Famous People Of Japan

Excerpt from Famous People of Japan: Ancient and Modern The object of this book is to present in a concise form some information about the famous people of Japan. This information might be much extended and the number of people dealt with might be much increased; but this would defeat the object of the book. We have tried to give what we consider is most needed by the general reader, whose time is limited and whose interest in the subject is not that of a specialist. With this aim in view we have had to consider as much what to leave out as what to put in, so as to make the book sufficient for its purpose without being redundant. The people we have written about are known to almost every Japanese; and if an educated man in this country were asked to make a list of a hundred representative famous and well-known persons, probably ninety percent of the ones we have chosen would be included in the list. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

''Nowhere in the world do people hold mountains in so much regard as in Japan,'' writes Fukada Kyuya in the afterword to this book. ''Mountains have played a part in Japanese history since the country's beginnings, and they manifest themselves in every form of art. For mountains have always formed the bedrock of the Japanese soul.'' In One Hundred Mountains of Japan, Fukada pays tribute to his favorite summits. Originating as a series of magazine articles about a personal selection of mountains, the work became an instant classic when it was first published in book form in 1964. Consisting of one hundred short essays, each celebrating one notable mountain and its place in Japan's traditions, the book is an elegantly written eulogy to the landscape, literature, and history that define a people. More recently, Japan's national broadcasting company has turned the original Nihon Hyakumeizan into a memorable TV series. Fukada himself was bemused by his book's success: ''In the end, the one hundred mountains represent my personal choice and I make no claims for them beyond that.'' Yet, half a century after he set down those words, his mountains have become an institution. Marked on every hiking map and enshrined in scores of spin-off books, his Hyakumeizan are today firmly embedded in the mountain traditions they grew out of. Now available in English translation, One Hundred Mountains of Japan will serve as a guide for a new cohort of hikers and mountaineers. It will also open up novel territories for students of Japan's literature, folklore, religions, and mountaineering history - in short, for mountain-lovers everywhere.--Amazon.com.

Examines the social, cultural, and political underpinnings of Japan's postwar and post-industrial trajectories.

This is a collection of 46 essays by specialists in Asian literature, who offer a wide range of possibilities for introducing Asian literature to English-speaking students. It is intended to help in promoting multicultural education.

Discusses the history, climate, cultural life, and economic issues of Japan, and includes photographs from the past and present.

It is the story of a hundred years that we propose to give; the record of the noblest and most marvelous century in the annals of mankind. Standing here, at the dawn of the Twentieth Century, as at the summit of a lofty peak of time, we may gaze far backward over the road we have traversed, losing sight of its minor incidents, but seeing its great events loom up in startling prominence before our eyes; heedless of its thronging millions, but proud of those mighty men who have made the history of the age and rise like giants above the common throng. History is made up of the deeds of great men and the movements of grand events, and there is no better or clearer way to tell the marvelous story of the Nineteenth Century than to put upon record the deeds of its heroes and to describe the events and achievements in which reside the true history of the age.