The Asama-Sansō incident was a hostage crisis and police siege in a mountain lodge near Karuizawa, Nagano prefecture, Japan that lasted from February 19, 1972 to February 28, 1972. The police rescue operation on the final day of the standoff was the first marathon live broadcast in Japan, lasting 10 hours and 40 minutes. The incident began when five members of the United Red Army (URA), following a bloody purge that left 14 members of the group plus one bystander dead, broke into a holiday lodge below Mount Asama, taking the wife of the lodge-keeper as a hostage. A standoff between police and the URA radicals took place, lasting ten days. The lodge was a natural fortress, solidly constructed of thick concrete on a steep hillside with only one entrance, which, along with their guns, enabled the hostage-takers to keep police at a distance. On February 28, the police stormed the lodge. Two police officers were killed in the assault, but the hostage was rescued and the URA radicals were taken into custody. The incident contributed to a decline in popularity of leftist movements in Japan. Japan's leftist student movement in the 1960s pervaded Japan's universities, and, by late in the decade, had become very factionalized, competitive, and violent. After a series of incidents in which leftist student groups attacked and injured or killed law enforcement officials and the general public, Japan's national police agency cracked down on the student groups, raiding their hideouts and arresting dozens in 1971 and 1972. Attempting to escape from the police, a core group of radicals from the URA retreated to a compound in Gunma Prefecture during the winter of 1972. (Full article...)
A registration card for Louis Wijnhamer (1904–1975), an ethnic Dutch humanitarian who was captured soon after the Empire of Japan occupied the Dutch East Indies in March 1942. Prior to the occupation, many ethnic Europeans had refused to leave, expecting the Japanese occupation government to keep a Dutch administration in place. When Japanese troops took control of government infrastructure and services such as ports and postal services, 100,000 European (and some Chinese) civilians were interned in prisoner-of-war camps where the death rates were between 13 and 30 per cent. Wijnhamer was interned in a series of camps throughout Southeast Asia and, after the surrender of Japan, returned to what was now Indonesia, where he lived until his death.
The Japanese government-issued dollar was a form of currency issued between 1942 and 1945 for use within the territories of Singapore, Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak and Brunei, under occupation by Imperial Japan during World War II. The currency, informally referred to as "banana money", was released solely in the form of banknotes, as metals were considered essential to the war effort. The languages used on the notes were reduced to English and Japanese. Each note bears a different obverse and reverse design, but all have a similar layout, and were marked with stamped block letters that begin with "M" for "Malaya". This 1945 one-hundred-dollar Japanese-issued banknote, depicting labourers in a rubber plantation on the obverse, and stilted Malay houses on the reverse, is part of the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution.
Other denominations: '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000000D-QINU`"'
Female internees practicing calisthenics at Manzanar War Relocation Center, Owens Valley, California. In 1943, photographer Ansel Adams followed an invitation by newly appointed camp director Ralph Merritt to photograph the everyday life of the Japanese American internees in the camp. Adams's intent was to "show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, (…) had overcome the sense of defeat and despair by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment."
Before the outbreak of World War I, German naval ships were located in the Pacific; Tsingtao developed into a major seaport while the surrounding Kiautschou Bay area was leased to Germany since 1898. During the war, Japanese and British Allied troops besieged the port in 1914 before capturing it from the German and Austro-Hungarian Central Powers, occupying the city and the surrounding region. It served as a base for the exploitation of the natural resources of Shandong province and northern China, and a "New City District" was established to furnish the Japanese colonists with commercial sections and living quarters. Tsingtao eventually reverted to Chinese rule by 1922.
Banknotes: Empire of Japan. Reproduction: National Numismatic Collection, National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution
The Japanese-issued Netherlands Indies gulden was the currency issued by the Japanese Empire when it occupied the Dutch East Indies during World War II. Following the Dutch capitulation in March 1942, the Japanese closed all banks, seized assets and currency, and assumed control of the economy in the territory. They began issuing military banknotes, as had previously been done in other occupied territories. These were printed in Japan, but retained the name of the pre-war currency and replaced the Dutch gulden at par. From 1943 the military banknotes were replaced by identical bank-issued notes printed within the territory, and the currency was renamed the roepiah from 1944. The currency was replaced by the Indonesian rupiah in 1946, one year after the Japanese surrender and the country's independence.
This note, denominated half gulden, is part of the 1942 series.
Asahi Breweries is a Japanese global beer, spirits, soft drinks and food business group. This photograph, taken during the blue hour with a full moon, shows the headquarters of Asahi Breweries in Sumida, Tokyo, as viewed from the wharf on the Sumida River near Azuma Bridge. The Asahi Beer Hall, topped by the Asahi Flame, designed by Philippe Starck, is visible on the right, with the Tokyo Skytree in the background on the left.
