Christians versus Samurai: What caused the bloodiest rebellion in Japanese history
Japan is traditionally associated with two religions - Shintoism and Buddhism. But in fact, Christianity has existed in it for several centuries. True, the relations between Japan and Christianity are…

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Why is summer and autumn the best time to travel in Japan?
There is probably no other country in the world that could achieve such technological progress and at the same time maintain millennial traditions. It is interesting to come to Japan…

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Cultural leisure and the rules of its passage
In light clothing, with a backpack on my shoulder in the early morning of the summer month of August, I walked unhurriedly out of the anthracite building of the Kyoto…

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biography began

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How Japanese Schindler in the USSR saved thousands of Jews from concentration camps: Tiune Sugihara

Thanks to the 1993 Oscar-winning film directed by Stephen Spielberg, the whole world learned the story of Oscar Schindler, a German businessman and member of the Nazi party who saved hundreds of concentration camp Jews during the Holocaust. But even today, few have heard of the Japanese Tiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat who worked in the Lithuanian consulate in 1940 and repeated Schindler’s feat.

This story, which can be called one of the most striking in the history of the war, is rarely mentioned even in historical reports on the events of the Holocaust.

In 1940, Sugihara worked as Japan’s Vice Consul in Kaunas, which was then the capital of Lithuania. The city had a large and prosperous Jewish community of about 30,000 people. Between 1939 and 1940, the number of Jews in the city increased by several thousand people fleeing persecution in Nazi-occupied Poland. The refugee stories of the horrors that befell the Jews under Nazi rule literally forced blood to be washed away in the veins of local residents. Continue reading

How Samurai’s son Matsuo Basho glorified the Japanese three-song haiku all over the world

Haiku (hoku) remains popular largely due to the fact that it perfectly conveys the subtexts of the funny, allows you to achieve funny understatement – a couple of expressive touches, a reference to the mysterious oriental nature – and the joke is ready. But when the haiku, which was originally called “hoku”, appeared in Japanese culture, his role was just that – comic. But thanks to the poet Matsuo Basho, the haiku genre has risen to the very heights of Japanese art – it turned out that “the haiku space is infinite and can contain the whole world”, in the words of another famous haiku author, or haijin, Masaoka Shiki.

The roots of Japanese poetry, as befits everything that this culture is famous for, go back to the deep past. Continue reading

Did Jesus really escape execution, get married and live in Japan: Museum in the village of Shingo

650 km north of Tokyo you can find the tiny village of Shingo, which locals consider the last refuge of Jesus Christ. Allegedly among the quiet hills of this place forgotten by God, the Christian prophet lived like an ordinary farmer, growing garlic. He had three daughters and lived in a Japanese village until 106 years old. All this, as well as many other interesting facts, is described in the local Museum of Jesus. Who knows, maybe today you can run into several of his descendants right on the street …
Shingo is located in Aomori Prefecture, and its population is about 2500 people. Near the alleged grave of Christ are other popular tourist attractions – a car race track, a stunning pyramid and the so-called “Big Rock”. However, tourists still travel to Shingo primarily to see the place where Jesus lived another Continue reading

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How to celebrate New Year in Japan
New Year in Japan: holiday history, traditions and customs, Japanese analogues of Santa Claus, Christmas tree, greetings and postcards, feast and festivities. New Year is the most famous holiday celebrated…

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Yakuza Eyga
Yakuza Eyga (Jap. ヤ ク ザ 映 画, literally - gangster cinema) is a Japanese cinema genre dedicated to the yakuza, at different times allowing either heroization or absolute denial…

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What is the secret of the Japanese rock garden
The mystery of the disappearing fifteenth stone is, perhaps, the first thing the European has associated with the traditional Japanese “dry” garden. However, neither the "invisible" stone, nor "Mount Fuji",…

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