tokugawa shogunate. Her paternal grandfather was Matsudaira Katamori, the last daimyo of Aizu, Prince and Princess Chichibu had no children, as Princess Chichibus only pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. Prince Chichibu received his commission as a lieutenant in the infantry in October 1922 and was assigned to the First Imperial Guard Division. He was promoted to first lieutenant in 1925 and became a captain in 1930 after graduation from the Army War College and he received a promotion to the rank of major and assigned to command the Thirty First Infantry Division stationed at Hirosaki, Aomori in August 1935. Prince Chichibu has been implicated by some historians in the abortive 26 February Incident in 1936 and his sympathy to the Kodoha faction within the Imperial Japanese Army was well known at the time. After the coup attempt, the prince and his wife were sent on a tour of Europe taking several months and this tour ended with the visit of Nuremberg in Germany by the prince alone. There he attended the Nuremberg rally and met Adolf Hitler, with whom he tried to boost relations, Prince Chichibu Yasuhito was subsequently appointed battalion commander of Thirty-First Infantry Regiment in August 1937, promoted to lieutenant colonel in March 1938 and to colonel in August 1939. During the war, he was involved in operations, and was sent to Manchukuo before the Nomonhan incident. On 9 February 1939, Chichibu attended a lecture on bacteriological warfare, given by Shiro Ishii and he also attended vivisection demonstrations by Ishii
30.
Chrysanthemum Throne
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The Chrysanthemum Throne is the term used to identify the throne of the Emperor of Japan. The term also can refer to very specific seating, such as the throne in the Shishin-den at Kyoto Imperial Palace. In a metonymic sense, the Chrysanthemum Throne also refers rhetorically to the head of state, Japan is the oldest continuing hereditary monarchy in the world. In much the same sense as the British Crown, the Chrysanthemum Throne is an abstract concept that represents the monarch. According to legend, the Japanese monarchy is said to have founded in 660 BC by Emperor Jimmu. The extant historical records only reach back to Emperor Ōjin, who is considered to have reigned into the early 4th century, in the 1920s, then-Crown Prince Hirohito served as regent during several years of his fathers reign, when Emperor Taishō was physically unable to fulfill his duties. However, the Prince Regent lacked the powers of the throne which he could only attain after his fathers death. The current Constitution of Japan considers the Emperor as the symbol of the State, the modern Emperor is a constitutional monarch. The metonymic meanings of Chrysanthemum Throne encompass the modern monarchy and the chronological list of legendary, the throne Takamikura is located in the Kyoto Imperial Palace. It is the oldest surviving throne used by the monarchy and it sits on an octagonal dais,5 metres above the floor. It is separated from the rest of the room by a curtain, the throne is used mainly for the enthronement ceremony, along with the twin throne michodai. This flexible English term is also a rhetorical trope, the Chrysanthemum throne is also understood as a synecdoche, which is related to metonymy and metaphor in suggesting a play on words by identifying a closely related conceptualization, e. g. Shortly thereafter, Emperor Yōzei is said to have acceded to the throne. Referring to the specific with the general, such as Chrysanthemum Throne for the reign of Emperor Yōzei or equally as well for the ambit of the Imperial system. Nihongi, Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A. D.697, brown, Delmer M. and Ichirō Ishida, eds. The Chrysanthemum Throne, A History of the Emperors of Japan, a Political History of Japan During the Meiji Era, 1867-1912. OCLC194887 Post, Jerrold and Robert S. Robins, nihon Odai Ichiran, ou, Annales des empereurs du Japon. Paris, Royal Asiatic Society, Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain, a Chronicle of Gods and Sovereigns, Jinnō Shōtōki of Kitabatake Chikafusa
31.