The siege of Osaka was a series of battles undertaken by the Japanese Tokugawa shogunate against the Toyotomi clan, and ending in the clan's dissolution. Divided into two stages (the winter campaign and the summer campaign), and lasting from 1614 to 1615, the siege put an end to the last major armed opposition to the shogunate's establishment. This eight-metre-long (26 ft) painting, titled The Summer Battle of Osaka Castle and executed on a Japanese folding screen, illustrates Osaka Castle under siege, and was commissioned by the daimyoKuroda Nagamasa, who took a team of painters with him to the battlefield to record the event. The painting depicts 5071 people and 21 generals, and is held in the collection of Osaka Castle.
Flowering Plum Tree (after Hiroshige), a copy of the ukiyo-e woodblock print Plum Park in Kameido by the Japanese artist Hiroshige. Completed in 1887, this painting is one of several Japanese-influenced works created by Vincent van Gogh after the opening up of Japan. In his copy, van Gogh ignored the shading present in the trunk and background of Hiroshige's image, which there implied age, and instead used colours with more "passion" and "youthfulness".
Kishū kumano iwatake tori (Iwatake mushroom gathering at Kumano in Kishu), 1860, a ukiyo-e print created by Hiroshige II. It is part of the series "100 Famous Views of Japan".
In baseball, Chinese Taipei defeated Japan 4-0 in the finals of the WBSC Premier 12, winning the first title of the top three international baseball tournaments in its history. (Taipei Times)
Born in Toyooka in Tajima Province, Toyoharu first studied art in Kyoto, then in Edo (modern Tokyo), where from 1768 he began to produce designs for ukiyo-e woodblock prints. He soon became known for his uki-e "floating pictures" of landscapes and famous sites, as well as copies of Western and Chinese perspective prints. Though his were not the first perspective prints in ukiyo-e, they were the first to appear as full-colour nishiki-e, and they demonstrate a much greater mastery of perspective techniques than the works of his predecessors. Toyoharu was the first to make the landscape a subject of ukiyo-e art, rather than just a background to figures and events. By the 1780s he had turned primarily to painting. The Utagawa school of art grew to dominate ukiyo-e in the 19th century with artists such as Utamaro, Hiroshige, and Kuniyoshi. (Full article...)
Chiba Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Greater Tokyo Area. Its capital is Chiba City. Chiba Prefecture was established on June 15, 1873 with the merger of KisarazuPrefecture and Inba Prefecture. Historically, the prefecture constituted three provinces of Awa, Kazusa, and Shimousa. Chiba borders Ibaraki Prefecture to the north at the Tone River, Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture to the west at the Edo River, the Pacific Ocean to the east and Tokyo Bay around its southern boundary. Most of Chiba lies on the hilly Boso Peninsula, a rice farming region: the east coast, known as the Ninety-Nine League Plain, is an especially productive area. The most populous zone, in the northwest of the prefecture, is part of the Kantō region that extends into the urban agglomeration of Tokyo and Saitama. The Kuroshio Current flows near Chiba, which keep it relatively warm in winter and cooler in summer than neighbouring Tokyo. Chiba is one of Japan's largest industrial areas, thanks to its long coastline on Tokyo Bay. After Chiba was chosen as the site for a major Kawasaki Steel factory in 1950, the prefectural government embarked on a large-scale land reclamation program that dredged up large plots of waterfront property for factories, warehouses, and docks. Chemical production, petrochemical refining, and machine production are the three main industries in Chiba today: together, they account for forty-five percent of the prefecture's exports. In recent years, the government has funded more than eighty industrial parks to bring development further inland as well.
... that 99 percent of Japanese municipalities collect and recyclesteel cans despite not being required by law, giving the country one of the world's highest recycling rates for these cans? (Japanese recycling bins pictured)
Image 30Japanese experts inspect the scene of the alleged railway sabotage on South Manchurian Railway that led to the Mukden Incident and the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. (from History of Japan)
Image 40Samurai could kill a commoner for the slightest insult and were widely feared by the Japanese population. Edo period, 1798 (from History of Japan)
Image 48Relief map of the land and the seabed of Japan. It shows the surface and underwater terrain of the Japanese archipelago. (from Geography of Japan)
Image 51A social hierarchy chart based on old academic theories. Such hierarchical diagrams were removed from Japanese textbooks after various studies in the 1990s revealed that peasants, craftsmen, and merchants were in fact equal and merely social categories. Successive shoguns held the highest or near-highest court ranks, higher than most court nobles. (from History of Japan)
Image 54The Kuril Islands, with their Russian names. The borders of the Treaty of Shimoda (1855) and the Treaty of St. Petersburg (1875) are shown in red. Currently, all islands northeast of Hokkaido are administered by Russia. (from Geography of Japan)
Image 79Mount Aso 4 pyroclastic flow and the spread of Aso 4 tephra (90,000 to 85,000 years ago). The pyroclastic flow reached almost the whole area of Kyushu, and volcanic ash was deposited of 15 cm in a wide area from Kyushu to southern Hokkaido. (from Geography of Japan)
Image 80Japanese archipelago with outlined islands (from Geography of Japan)
Image 82Minamoto no Yoritomo was the founder of the Kamakura shogunate in 1192. This was the first military government in which the shogun with the samurai were the de facto rulers of Japan. (from History of Japan)
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