1.
Osaka
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Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Japan. Historically a merchant city, Osaka has also known as the nations kitchen. Some of the earliest signs of habitation in the Osaka area at the Morinomiya ruins comprise shell mounds, sea oysters. It is believed that what is today the Uehonmachi area consisted of a land with an inland sea in the east. During the Yayoi period, permanent habitation on the plains grew as rice farming became popular, by the Kofun period, Osaka developed into a hub port connecting the region to the western part of Japan. The large numbers of increasingly larger tomb mounds found in the plains of Osaka are seen as evidence of political-power concentration, in 645, Emperor Kōtoku built his Naniwa Nagara-Toyosaki Palace in what is now Osaka, making it the capital of Japan. The city now known as Osaka was at this time referred to as Naniwa, although the capital was moved to Asuka in 655, Naniwa remained a vital connection, by land and sea, between Yamato, Korea, and China. Naniwa was declared the capital again in 744 by order of Emperor Shōmu, and remained so until 745, in 1496, Jōdo Shinshū Buddhists established their headquarters in the heavily fortified Ishiyama Hongan-ji, located directly on the site of the old Naniwa Imperial Palace. Oda Nobunaga began a siege campaign on the temple in 1570 which ultimately resulted in the surrender of the monks. Toyotomi Hideyoshi constructed Osaka Castle in its place in 1583, Osaka was long considered Japans primary economic center, with a large percentage of the population belonging to the merchant class. Over the course of the Edo period, Osaka grew into one of Japans major cities and returned to its ancient role as a lively and its popular culture was closely related to ukiyo-e depictions of life in Edo. By 1780 Osaka had cultivated a vibrant arts culture, as typified by its famous Kabuki, in 1837 Ōshio Heihachirō, a low-ranking samurai, led a peasant insurrection in response to the citys unwillingness to support the many poor and suffering families in the area. Approximately one-quarter of the city was razed before shogunal officials put down the rebellion, Osaka was opened to foreign trade by the government of the Bakufu at the same time as Hyōgo on 1 January 1868, just before the advent of the Boshin War and the Meiji Restoration. Osaka residents were stereotyped in Edo literature from at least the 18th century, jippenisha Ikku in 1802 depicted Osakans as stingy almost beyond belief. Edo writers aspired to samurai culture, and saw themselves as poor but generous, chaste, Edo writers by contrast saw zeeroku as obsequious apprentices, stingy, greedy, gluttonous, and lewd. The modern municipality was established in 1889 by government ordinance, with an area of 15 square kilometres, overlapping todays Chūō. Later, the city went through three major expansions to reach its current size of 223 square kilometres, Osaka was the industrial center most clearly defined in the development of capitalism in Japan. It became known as the Manchester of the Orient, the rapid industrialization attracted many Korean immigrants, who set up a life apart for themselves
2.
Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
3.
Nintendo
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Nintendo Co. Ltd. is a Japanese multinational consumer electronics and video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. Nintendo is one of the worlds largest video game companies by market capitalization, founded on 23 September 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it originally produced handmade hanafuda playing cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small businesses, such as cab services. The word Nintendo can be translated from Japanese to English as leave luck to heaven. From 1992 until 2016, Nintendo was also the majority shareholder of Major League Baseballs Seattle Mariners, as of 31 March 2014, Nintendo has cumulative sales of over 670.43 million hardware units and 4.23 billion software units. The company has created and released some of the best-known and top-selling video game franchises, such as Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Nintendo was founded as a card company in late 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi. Based in Kyoto, Japan, the produced and marketed a playing card game called Hanafuda. The handmade cards soon became popular, and Yamauchi hired assistants to mass-produce cards to satisfy demand, in 1949, the company adopted the name Nintendo Karuta Co. Ltd. doing business as The Nintendo Playing Card Co. outside Japan. Nintendo continues to manufacture playing cards in Japan and organizes its own contract bridge tournament called the Nintendo Cup. In 1956, Hiroshi Yamauchi, grandson of Fusajiro Yamauchi, visited the U. S. to talk with the United States Playing Card Company and he found that the biggest playing card company in the world was using only a small office. Yamauchis realization that the card business had limited potential was a turning point. He then acquired the license to use Disney characters on playing cards to drive sales, in 1963, Yamauchi renamed Nintendo Playing Card Co. Ltd. to Nintendo Co. Ltd. The company then began to experiment in other areas of business using newly injected capital during the period of time between 1963 and 1968, Nintendo set up a taxi company called Daiya. However, Nintendo was forced to sell it because problems with the unions were making it too expensive to run the service. It also set up a hotel chain, a TV network. All of these ventures failed, and after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, playing card sales dropped. In 1966, Nintendo moved into the Japanese toy industry with the Ultra Hand, Yokoi was moved from maintenance to the new Nintendo Games department as a product developer. Nintendo continued to produce toys, including the Ultra Machine, Love Tester
4.