Imperial Japanese Navy
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The Imperial Japanese Navy was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 until 1945, when it was dissolved following Japans defeat and surrender in World War II. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force was formed after the dissolution of the IJN, the Japanese Navy was the third largest navy in the world by 1920, behind the Royal Navy and the United States Navy. It was supported by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service for aircraft and it was the primary opponent of the Western Allies in the Pacific War. This eventually led to the Meiji Restoration, accompanying the re-ascendance of the Emperor came a period of frantic modernization and industrialization. Following the attempts at Mongol invasions of Japan by Kubilai Khan in 1274 and 1281, Japan undertook major naval building efforts in the 16th century, during the Warring States period, when feudal rulers vying for supremacy built vast coastal navies of several hundred ships. Around that time Japan may have developed one of the first ironclad warships when Oda Nobunaga, in 1588 Toyotomi Hideyoshi issued a ban on Wakō piracy, the pirates then became vassals of Hideyoshi, and comprised the naval force used in the Japanese invasion of Korea. Japan built her first large ocean-going warships in the beginning of the 17th century, from 1604 the Bakufu also commissioned about 350 Red seal ships, usually armed and incorporating some Western technologies, mainly for Southeast Asian trade. For more than 200 years, beginning in the 1640s, the Japanese policy of seclusion forbade contacts with the outside world and prohibited the construction of ocean-going ships on pain of death. Contacts were maintained, however, with the Dutch through the port of Nagasaki, the Chinese also through Nagasaki and the Ryukyus and Korea through intermediaries with Tsushima. Apart from Dutch trade ships no other Western vessels were allowed to enter Japanese ports, an exception was during the Napoleonic wars. However frictions with foreign ships started from the beginning of the 19th century, the Nagasaki Harbour Incident involving the HMS Phaeton in 1808 and other subsequent incidents in the following decades led to the Shogunate to enact an edict to repel foreign vessels. Western ships which were increasing their presence around Japan due to whaling, the shogunate also began to strengthen the nations coastal defenses. Numerous attempts to open Japan ended in failure in part to Japanese resistance, during 1853 and 1854, American warships under the command of Commodore Matthew Perry entered Edo Bay and made demonstrations of force requesting trade negotiations. After two hundred years of seclusion the 1854 Convention of Kanagawa led to the opening of Japan to international trade and this was soon followed by the 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce and treaties with other powers. In 1855, with Dutch assistance, the Shogunate acquired its first steam warship, Kankō Maru, samurai such as the future Admiral Enomoto Takeaki were sent by the Shogunate to study in the Netherlands for several years. In 1859 the Naval Training Center relocated to Tsukiji in Tokyo, in 1857 the Shogunate acquired its first screw-driven steam warship Kanrin Maru and used it as an escort for the 1860 Japanese delegation to the United States. In 1865 the French naval engineer Léonce Verny was hired to build Japans first modern naval arsenals, at Yokosuka, in 1867–1868 a British Naval mission headed by Commander Richard Tracey went to Japan to assist the development of the Japanese Navy and to organize the naval school of Tsukiji. The Shogunate also allowed and then ordered various domains to purchase warships and to develop naval fleets, Satsuma, a naval center had been set up by the Satsuma domain in Kagoshima, students were sent abroad for training and a number of ships were acquired
32.
Imperial Japanese Army Academy
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The Imperial Japanese Army Academy was the principal officers training school for the Imperial Japanese Army. The programme consisted of a course for graduates of local army cadet schools and for those who had completed four years of middle school. Established as the Heigakkō in 1868 in Kyoto, the training school was renamed the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1874 and relocated to Ichigaya. After 1898, the Academy came under the supervision of the Army Education Administration, in 1937 the Academy was divided, with the Senior Course Academy being relocated to Sagamihara in Kanagawa prefecture, and the Junior Course School moved to Asaka, Saitama. The 50th graduation ceremony was held in the new Academy buildings in Sagamihara on 20 December 1937, in 1938, a separate school was established for military aviation officers. During World War II, the school was highly respected and faculty consisted of many Tokyo Imperial University alumni and it also accepted a large number of students from China, and many of those cadets later had prominent ranks in the Republic of China Armed Forces. In September 1945, after the surrender of Japan, a battalion of the U. S. Army’s 1st Cavalry Division took control of the Academy from the soldiers guarding it. The Academy was abolished along with the Imperial Japanese Army at the end of 1945, currently the corresponding institution for the modern Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force is the Japan National Defense Academy. From 1937 to 1945, an estimated 18,476 cadets were trained at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy, the Rikugun Yonen Gakkō were schools mainly for officers children and children of army soldiers who fell in action. Some candidates were enlisted men in service under 25 years old. The training curriculum included college-level general education courses, traditional martial arts, Handbook on Japanese Military Forces, TM-E 30-480. Recruitment & Training of the IJA Handbook on Japanese Military Forces, TM-E 30-480
33.
