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Twilight Samurai
is a 2002 Japanese historical drama film co-written and directed by Yoji Yamada and starring Hiroyuki Sanada and Rie Miyazawa. Set in mid-19th century Japan, a few years before the Meiji Restoration, it follows the life of Seibei Iguchi, a low-ranking samurai employed as a bureaucrat. Poor, but not destitute, he still manages to lead a content and happy life with his daughters and his mother, who has dementia. Through an unfortunate turn of events, the turbulent times conspire against him. The film was inspired by the short story "The Bamboo Sword" by Shuhei Fujisawa. ''The Twilight Samurai'' won an unprecedented 12 Japanese Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay. ''The Twilight Samurai'' was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 76th Academy Awards. Plot At the start of the film, the main character, Iguchi Seibei, becomes a widower when his wife succumbs to tuberculosis. His ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yoji Yamada
is a Japanese film director best known for his ''Otoko wa Tsurai yo'' series of films and his Samurai Trilogy ('' The Twilight Samurai'', '' The Hidden Blade'' and '' Love and Honor''). Biography Yamada was born in Osaka, but due to his father's job as an engineer for the South Manchuria Railway, he was brought up in Dalian, China, from the age of two. Following the end of World War II, he returned to Japan and subsequently lived in Ube in Yamaguchi Prefecture. After receiving his degree from Tokyo University in 1954, he entered Shochiku and worked under Yoshitaro Nomura as a scriptwriter and as an assistant director. Yamada won many awards throughout his long career and is well respected in Japan and by critics throughout the world. He wrote his first screenplay in 1958 and directed his first movie in 1961. Yamada continues to make movies to this day. He once served as president of the Directors Guild of Japan, and is currently a guest professor of Ritsumeikan University. To ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Academy Awards
The , often called the Japan Academy Prize, the Japan Academy Awards, and the Japanese Academy Awards, is a series of awards given annually since 1978 by the Japan Academy Film Prize Association (日本アカデミー賞協会, ''Nippon Akademii-shou Kyoukai'') for excellence in Japanese film. Award categories are similar to the Academy Awards. Venue Since 1998, the venue is regularly held at the Grand Prince Hotel New Takanawa of Prince Hotels in Takanawa, Minato-ku, Tokyo. Admission tickets for this award ceremony are also sold to regular customers. As of 2015, there is a charge of 40,000 Yen which includes a French cuisine course dinner named after the award ceremony. Spectators are expected to attend in semi-formal attire. Elementary school students and younger are not permitted. Award The winners are selected from the recipients of the Award for Excellence. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ittō-ryū
, meaning "one-sword school", is the ancestor school of several Japanese Koryū kenjutsu styles, including Ono-ha, Mizoguchi-ha, Nakanishi-ha, Kogen, Hokushin, Itto Shoden and even Mugai Ryu. The style was developed by Itō Ittōsai Kagehisa. Ono-ha Ittō-ryū is the oldest of the many Ittō-ryū styles which descended from Ittōsai Kagehisa's original art. It continues to be one of the most influential of the traditional kenjutsu styles today, exerting a major influence, along with Hokushin branch, upon modern kendo's kata, tactics, and aesthetic. Ono-ha was founded by Ittōsai's immediate successor, Mikogami Tenzen (also known as Ono Jiroemon Tadaaki, 1565–1628), from whence the name of the art is derived. Oral tradition indicates that Ittosai made Tadaaki fight a serious duel with another student, Zenki, in order to establish a successor to the style. Serving as an instructor to both the second and third ''shōguns'', along with Yagyū Munenori of the rival school the Y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kodachi
A , literally translating into "small or short ''tachi'' (sword)", is one of the traditionally made Japanese swords (''nihontō'') used by the samurai class of feudal Japan. Kodachi are from the early Kamakura period (1185–1333) and are in the shape of a tachi. Kodachi are mounted in tachi style, but with a length of less than .(12-24i''The Japanese sword'', Kanzan Satō, Kodansha International, May 30, 1983 P.54/ref> They are often confused with wakizashi, due to their length and handling techniques. The exact use of the kodachi is unknown; it may have been preferred to be worn in court by the noble class, or kuge, in Kyoto, and or it may have been worn by adolescent samurai. The location of the smith's signature indicates that the Kodachi was worn edge down, unlike a wakizashi. Kodachi appear to have been produced only in a certain time period by higher quality craftsmen within specific schools of swordsmithing. Other theories indicate it was meant to be worn by nobles when t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scabbard
A scabbard is a sheath for holding a sword, dagger, knife, or similar edged weapons. Rifles and other long guns may also be stored in scabbards by horse riders for transportation. Military cavalry and cowboys had scabbards for their saddle ring carbines and rifles for transportation and protection. Scabbards have been made of many materials over the millennia, including leather, wood, and metal such as brass or steel. Most commonly, sword scabbards were worn suspended from a sword belt or shoulder belt called a baldric. Antiquity Scabbards have at least been around since the Bronze Age, and are thought to have existed as long as the blade has. Wooden scabbards were typically covered in fabric or leather; the leather versions also usually bore metal or leather fittings for added protection and carrying ease. All-metal scabbards were popular items for a display of wealth among elites in the European Iron Age, and often intricately decorated. Little is known about the scabbards ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rōnin
In feudal Japan to early modern Japan (1185–1868), a ''rōnin'' ( ; , , 'drifter' or 'wandering man', ) was a samurai who had no lord or master and in some cases, had also severed all links with his family or clan. A samurai became a ''rōnin'' upon the death of his master, or after the loss of his master's favor or legal privilege.Stephane Lun (2021). ''A Guide on Shinsengumi: the background and management.'' In modern Japanese, the term is usually used to describe a salaryman who is unemployed or a secondary school graduate who has not yet been admitted to university. Etymology The word ''rōnin'' is usually translated to 'drifter' or 'wanderer'; however, per kanji, means "wave" as on the water, as well as "unrestrained, dissolute", while means "person". It is an idiomatic expression for 'vagrant' or 'wanderer', someone who does not belong to one place. The term originated in the Nara and Heian periods, when it referred to a serf who had fled or deserted his master ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seppuku