Mario (franchise)
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The Mario franchise is a video game franchise published and produced by Nintendo starring the fictional Italian character Mario. The franchises other forms of media include television series and a feature film. It was originally created by game designer Shigeru Miyamoto with the arcade Donkey Kong, the games have been developed by a variety of developers including Nintendo, Hudson Soft, and AlphaDream. Most Mario games have either been released for the arcade or Nintendo video game consoles, the main series in the franchise is the Super Mario platform series, which mostly follows Marios adventures in the fictional world of the Mushroom Kingdom. These games typically rely on Marios jumping ability to him to progress through levels. Analysts suggest that by 2012, the Mario franchise was valued at over $10 billion, the franchise has spawned over 200 games of various genre. After the commercial failure of Radar Scope, Nintendos company president referred to Shigeru Miyamoto to create a game to save the company. Miyamoto came up with the idea of a game in which the character has to make his way through an obstacle course consisting of sloped platforms, ladders. Miyamoto named the game Donkey Kong, and its main protagonist Jumpman, Donkey Kong is an early example of the platform genre. In addition to presenting the goal of saving Pauline, the game gives the player a score, Points are awarded for finishing screens, leaping over obstacles, destroying objects with a hammer power-up, collecting items such as hats, parasols, and purses, and completing other tasks. Eventually Jumpmans name was internationally and permanently changed to Mario, the success of the game spawned several ports, and a sequel, Donkey Kong Jr. which is Marios only appearance as an antagonist. Donkey Kong 3 did not feature Mario, Donkey Kong has established his own unique franchise outside the Mario universe, starting with Donkey Kong Country and has spawned many sequels and spin-offs. The Mario branding was used for the first time in an arcade game, Mario Bros. which introduced Marios brother. The objective of Mario Bros. is to all of the enemies in each phase. Each phase is a series of platforms with four pipes at each corner of the screen, the mechanics of Mario Bros. involve only running and jumping. Unlike future Mario titles, players cannot jump on enemies until they are flipped over, both sides of every phase feature a mechanism that allows the player to go off-screen to the left and appear on the right, and vice versa. The game has reappeared in various forms, including as a minigame in Super Mario Bros.3 and the Super Mario Advance series. Nintendo has released several Mario and Donkey Kong LCD video games for the Game & Watch console, eleven were released between 1982 and 1994
5.
The Legend of Zelda
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The Legend of Zelda is a high-fantasy action-adventure video game series created by Japanese game designers Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka. It is primarily developed and published by Nintendo, although some portable installments have been outsourced to Capcom, Vanpool, the series gameplay incorporates elements of action, adventure and puzzle-solving games. The series centers on Link, the character and chief protagonist. The games plots commonly involve a relic known as the Triforce, the protagonist in each game is usually not the same incarnation of Link, but a few exceptions exist. Since the original The Legend of Zelda was released in 1986, an American animated TV series based on the games aired in 1989 and individual manga adaptations commissioned by Nintendo have been produced in Japan since 1997. The Legend of Zelda is one of Nintendos most prominent and successful franchises, the Legend of Zelda games feature a mixture of puzzles, action, adventure/battle gameplay, and exploration. These elements have remained constant throughout the series, but with refinements, later games in the series also include stealth gameplay, where the player must avoid enemies while proceeding through a level, as well as racing elements. Some items are consistent and appear many times throughout the series, though the games contain many role-playing elements, they emphasize straightforward hack and slash-style combat over the strategic, turn-based or active time combat of games like Final Fantasy. In later games, the series includes a big key that would unlock the door to battle the dungeons boss enemy. In most Zelda games, the life meter is represented as a line of hearts. Both will completely replenish Links health, the games pioneered a number of features that were to become industry standards. The original Legend of Zelda was the first console game with a function that enabled players to stop playing. The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time introduced a system that simplified 3D combat. Games in The Legend of Zelda series frequently feature in-game musical instruments, particularly in musical puzzles, often, instruments trigger game events, for example, the recorder in The Legend of Zelda can reveal secret areas, as well as warp Link to the Dungeon entrances. This warping with music feature has also used in A Link to the Past. In Ocarina of Time, playing instruments is a part of the game. The Legend of Zelda Theme is a piece of music that was created for the first game of the franchise. As a result, Kondo wrote a new arrangement of the theme within one day
6.