Army War College (Japan)
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This article deals with the Empire of Japans Army War College. For other war colleges, see, War College, the Army War College, Short form, Rikudai of the Empire of Japan was founded in 1882 in Minato, Tokyo to modernize and Westernize the Imperial Japanese Army. Much of the empires elite including prime ministers during the period of Japanese militarism were graduates of the college, the most prominent of these instructors was Major Klemens W. J. Meckel. He was influential in assisting in the reorganization of the army from a garrison-based system into a divisional system. Reporting directly to the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Headquarters, the college specialized initially in teaching tactics, each class had from 30-35 students. Learning tended to be by rote memorization, with encouragement for creative thinking or discussion among the students. The curriculum was a course, and was considered a necessary prerequisite for future promotion to a staff rank. Each year, the six graduates with the best marks are awarded with an Army Sword by the Emperor and are collectively known as the Army Sword Club. The college graduated 60 classes before it was abolished following the surrender of Japan at the end of World War II and its building in Tokyo, constructed in 1891, was demolished after the war and replaced by a municipal junior high school in 1955. Imperial Japanese Army Academy List of graduates of the Japanese Imperial Military Academies Imperial Japanese Army Harries, soldiers of the Sun, The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army. Spang, Christian W, Rolf Harald Wippich, japanese-German Relations, 1895-1945 War and Diplomacy. Organization of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy
34.
Yokosuka Line
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The Yokosuka Line is a railway line in Japan operated by the East Japan Railway Company. The Yokosuka Line connects Tokyo Station with Kurihama in Yokosuka, Kanagawa, Yokosuka Line local trains make all stops. Most trains have 11 cars, with two of those being Green cars, other trains between Tokyo and Zushi are made up of 15 cars—an 11-car set joined to a 4-car set. The Airport Narita rapid service operates as a train within the Yokosuka Line. Shōnan-Shinjuku Line local trains make all stops on the Yokosuka Line between Nishi-Ōi and Zushi, for information on the Narita Express and other limited express services, see their respective articles. The Yokosuka Line has through service onto the Sōbu Line to Chiba, on April 22,1887 the Cabinet ordered the Government Railways to build the line with the budget diverted from the fund for the Tōkaidō Line construction. After the survey from July to December 1887, the construction of the railway between Ōfuna and Yokosuka started in January 1888 and completed in June 1889 spending 408,480 yen in total, the operation of the line started on June 16,1889. The Hinkaku Line was originally built to divert traffic from the busy Tōkaidō Main Line. After a 1967 explosion, freight trains were banned from portions of the central Tokyo rail network, the new Musashino Line was connected to the Hinkaku Line roughly 6 km north of Tsurumi Station near Musashi-Kosugi, siphoning off nearly all freight traffic after its opening in 1975. This left a substantial chunk of the double-tracked, mostly grade-separated Hinkaku Line disused, two new stations were constructed, one adjacent to the existing Kashimada Station on the Nambu Line in 1980 and another at Nishi-Ōi in 1986. Musashi-Kosugi Station, the station in this section opened in 2010 and provides a transfer to the Nambu Line as well as the Tōkyū Tōyoko
35.
