Big Sound Temple
Japan
Japan K - P
Kagoshima, Bombardment of
Followed the Namamugi Incident of September 14, 1862, when four British nationals had been attacked and one killed by samurai after failing to show proper respect to the passing daimyo of Satsuma, the Tokugawa Shogunate had issued a public apology and paid a fine of 100,000 pounds to the English authorities.
But
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Kuizu Mirionea
Or ‘Quiz Millionaire’,
Not that any of this keeps him off the box, however.
His catchphrase on Kuizu Mirionea is ‘Final answer?’, which his contestants confirm by repeating the words in that strange, almost robotic accent many Japanese adopt when speaking English.
And then Monta’s froggy face splits into a frankly scary grin, his eyes bulging as his face moves oh-so-slowly forwards, like a cobra preparing to strike…
At which point – so long as a reasonably large amount of money is at stake – Kuizu Mirionea invariably goes to commercials, allowing Monta to hop back onto the sun-bed for a quick two minute top-up…
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Manjiro, 'John'
Aged fourteen, Manjiro Nakahama (1827 - 1898) was onboard a fishing vessel with four other men when the ship was wrecked on a tiny island. They managed to survive for six months until an American whaler, the John Howland, rescued them, eventually putting the four Japanese fishermen onshore at
Nakahama – who’d by now acquired the affectionate nickname ‘John Manjiro’ amongst the American crew – requested to remain onboard, however, and was thus taken to the
When
Nakahama returned to the
Eventually he arrived at
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Meiji Restoration
On November 9, 1867, the 15th Tokugawa Shogun Yoshinobu officially resigned his position, stating in a speech that ‘…if… administrative authority be restored to the Imperial Court, and… if the empire be supported by the efforts of the whole people, then the empire will be able to maintain its rank and dignity among the nations of the earth – it is, I believe, my highest duty to realise this ideal by giving up entirely my rule over this land…’
In reality, Yoshinobu had practically been forced to relinquish his leadership. The feudalistic Tokugawa Shogunate had been irreparably weakened by Western (particularly American) pressure on
By early January the following year the teenage Emperor Meiji was officially back in power – although all that really happened was that the governing of Japan switched from the Tokugawa Shogunate to an oligarchy that consisted mainly of the two samurai clans Satsuma and Choshu. They inherited a land whose apparent infatuation with – and consequent emulation of – the West contrasted uneasily with the still widespread sonnō jōi
Musashi’s first duel was at the tender age of 13, when he passed a wooden sign that read: ‘Whoever wants to challenge me shall be accepted’, followed by a name.
Musashi scribbled: ‘I will challenge you tomorrow’, adding his name and address. (I guess he took it as read that the sign referred to a duel with swords.)
A duel was arranged the following morning, following the freezing, pre-dawn bath that Musashi was apparently fond of taking. (It’s also been claimed that Musashi never washed at all, so concerned was he that this might enable an assassin to take him by surprise.)
And so, though barely in his teens, Musashi savoured his first victory, apparently beating his opponent – a Samurai – to death with a wooden sword.
Another duel followed three years later, and again it brought Musashi some fame locally. Then he fought in the famous Battle of Sekigahara (1600), which paved the way for Tokugawa Ieyasu to become the first Shogun of Japan. Musashi had joined forces with the losing side, however, and was subsequently obliged to hide amongst thousands of corpses for some three days to avoid being captured and killed himself.
A few years later, aged 21, he went to
Musashi was clearly deadly, and word began to spread…
A third challenge came from Yoshioka Genzaemon’s 12-year-old son, although this was a blind: instead of a duel, Musashi would instead stumble into an ambush and be cut down by around 80 samurai.
Unusually for Musashi, he arrived at the duel early (he was often late, which was construed as being a grave insult to an opponent), when his would-be assassins were still busy concealing themselves. He twigged what was going on, cut down a few of the samurai – as well as the unfortunate child who’d issued the third challenge – then took to his heels.