, also known as , is a form of Japanese ritualistic suicide by disembowelment. It was originally reserved for samurai in their code of honor, but was also practiced by other Japanese people during the Shōwa era (particularly officers near the end of World War II) to restore honor for themselves or for their families. As a samurai practice, ''seppuku'' was used voluntarily by samurai to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies (and likely be tortured), as a form of capital punishment for samurai who had committed serious offenses, or performed because they had brought shame to themselves. The ceremonial disembowelment, which is usually part of a more elaborate ritual and performed in front of spectators, consists of plunging a short blade, traditionally a '' tantō'', into the belly and drawing the blade from left to right, slicing the belly open. If the cut is deep enough, it can sever the abdominal aorta, causing death by rapid exsanguination. One ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katana
A is a Japanese sword characterized by a curved, single-edged blade with a circular or squared guard and long grip to accommodate two hands. Developed later than the ''tachi'', it was used by samurai in feudal Japan and worn with the edge facing upward. Since the Muromachi period, many old ''tachi'' were cut from the root and shortened, and the blade at the root was crushed and converted into a ''katana''. The specific term for ''katana'' in Japan is and the term ''katana'' (刀) often refers to single-edged swords from around the world. Etymology and loanwords The word ''katana'' first appears in Japanese in the ''Nihon Shoki'' of 720. The term is a compound of ''kata'' ("one side, one-sided") + ''na'' ("blade"),1995, (''w:Daijisen, Daijisen'') (in Japanese), w:Tōkyō, Tōkyō: w:Shogakukan, Shogakukan, , entry available onlinhere/span> in contrast to the double-sided ''Tsurugi (sword), tsurugi''. The ''katana'' belongs to the ''nihontō'' family of swords, and is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duel
A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two people with matched weapons. During the 17th and 18th centuries (and earlier), duels were mostly single combats fought with swords (the rapier and later the small sword), but beginning in the late 18th century in England, duels were more commonly fought using pistols. Fencing and shooting continued to coexist throughout the 19th century. The duel was based on a code of honor. Duels were fought not to kill the opponent but to gain "satisfaction", that is, to restore one's honor by demonstrating a willingness to risk one's life for it. As such, the tradition of dueling was reserved for the male members of nobility; however, in the modern era, it extended to those of the upper classes. On occasion, duels with swords or pistols were fought between women. Legislation against dueling dates back to the medieval period. The Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215) outlawed duels and civil legislation in the Holy Roman Empire agains ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sake
Sake, , or saki, also referred to as Japanese rice wine, is an alcoholic beverage of Japanese origin made by fermenting rice that has been polished to remove the bran. Despite the name ''Japanese rice wine'', sake, and indeed any East Asian rice wine (such as huangjiu and cheongju), is produced by a brewing process more akin to that of beer, where starch is converted into sugars that ferment into alcohol, whereas in wine, alcohol is produced by fermenting sugar that is naturally present in fruit, typically grapes. The brewing process for sake differs from the process for beer, where the conversion from starch to sugar and then from sugar to alcohol occurs in two distinct steps. Like other rice wines, when sake is brewed, these conversions occur simultaneously. The alcohol content differs between sake, wine, and beer; while most beer contains 3–9% ABV, wine generally contains 9–16% ABV, and undiluted sake contains 18–20% ABV (although this is often lowered to abou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geisha
{{Culture of Japan, Traditions, Geisha {{nihongo, Geisha{{efn, {{IPAc-en, lang, ˈ, ɡ, eɪ, ., ʃ, ə, {{IPA, ja, ɡei.ɕa, ɡeː-, lang{{cite book, script-title=ja:NHK日本語発音アクセント新辞典, publisher=NHK Publishing, editor=NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute, date=24 May 2016, lang=ja, 芸者, also known as {{nihongo, , 芸子, geiko{{efn, {{IPA, ja, ɡei.ko, ɡeː-, lang, {{citation needed span, in Kyoto and Kanazawa, date=May 2025 or {{nihongo, , 芸妓, geigi{{efn, {{IPA, ja, ɡeꜜi.ɡi, ɡeꜜː-, -ŋi, lang , are female Japanese people, Japanese performing arts, performing artists and entertainers trained in performing arts#Japan, traditional Japanese performing arts styles, such as Japanese traditional dance, dance, Music of Japan, music and singing, as well as being proficient conversationalists and hosts. Their distinct appearance is characterised by long, trailing kimono, nihongami#geisha, traditional hairstyles and {{transliteration, ja, o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clan
A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, a clan may claim descent from a founding member or apical ancestor who serves as a symbol of the clan's unity. Many societies' exogamy rules are on a clan basis, where all members of one's own clan, or the clans of both parents or even grandparents, are excluded from marriage as incest. Clans preceded more centralized forms of community organization and government, and have existed in every country. Members may identify with a coat of arms or other symbol. Etymology The word "clan" is derived from the Gaelic word meaning "children", "offspring", "progeny" or "descendants". According to the ''Oxford English Dictionary'', the word "clan" was introduced into English in around 1406, as a descriptive label for the organization of society in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. None of the Irish and Scottish Gaelic terms for kinship groups is cognate to English ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