Prince Tsuneyoshi Takeda
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Prince Tsuneyoshi Takeda was the second and last heir of the Takeda-no-miya collateral branch of the Japanese Imperial Family. Prince Takeda Tsuneyoshi was the son of Prince Takeda Tsunehisa and Princess Masako, Princess Tsune. He was, therefore, a first cousin of Emperor Shōwa, Prince Tsuneyoshi became the second head of the Takeda-no-miya house on 23 April 1919. On 12 May 1934, Prince Takeda married Sanjo Mitsuko and he then graduated from the 50th class of the Army War College in 1938 as the build-up to World War II was beginning. He was promoted to the rank of major in August 1940, and attached to the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff in Tokyo and he became lieutenant colonel in August 1943. Prince Takeda held executive responsibilities over Unit 731 in his role as chief officer of the Kwantung Army. Unit 731 conducted biological research on human subjects with a variety of bacterial cultures and viruses during World War II. After the war, a staff photographer also recalled the day the Prince visited Unit 731s facility at Pingfang, Prince Takeda briefly served as the emperors personal liaison to the Saigon headquarters of Field Marshal Terauchi Hisaichi, commander of the Southern Expeditionary Army Group. During that assignment, he observed first-hand the desperate conditions of the Japanese forces at Rabaul, Guadalcanal, after his return, he was then assigned to the Kwantung Army headquarters. After Emperor Shōwas radio address announcing the surrender of Japan on 15 August 1945, with the abolition of the collateral branches of the imperial family by the American occupation authorities on 14 October 1947, Prince Tsuneyoshi and his family became commoners. Initially, he retired to his estate in Chiba Prefecture to raise racehorses, in 1947, he attempted to enter the business world by establishing a company to make knitting machines, but the company soon went bankrupt. Takeda then turned his attention to promoting and developing amateur and professional sports, as a participant in equestrian events as part of Japans delegation to the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, he already had a reputation as the sports prince. He became president of the Japan Skating Association in 1948 and a member of the north Tokyo Rotary Club and he became president of the Japanese Olympic Committee in 1962 and was an important figure in organizing the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo and the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo. He was also a member of the International Olympic Committee from 1967 to 1981, in 1987, the former Prince published a volume of autobiographical essays entitled Kumo no ue shita, Omoide-banashi. The former prince died of heart failure on 12 May 1992 and he married Kyoko Nezu, the third daughter of Nezu Kaichirō, former chairman of Tobu Railways, and has a son, Tsunetaka Takeda, and daughter, Hiroko Takeda. The former Takeda palace and a portion of its gardens in Tokyo survives as a part of the Grand Prince Hotel Takanawa, dower, John W. Embracing Defeat, Japan in the Wake of World War II. ISBN 0-393-32027-8 Gold, Hal, Unit 731 Testimony, Tuttle,2003, soldiers of the Sun, The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army. Tokyo, Foreign Affairs Association of Japan, OCLC1782308 Williams, Peter and Wallace, David
36.
Biological warfare
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Biological weapons are living organisms or replicating entities that reproduce or replicate within their host victims. Entomological warfare is considered a type of biological weapon. None of these are conventional weapons, which are deployed primarily for their explosive, kinetic, Biological weapons may be employed in various ways to gain a strategic or tactical advantage over the enemy, either by threats or by actual deployments. Like some of the weapons, biological weapons may also be useful as area denial weapons. These agents may be lethal or non-lethal, and may be targeted against a single individual and they may be developed, acquired, stockpiled or deployed by nation states or by non-national groups. In the latter case, or if a nation-state uses it clandestinely, toxins and psychochemical weapons are often referred to as midspectrum agents. Unlike bioweapons, these agents do not reproduce in their host and are typically characterized by shorter incubation periods. Offensive biological warfare, including production, stockpiling and use of biological weapons, was outlawed by the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. Many countries, including signatories of the BWC, currently pursue research into the defense or protection against BW, a nation or group that can pose a credible threat of mass casualty has the ability to alter the terms on which other nations or groups interact with it. Therefore, biological agents may be useful as strategic deterrents in addition to their utility as offensive weapons on the battlefield. As a tactical weapon for use, a significant problem with a BW attack is that it would take days to be effective. Some biological agents have the capability of person-to-person transmission via aerosolized respiratory droplets and this feature can be undesirable, as the agent may be transmitted by this mechanism to unintended populations, including neutral or even friendly forces. While containment of BW is less of a concern for criminal or terrorist organizations, it remains a significant concern for the military. Rudimentary forms of warfare have been practiced since antiquity. During the 6th century BC, the Assyrians poisoned enemy wells with a fungus that would render the enemy delirious, in 1346, the bodies of Mongol warriors of the Golden Horde who had died of plague were thrown over the walls of the besieged Crimean city of Kaffa. Specialists disagree over whether this operation may have been responsible for the spread of the Black Death into Europe, the British Army used smallpox against Native Americans during the Siege of Fort Pitt in 1763. An outbreak that left as many as one hundred Native Americans dead in Ohio Country was reported in 1764, the spread of the disease weakened the natives resistance to the British troops led by Henry Bouquet. It is not clear, however, whether the smallpox was a result of the Fort Pitt incident or the virus was present among the Delaware people
37.