J. R. R. Tolkien
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He was at one time a close friend of C. S. Lewis—they were both members of the informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings. Tolkien was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972, after Tolkiens death, his son Christopher published a series of works based on his fathers extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion. Between 1951 and 1955, Tolkien applied the term legendarium to the part of these writings. While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien and this has caused Tolkien to be popularly identified as the father of modern fantasy literature—or, more precisely, of high fantasy. In 2008, The Times ranked him sixth on a list of The 50 greatest British writers since 1945, forbes ranked him the 5th top-earning dead celebrity in 2009. Tolkiens paternal ancestors were middle-class craftsmen who made and sold clocks, watches and pianos in London, the Tolkien family had emigrated from Germany in the 18th century but had become quickly intensely English. According to the tradition, the Tolkiens had arrived in England in 1756. Several families with the surname Tolkien or similar spelling live in northwestern Germany, mainly in Lower Saxony, however, this origin of the name has not been proven. A German writer has suggested that the name is likely to derive from the village of Tolkynen near Rastenburg. Although that village is far from Lower Saxony, its name is derived from the now-extinct Old Prussian language. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State to Arthur Reuel Tolkien, an English bank manager, the couple had left England when Arthur was promoted to head the Bloemfontein office of the British bank for which he worked. Tolkien had one sibling, his brother, Hilary Arthur Reuel. In another incident, a family servant, who thought Tolkien a beautiful child, took the baby to his kraal to show him off. When he was three, he went to England with his mother and brother on what was intended to be a family visit. His father, however, died in South Africa of rheumatic fever before he could join them and this left the family without an income, so Tolkiens mother took him to live with her parents in Kings Heath, Birmingham. Soon after, in 1896, they moved to Sarehole, then a Worcestershire village, Mabel Tolkien taught her two children at home. Ronald, as he was known in the family, was a keen pupil and she taught him a great deal of botany and awakened in him the enjoyment of the look and feel of plants. Young Tolkien liked to draw landscapes and trees, but his lessons were those concerning languages
7.
The Lord of the Rings
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The Lord of the Rings is an epic high-fantasy novel written by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkiens 1937 fantasy novel The Hobbit, written in stages between 1937 and 1949, The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-selling novels ever written, with over 150 million copies sold. The work was intended by Tolkien to be one volume of a two-volume set, the other to be The Silmarillion. For economic reasons The Lord of the Rings was published in three volumes over the course of a year from 29 July 1954 to 20 October 1955, the three volumes were titled The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. Structurally, the novel is divided internally into six books, two per volume, with appendices of background material included at the end of the third volume. Some editions combine the work into a single volume. The Lord of the Rings has since been reprinted numerous times, Tolkiens work has been the subject of extensive analysis of its themes and origins. Although a major work in itself, the story was only the last movement of a larger epic Tolkien had worked on since 1917 and these inspirations and themes have often been denied by Tolkien himself. The Lord of the Rings has inspired, and continues to inspire, artwork, music, films and television, video games, award-winning adaptations of The Lord of the Rings have been made for radio, theatre, and film. In 2003, it was named Britains best-loved novel of all time in the BBCs The Big Read, Sauron was defeated by an alliance of Elves and Men led by Gil-galad and Elendil, respectively. Isildur, son of Elendil, cut the One Ring from Saurons finger, Isildur claimed the Ring as an heirloom for his line, but when he was later ambushed and killed by the Orcs, the Ring was lost in the River Anduin at Gladden Fields. Over two thousand years later, the Ring was found by one of the river-folk called Déagol and his friend Sméagol fell under the Rings influence and strangled Déagol to acquire it. Sméagol was banished and hid under the Misty Mountains, the