Ama Divers
are Japanese divers famous for collecting pearls, though traditionally their main catch is seafood. The vast majority of are women. Terminology There are several sea occupations that are pronounced "ama" and several words that refer to sea occupation. * – a sea-diving fisherwoman * – a sea-diving fisherman * , – a sea-diving fisherperson of either gender * ''uminchu'' () – a sea fisherperson of either gender in Okinawan While one definition of ama specifically refers to divers, another definition refers to fisherpersons in general. History Japanese tradition holds that the practice of may be 2,000 years old. Records of female pearl divers, or , date back as early as AD 927 in Japan's Heian period. Early were known to dive for seafood and were honored with the task of retrieving abalone for shrines and imperial emperors. traditionally wear white, as the colour represents purity and also to possibly ward off sharks. Traditionally and even as recently as th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea in the south. The Japanese archipelago consists of four major islands—Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu—and List of islands of Japan, thousands of smaller islands, covering . Japan has a population of over 123 million as of 2025, making it the List of countries and dependencies by population, eleventh-most populous country. The capital of Japan and List of cities in Japan, its largest city is Tokyo; the Greater Tokyo Area is the List of largest cities, largest metropolitan area in the world, with more than 37 million inhabitants as of 2024. Japan is divided into 47 Prefectures of Japan, administrative prefectures and List of regions of Japan, eight traditional regions. About three-quarters of Geography of Japan, the countr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cultured Pearl
Cultured pearls are pearls which are formed within a cultured pearl sac with human intervention in the interior of productive living molluscs in a variety of conditions depending upon the mollusc and the goals. Having the same material as natural pearls, cultured pearls can be cultivated in seawater or freshwater bodies. Over 95% of the pearls available on the market are cultured pearls. Development of a pearl A pearl is formed when the mantle tissue is injured by a parasite, an attack of a fish, or another event that damages the external fragile rim of the shell of a mollusk shell bivalve or gastropod. In response, the mantle tissue of the mollusk secretes nacre into the pearl sac, a cyst that forms during the healing process. Chemically speaking, this is calcium carbonate and a fibrous protein called conchiolin. As the nacre builds up in layers of minute aragonite tablets, it fills the growing pearl sac and eventually forms a pearl. Natural pearls are initiated in natu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Octopus
An octopus (: octopuses or octopodes) is a soft-bodied, eight-limbed mollusc of the order Octopoda (, ). The order consists of some 300 species and is grouped within the class Cephalopoda with squids, cuttlefish, and nautiloids. Like other cephalopods, an octopus is bilaterally symmetric with two eyes and a beaked mouth at the centre point of the eight limbs. An octopus can radically deform its shape, enabling it to squeeze through small gaps. They trail their appendages behind them as they swim. The siphon is used for respiration and locomotion (by water jet propulsion). Octopuses have a complex nervous system and excellent sight, and are among the most intelligent and behaviourally diverse invertebrates. Octopuses inhabit various ocean habitats, including coral reefs, pelagic waters, and the seabed; some live in the intertidal zone and others at abyssal depths. Most species grow quickly, mature early, and are short-lived. In most species, the male uses a speciall ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hokusai
, known mononymously as Hokusai, was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist of the Edo period, active as a painter and printmaker. His woodblock printing in Japan, woodblock print series ''Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji'' includes the iconic print ''The Great Wave off Kanagawa''. Hokusai was instrumental in developing ''ukiyo-e'' from a style of portraiture largely focused on courtesans and actors into a much broader style of art that focused on landscapes, plants, and animals. His works had a significant influence on Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet during the wave of Japonisme that spread across Europe in the late 19th century. Hokusai created the monumental ''Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji'' as a response to a domestic travel boom in Japan and as part of a personal interest in Mount Fuji. It was this series, specifically, ''The Great Wave off Kanagawa'' and ''Fine Wind, Clear Morning'', that secured his fame both in Japan and overseas. Hokusai was best known for his woodblock ukiyo-e p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Woodblock Print
Woodblock printing or block printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later on paper. Each page or image is created by carving a wooden block to leave only some areas and lines at the original level; it is these that are inked and show in the print, in a relief printing process. Carving the blocks is skilled and laborious work, but a large number of impressions can then be printed. As a method of printing on cloth, the earliest surviving examples from China date to before 220 AD. Woodblock printing existed in Tang China by the 7th century AD and remained the most common East Asian method of printing books and other texts, as well as images, until the 19th century. ''Ukiyo-e'' is the best-known type of Japanese woodblock art print. Most European uses of the technique for printing images on paper are covered by the art term woodcut, except for the b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Dream Of The Fisherman's Wife