Ningbo
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Ningbo, formerly written Ningpo, is a sub-provincial city in northeast Zhejiang province in China. It comprises the districts of Ningbo proper, three satellite cities, and a number of rural counties including islands in Hangzhou Bay and the East China Sea. Its port, spread across locations, is among the busiest in the world. As of the 2010 census, the entire administrated area had a population of 7.6 million, with 3.5 million in the six urban districts of Ningbo proper. To the north, Hangzhou Bay separates Ningbo from Shanghai, to the east lies Zhoushan in the East China Sea, on the west and south, Ningbo borders Shaoxing, the first character in the citys name ning means serene, while its second character bo translates to waves. The city is abbreviated Yǒng, after the Yong Hill, a prominent coastal hill near the city, the character ming was composed by two parts, representing two lakes inside the city wall, Sun Lake and Moon Lake. As a city with giant port, culture of Ningbo influences many countries near it, Ningbo is one of Chinas oldest cities, with a history dating to the Hemudu culture in 4800 BC. Since the Tang dynasty Ningbo was an important commercial port, arab traders lived in Ningbo during the Song dynasty when it was known as Mingzhou, as the ocean-going trade passages took precedence over land trade during this time. Another name for Mingzhou/Ningbo was Siming and it was a well known center of ocean-going commerce with the foreign world. These merchants did not intermingle with native Chinese, practicing their own customs and religion and they did not try to proselytize Islam to Chinese. Jews also lived in Ningbo, as evidenced by the fact that, after a flood destroyed Torah scrolls in Kaifeng. The city of Ningbo was known in Europe for a time under the name of Liampó. This is the spelling used e. g. in the standard Portuguese history, João de Barross Décadas da Ásia. The spelling Liampó is also attested in the Peregrination by Fernão Mendes Pinto, for the mid-16th-century Portuguese, the nearby promontory, which they called the cape of Liampó, after the nearby illustrious city was the easternmost known point of the mainland Asia. The Portuguese began trading in Ningbo around 1522, by 1542, the Portuguese had a sizable community in Ningbo. Portuguese activities from their Ningbo base included pillaging and attacking multiple Chinese port cities around Ningbo for plunder and they also enslaved people during their raids. The Portuguese were ousted from the Ningbo area in 1548, Ningbo was one of the five Chinese treaty ports opened by the Treaty of Nanjing at the end of the First Opium War between Britain and China. During the war, British forces took possession of the city of Ningbo briefly after storming the fortified town of Zhenhai at the mouth of the Yong River on October 10,1841
38.
The Battle of China
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The Battle of China was the sixth film of Frank Capras Why We Fight propaganda film series. Following its introductory credits—displayed to the Army Air Force Orchestras cover version of The March of the Volunteers—the movie opens on footage of the Japanese invasion of China and it then briefly introduces the history, geography, and people of China. It contrasts the peaceful development of the Republic of China under Sun Yat-sen against the militarized modernization of the Empire of Japan. Japans invasions of China are explained with reference to the since-largely-discredited Tanaka Memorial, Here was their mad dream, Phase Two - the absorption of China for manpower. Phase Three - a triumphant sweep to the south to seize the riches of the Indies, Phase Four - the eastward move to crush the United States. It is claimed that Japan moved piece by piece in order to avoid external interference but accelerated its actions in response to Chinas growing unity and development under the Republic. Contrary to many modern timelines of the war, the film downplays Chinese resistance in Manchuria and presents the Marco Polo Bridge Incident as a largely peaceful, instead, the Battle of Shanghai is presented as the beginning of real hostilities. The aerial bombardment which produced the Bloody Saturday photograph is called the first such attack on civilians in history and it then includes graphic footage of the aftermath of the Rape of Nanking, said to have been smuggled out of occupied China by a hospital worker. The narration calls the death toll unprecedented, although its figure of 40,000 is far lower than most modern estimates, the Chinese communists are only mentioned obliquely through the films repeated reference to Chinas division and factions. The Xian Incident is similarly omitted, instead, the country is said to have united in the face of the atrocities in Nanjing. The relocation of personnel and resources to Chongqing is covered, the attendant scorched-earth policy is given only oblique reference or the immolation of Changsha, although the Japanese bombing of Chongqing is dwelt on. The expansion of the National Revolutionary Army is described, including footage of their drills, the Japanese—often referenced as Japs and less often as Nips—blockading and occupation of Chinas ports is discussed and the rebuilding of Chinas destroyed rail system called the work of slave labor. The construction of the Burma Road between Lashio in Burma and the road to Kunming is then described. A task said to have needed seven years with the most modern machinery is shown being constructed with simple laborers in less than 12 months, the guerrilla warfare behind Japanese lines is lionized and treated as nearly unique in the war. The film admits that a series of defeats—in Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, the worsening situation then serves to make the films extended treatment of the Chinese victory at Changsha in 1942 all the more impressive. The film then shifts to 1944 and the American forces sweeping westward across the Pacific to Chinas defense, the Allied forces massed in British India are shown flying Chinese troops southwest to train, equipping them with modern weaponry and tactics, and working to construct the Ledo Road. Footage of the The Hump airlift is shown to the tune of the Army Air Force anthem, before an American flag, Soong Mei-ling, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, is shown announcing in English, We in China want a better world not for ourselves alone. To a standing ovation by the United States Congress, the montage of the marching armies of China are then shown while a Chinese chorus sings The March of the Volunteers
39.
Japanese war crimes
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Japanese war crimes occurred in many Asian and Pacific countries during the period of Japanese imperialism, primarily during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. These incidents have been described as an Asian Holocaust, some Japanese soldiers have admitted to committing these crimes. Since the 1950s, senior Japanese Government officials have issued apologies for the countrys war crimes. Allied authorities found that Koreans and Taiwanese serving in the forces of the Empire of Japan also committed war crimes, in addition to Japanese military and civil personnel. War crimes have been defined by the Tokyo Charter as violations of the laws or customs of war, War crimes also included deliberate attacks on citizens and property of neutral states as they fall under the category of non-combatants, as at the attack on Pearl Harbor. Military personnel from the Empire of Japan have been accused or convicted of committing many such acts during the period of Japanese imperialism from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries. They have been accused of conducting a series of rights abuses against civilians and prisoners of war throughout East Asia. These events reached their height during the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937–45, Japan didnt sign the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Prisoners of War, though in 1942, it did promise to abide by its terms. The crimes committed also fall under other aspects of international and Japanese law, for example, many of the crimes committed by Japanese personnel during World War II broke Japanese military law, and were subject to court martial, as required by that law. Class B war criminals were found guilty of war crimes per se. This is because the treaty does not mention the legal validity of the tribunal, had Japan certified the legal validity of the war crimes tribunals in the San Francisco Treaty, the war crimes would have become open to appeal and overturning in Japanese courts. This would have been unacceptable in international diplomatic circles, according to this view, those convicted of war crimes are not criminals under Japanese law. Outside Japan, different societies use widely different timeframes in defining Japanese war crimes, for example, the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910 was enforced by the Japanese military, and the Society of Yi Dynasty Korea was switched to the political system of the Empire of Japan. Thus, North and South Korea refer to Japanese war crimes as events occurring during the period of Korea under Japanese rule, Japanese war crimes were not always carried out by ethnic Japanese personnel. Military culture, especially during Japans imperialist phase, had great bearing on the conduct of the Japanese military before, after the Meiji Restoration and the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate, the Emperor became the focus of military loyalty. During the so-called Age of Empire in the late 19th century, Japan followed the lead of other powers in developing an empire. After the Russo-Japanese War, all 79,367 Russian Empire prisoners were released and were paid for labour performed, perceived failure or insufficient devotion to the Emperor would attract punishment, frequently of the physical kind. In the military, officers would assault and beat men under their command, in POW camps, this meant prisoners received the worst beatings of all, partly in the belief that such punishments were merely the proper technique to deal with disobedience
40.