Ring gave him long life and changed him over hundreds of years into a twisted, corrupted creature called Gollum. Gollum lost the Ring, his precious, and as told in The Hobbit, meanwhile, Sauron assumed a new form and took back his old realm of Mordor. When Gollum set out in search of the Ring, he was captured and tortured by Sauron, Sauron learned from Gollum that Baggins of the Shire had taken the Ring. Sauron, who needed the Ring to regain his power, sent forth his powerful servants. The story begins in the Shire, where the hobbit Frodo Baggins inherits the Ring from Bilbo Baggins, his cousin, neither hobbit is aware of the Rings nature, but Gandalf the Grey, a wizard and an old friend of Bilbo, suspects it to be Saurons Ring. After Gandalf confirms his suspicions, he tells Frodo the history of the Ring, Frodo leaves the Shire, in the company of his gardener and friend, Samwise Gamgee, and two cousins, Meriadoc Brandybuck, called Merry, and Peregrin Took, called Pippin
8.
The Legend of Zelda (video game)
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During the course of the game, the player sees Link from a top-down perspective and must navigate him through the overworld and several dungeons, defeating enemies and finding secrets along the way. The first game of the The Legend of Zelda series, it was released in Japan as a launch title for the Family Computer Disk System peripheral in 1986. This version was released in Japan in 1994 under the title The Hyrule Fantasy, the game was ported to the GameCube and Game Boy Advance, and is available in emulated form via the Virtual Console on the Wii, Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. The Legend of Zelda was a bestseller for Nintendo, selling over 6.5 million copies and it is often featured in lists of games considered the greatest or most influential and is regarded as a spiritual forerunner of the role-playing video game genre. A solitary sequel, Zelda II, The Adventure of Link, was first released in Japan less than a year after its predecessors debut, the game spawned several prequels and a number of spin-offs, establishing a series that has become one of Nintendos most popular. The Legend of Zelda incorporates elements of action, adventure, the player controls Link from a flip-screen overhead perspective as he travels in the overworld, a large outdoor map with varied environments. Link begins the game armed only with a shield, but a sword becomes available to Link after he ventures into a cave that is accessible from the games first map screen. Throughout the game, various characters aid Link by giving or selling equipment and these people can be found in caves scattered throughout the overworld, some are readily accessible, while others are hidden behind obstacles such as rocks, trees, and waterfalls. Barring Links progress are creatures he must battle to locate the entrances to nine underground dungeons, each dungeon is a unique, maze-like collection of rooms connected by doors and secret passages, and guarded by monsters different from those found on the surface. Dungeons also contain items which Link can add to his arsenal, such as a boomerang for retrieving distant items and stunning enemies. Link must successfully navigate through each of the first eight dungeons to obtain all eight pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom, once he has completed the artifact, he can enter the ninth dungeon to rescue Zelda. In addition, the entrances of the three highest-level dungeons are hidden, Link can freely wander the overworld, finding and buying items at any point. This flexibility enables unusual ways of playing the game, for example, it is possible to reach the final boss of the game without ever receiving the first sword. Although this more difficult replay was not unique to Zelda, few games offered entirely different levels to complete on the second playthrough. The Second Quest can be replayed each time the game is completed, the plot of The Legend of Zelda is described in the instruction booklet and in the short prologue after the title screen. In an attempt to prevent Ganon from acquiring the Triforce of Wisdom, another of the pieces, Princess Zelda splits it, before the princess is eventually kidnapped by Ganon, she commands her nursemaid Impa to find someone courageous enough to save the kingdom. While wandering the land, the old woman is surrounded by Ganons henchmen, though a young boy named Link appears and rescues her. After hearing Impas plea, he resolves to save Zelda and sets out to reassemble the scattered fragments of the Triforce of Wisdom, during the course of the game, Link locates the eight underground labyrinths, defeats several guardian monsters, and retrieves the fragments
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