Over the next few years Musashi roamed around
Musashi left him dying on the ground, disdaining the finishing blow that was the norm. (Some sources say that this was because Musashi had to leap into a boat, beating a hasty retreat from his deceased opponent’s angry friends.)
Later in his life Musashi appears to have become mildly depressed, turning into something of a recluse and going to live in a cave. But it was in this cave that he wrote his famous Book of Five Rings, about philosophy and martial arts in general. He died (probably from stomach cancer) just one week after completing it.
Naginata
First observed in paintings of battles dating from the 900s, the naginata is a weapon rather like the European pike in appearance. It was used to best effect against mounted samurai cavalry, but was particularly noted for the way it was adopted by a group of people generally not (at that time) considered to be very ‘warrior-like’.
I’m talking, of course, about women.
One woman in particular, the charmingly named ‘Lady Hangaku’, proved so adept at using the naginata that she ended up commanding around three thousand soldiers (she probably had something of a strong personality, too). At the very start of the twelfth century, Lady Hangaku and her men fought a fierce battle against an army more than three times their size, with the – apparently exceedingly beautiful – woman’s awesome use of the steel-bladed naginata causing many a man to fall from his horse, where unless he got up quickly (and I mean quickly) he was dead meat.
In spite of all this, however, Lady Hangaku was captured. Depending on what story you believe afterwards, she was either then killed or released to marry a man with whom she had a child.
And so it remains to this very day that naginata ‘classes’ prove extremely popular with women of all ages, although the emphasis is now rather more on kata and general dōjō etiquette than it is on stabbing a samurai in the legs as he sits astride his mighty steed. 
Hirohito, the 124th Emperor of Japan in the traditional order of succession, declared as part of a nationwide radio broadcast that his supposed divinity was a ‘false conception’. The Ningen-sengen or ‘Humanity Declaration’ was taken to mean that the Japanese people were no longer to believe that he was a living kami, or Shinto god, descended from the sun goddess Amaterasu. Hirohito’s declaration was widely supposed to be part of a shadowy deal struck with the leader of the
MacArthur appeared to want it believed that Hirohito was a rather meek man who’d been at the mercy of a powerful political and military clique, rather than someone who had full knowledge – indeed, control – of Japan’s activities (and, by implication, atrocities) during the Second World War. It was even suspected that MacArthur had the testimony of various Japanese war criminals ‘doctored’, so as not to implicate Hirohito in any wrongdoing. Hirohito was now to be seen as someone who had (through ordering
Oyama, Masutatsu ‘Mas’
Probably
Aged fifteen, Oyama decided that he wanted to go to
A premature end to his military career, however, was brought about when he thumped an officer who thought it would be a good idea to bait this gentle-looking young man.
With a lot more time suddenly on his hands (Oyama was fortunate not to be imprisoned for the offence), he started to do some serious karate training. And this was real karate, by the way, not the sort of glorified ‘keep-fit’ program that will get you a black belt in many of today’s high-street dojo – Oyama spat blood, broke bones (both his own and other people’s) and kept coming back for more.
Then one day, while attending a dance at a local hall, Oyama came to the assistance of a young woman who was being bothered by a drunk.
‘Keep out of this!’ snarled the drunk (or words to that effect), producing a knife and slashing it wildly in front of him.
With just one blow, Oyama crushed the side of the man’s head like an egg. The man fell to the floor, dead. But Oyama hadn’t meant to kill, and the fact that he was now a murderer (however justifiable this homicide might have been) devastated him – even more so when he found out that the man’s wife and children were facing destitution on a nearby farm.
Completely renouncing karate, Oyama went to live and work on the farm for several months (the widow appears not to have minded that her husband’s killer was helping out) by way of penance.
Finally, absolved of guilt by the dead man’s widow, he left and again began training in karate. But he soon became bored with practicing in the same environment; he needed to train somewhere else – somewhere where he would be pushed to the very limits of his endurance. An environment so harsh it might even destroy him: basically, Oyama wanted to find a place that would separate the men from the boys.
‘I know,’ he decided in a flash of inspiration, ‘I’ll go and train on top of
And so it began. From five o’clock each morning, awakening inside a small, chilly cave (probably – it’s never actually been said where he slept), Oyama hit trees with his arms, legs and forehead, broke river rocks with his hands, ran up and down the mountainside, practiced his kata beneath a freezing waterfall, and generally gave himself a very hard time indeed.
‘Maybe that’s enough,’ he thought after eighteen months of such training.
So down he came from the mountain, just long enough to win a bunch of karate tournaments before deciding that, no, his SAS-like training wasn’t yet complete.
Another year passed on top of Mount Chiba, as whoever brought Oyama his supplies each week found themselves beginning to suspect that their friendship was being somewhat trespassed upon.
Oyama himself, meanwhile, decided that as most humans didn’t have a hope in hell of standing against him, he might as well have a bash at fighting a bull. What better way to show the world – for such a feat would surely capture widespread attention – that Japanese karate was truly a force to be reckoned with.
In fact, Oyama would eventually face over fifty bulls in a bloody showdown between man and beast. He quickly dispatched three of the unfortunate creatures with a straight blow to the head, while depriving most of the others of their horns with his legendary ‘knife-hand’ strike.
One bull, however, managed to keep its horns long enough to severely gore Oyama. Carted off to hospital, expected not to last the night, Oyama eventually pulled through.
From then until his death, he fought anyone who wanted to fight while running his own karate school. His students were expected to train with almost the same single-minded intensity as himself, which included eight mile runs bare-chested in winter and brutal ‘knockdown’ sparring where kicks in the groin were not only allowed but expected.
Not surprisingly, about nine out of ten students said ‘Thanks but not thanks’ in a high-pitched voice and left to do something rather less demanding, like ikebana.
Finally, after a long battle against lung cancer, Oyama passed away on April 26, 1994 aged seventy-one. His name means ‘mountain’ in Japanese, and that he surely was.
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Pokémon
The brainchild of Satoshi Tajiri, Pokémon (an abbreviation of the Japanese title Poketto Monsuta, or ‘Pocket Monster’) was approximately six years in the making. It was based upon Tajiri’s other passion apart from playing Space Invaders and Donkey Kong – namely, collecting insects. Tajiri eventually licensed his game to Nintendo, and specifically to their handheld game console the ‘Game Boy’. Tajiri saw great potential for his game, in the fact that two Game Boy players could play against each other by linking their consoles with a cable.
Although the concept of Pokémon is readily explained by its fans, it remains a little hard to fathom by those who’ve remained immune to its charms. In a virtual world, it seems, players seek to capture various strange-looking ‘insects’, which are then trained to become a fighting ‘force’ which can be pitted against a rival player’s team.
Currently, Pokémon is second only to Nintendo’s Mario series as the most successful game-based franchise in the world. It has been licensed into a myriad of other forms, including books, films, toys and playing cards. The author has seen at least one All Nippon Airlines 747 gaudily decorated with pictures of Pokémon characters. Yet Tajiri (who has said in an interview that he sleeps for twelve hours and then works for twenty-four) has also seen his creation attract a substantial amount of criticism: Pokémon has been accused of everything from causing childhood gambling addictions to (due to the use of a left-facing manji – ‘swastika’ in Japanese) being anti-Semitic.
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Port Arthur, Seige of
His Majesty’s millions conquer the strong foe
Field battles and siege result in mountains of corpses
How can I, in shame, face their fathers?
Songs of triumph today – but how many have returned?
So wrote Japanese General Maresuke Nogi of the infamous ‘Siege of Port Arthur’ – the longest (August 1, 1904 - January 2, 1905) and most vicious battle of the Russo-Japanese War that had resulted in the loss of approximately 60,000 Japanese troops. (A figure which included Nogi’s two sons.)
The ultimately victorious campaign by the Japanese to wrestle Port Arthur – an important naval base at the tip of Liaotung Peninsula, Manchuria – from Russian control lasted around six months, and featured much of what would (less than a decade later) serve to make the First World War so notorious: trenches, heavy mortar and machinegun fire, hand grenades, mud and barbed wire.
The Japanese at first shelled