Nanjing
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Nanjing has a prominent place in Chinese history and culture, having served as the capitals of various Chinese dynasties, kingdoms and republican governments dating from the 3rd century CE to 1949. When being the capital of a state, for instance, the ROC, Nanjing is particularly known as Jinling or Ginling and the old name has been used since the Warring States period in Zhou Dynasty. Located in Yangtze River Delta area and the center of east China and it has also been awarded the title of 2008 Habitat Scroll of Honour of China, Special UN Habitat Scroll of Honour Award and National Civilized City. Nanjing boasts many high-quality universities and research institutes, with the number of universities listed in 100 National Key Universities ranking third, the ratio of college students to total population ranks No.1 among large cities nationwide. Nanjing is one of the three Chinese top research centers according to Nature Index, Key cultural facilities include Nanjing Library, Nanjing Museum and Art Museum. Archaeological discovery shows that Nanjing Man lived in more than 500 thousand years ago, zun, a kind of wine vessel, was found to exist in Beiyinyangying culture of Nanjing in about 5000 years ago. According to a legend quoted by an artist in Ming dynasty, Chen Yi, Fuchai, King of the State of Wu, later in 473 BCE, the State of Yue conquered Wu and constructed the fort of Yuecheng on the outskirts of the present-day Zhonghua Gate. In 333 BCE, after eliminating the State of Yue, the State of Chu built Jinling Yi in the part of present-day Nanjing. It was renamed Moling during reign of Qin Shi Huang, since then, the city experienced destruction and renewal many times. Nanjing was later the city of Danyang Prefecture, and had been the capital city of Yangzhou for about 400 years from late Han to early Tang. This city would soon play a role in the following centuries. Shortly after the unification of the region, the Western Jin dynasty collapsed, First the rebellions by eight Jin princes for the throne and later rebellions and invasion from Xiongnu and other nomadic peoples that destroyed the rule of the Jin dynasty in the north. Its the first time that the capital of the moved to southern part. During the period of North–South division, Nanjing remained the capital of the Southern dynasties for more than two and a half centuries, during this time, Nanjing was the international hub of East Asia. Based on historical documents, the city had 280,000 registered households, assuming an average Nanjing household had about 5.1 people at that time, the city had more than 1.4 million residents. As the old capital of China, many legendary stories happened here, residents in Nanjing all have the warmest affection for this city. Throughout glory and darkness in past centuries, Nanjing becomes a low-key city, GDP growth rate significantly exceeds the average rate in China for decades, which also maintain a fast developing model. Possibly the best preserved of them is the ensemble of the Tomb of Xiao Xiu, the period of division ended when the Sui Dynasty reunified China and almost destroyed the entire city, turning it into a small town
Japan
Imperial Japanese Army
Brazil: Grand Cross of the Order of the Southern Cross[17]
Bulgaria: Commander of the Order of the Balkan Mountains[17]
Denmark: Knight of the Order of the Elephant[17][18]
Empire of Iran: Member 1st Class of the Imperial Order of Pahlavi[19]
Italy: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic[17][21]
Netherlands: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown[17]
Norway: Grand Cross of the Order of St. Olav[17]
Peru: Grand Cross of the Order of the Sun[17]
Sweden: Knight of the Royal Order of the Seraphim[17]