''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of the archaic pronoun ''thee' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Amachan
is a Japanese television drama series. It debuted on April 1, 2013, and was broadcast until September 28, 2013. It was scripted by Kankurō Kudō and starred Rena Nōnen as Aki Amano, a high-school girl from Tokyo who moves to the Sanriku Coast in the Tohoku region to become a female diver. She becomes a local idol, then returns to Tokyo to try to become a real idol, and finally returns to Tohoku to help revitalize the area after the Great East Japan earthquake. It is the 88th NHK Asadora. ''Amachan'' was not only a ratings success, but brought economic benefits to the Tohoku region and was considered a social phenomenon. It also won the Galaxy Award for best television program of 2013. Synopsis Hometown chapter (Episode 1 - Episode 72) Haruko Amano left the small northern seaside town of Sodegahama 24 years ago and has not returned since. When her childhood friend Daikichi emails her with news that her mother has collapsed, she rushes back with her 16-year-old daughter Aki ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Asadora
, colloquially known as , is a serialized, 15 minutes per episode, Japanese television drama program series broadcast in the mornings by Japanese public broadcaster NHK. The first such series aired in 1961 with the black-and-white , starring Takeshi Kitazawa which aired in Japan Monday through Friday mornings—it was also the only of such series to be aired for 20 minutes per episode. From 1975 onward, series aired in the first half of the year are produced by the NHK Tokyo Broadcasting station and series in the latter half of the year are produced by the NHK Osaka Broadcasting station; the Osaka branch's first ''asadora'' production was in 1964. Due to the practice of wiping commonly in practice around the world in the 1960s and 1970s, not all episodes of all pre-1980 ''asadora'' series survive, as the 2-inch Quad videotapes were often wiped and reused; 16 of the produced ''asadora'' series in total are incomplete in the NHK archives, with several series having no survivi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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You Only Live Twice (film)
''You Only Live Twice'' is a 1967 spy film and the fifth in the List of James Bond films, ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions, starring Sean Connery as the fictional Secret Intelligence Service, MI6 agent James Bond filmography, James Bond. It is the first of three Bond films to be directed by Lewis Gilbert. The screenplay of ''You Only Live Twice'' was written by Roald Dahl, and loosely based on Ian Fleming's 1964 novel of the You Only Live Twice (novel), same name. It is the first James Bond film to discard most of Fleming's plot, using only a few characters and locations from the book as the background for an entirely new story. In the film, Bond is dispatched to Japan after American and Soviet-crewed spacecraft vanish mysteriously in orbit, each nation blaming the other amidst the Cold War. Bond travels secretly to a remote Japanese island to find the perpetrators, and comes face-to-face with Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE. The film reveals the appe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kissy Suzuki
Kissy Suzuki is a fictional character introduced in Ian Fleming's 1964 ''James Bond'' novel, '' You Only Live Twice'' and featured in the 1967 film adaptation played by Mie Hama. Despite James Bond's womanizing, Kissy Suzuki (at least the literary version) remains the only character known to the reader who bears a child by him: a son named James Suzuki. In the films, Madeleine Swann, played by Léa Seydoux, has a child, Mathilde (Lisa-Dorah Sonnet), by Bond (Daniel Craig) in ''No Time to Die''. The treatment of Kissy varies greatly between the novel and the film, where she is never identified by her name, no family name appears in the closing credits and the film ends in the usual Bond-style happy ending. Novel version In the book You Only Live Twice, Kissy Suzuki is an Ama diver and former Hollywood actress. She is distantly related to a local police superintendent working with Tiger Tanaka, head of the Japanese Secret Service and is, therefore, asked to assist James Bond. Bo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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You Only Live Twice (novel)
''You Only Live Twice'' is the eleventh novel and twelfth book in Ian Fleming's ''James Bond'' series. It was first published by Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom on 26 March 1964 and quickly sold out. It was the last novel Fleming published in his lifetime. He based his book in Japan after a stay in 1959 as part of a trip around the world that he published as '' Thrilling Cities''. He returned to Japan in 1962 and spent twelve days exploring the country and its culture. ''You Only Live Twice'' begins eight months after the murder of Tracy Bond, James Bond's wife, which occurred at the end of the previous novel, '' On Her Majesty's Secret Service'' (1963). Bond is drinking, gambling heavily and making mistakes on his assignments when, as a last resort, he is sent to Japan on a semi-diplomatic mission. While there he is challenged by the head of the Japanese Secret Service to kill Dr. Guntram Shatterhand. Bond realises that Shatterhand is Ernst Stavro Blofeld—the man respo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |