BONSAI: UNIVERSE IN TREE
In the East, trees, herbs, and flowers are worshiped as living beings. They conduct confidential conversations with them, as with close friends. They are idolized. Monuments are erected to beloved…

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Why Japan has left-hand traffic
This question is, of course, burning. It becomes especially relevant when, after a short stay in Japan, you suddenly find yourself thinking that you can’t part with the Japanese in…

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Ken Watanabe
Ken was born on October 21, 1959 in a small mountain village in Niigata Prefecture. Ken's parents were teachers, but their two children preferred cinema: Ken's sister, Yuki Watanabe, also…

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many ways

JAPAN’S POSTAL MARKS

Her Majesty Postage Stamp! It is a unique invention in itself. And she appeared at the behest of the time. Rather – at the behest of economic progress.

The vigorously developing capitalism of the mid-19th century, industry, trade, transport, or, as they say now, “business”, needed a connection. Moreover, the communication is well-established, reliable, and, most importantly, publicly available, convenient and cheap. And this, I think, predetermined the fact that for the first time a postage stamp appeared in Great Britain, which had become by that time a powerful colonial power, a “workshop of the world”, a “world cab driver”, and a “world banker.” And the communication system that existed in the country at that time was cumbersome, expensive and required streamlining.

In 1837, a member of the House of Commons of the British Parliament, inventor and educator, Sir Rowland Hill published his project “Post Office Reform, its Importance and Feasibility”. In his work, he proposed to unify the postage Continue reading

MASAHIRO YASUDA AND HIS THEATER “YAMANOTE”

With this pensive, phlegmatic (as it seemed to me when I first met) man I first met in the summer of 2000, during the Moscow Theater Olympics. Having put Meterlinka’s Blue Bird at his Yamanote Theater in Tokyo, he wanted to talk with one of the Russian theater specialists and find out how Stanislavsky’s performance at the Moscow Art Theater looked like. Translator Yukiko Kase, a very nice girl who graduated from the philological faculty of Moscow State University here in Moscow and defended her dissertation on Gogol’s work, called me and asked for a meeting.

The day we spent partly at my home, analyzing the little that we managed to get about the Mkhatov’s “Blue Bird” (sketches of costumes and scenery, photographs, memoirs of the participants), partly in the Kuskovo park, the summer cottage of Count Sheremetyev.

Communication was intense. The percentage of questions Yasud asked was many times greater than the percentage of questions I asked him. Therefore, it will be more accurate to determine the nature of our conversation as his questions and my monologues. And the subjects of interest were such that, when satisfied, they meant global calculations and they Continue reading

ABOUT KOGEN THEATER

The Kyogen Theater, of which we are actors, is the oldest theater in Japan. Perhaps you can even say that this is one of the oldest theaters in the world. They say that Kyogen was born 600 years ago, and during these 600 years, the performances of the Kyogen theater are constantly played without interruption. But the Kyogen that you will see now, it is not played in exactly the same form as it was 600 years ago.

The fact is that our ancestors watched the performances of the Kyogen theater in the same way, with the same mood as you are watching, for example, modern performances, television programs or film programs. Just like today, in a modern theater, then themes changed every day, the performances played by the actors changed. And for 200 years, the Kyogen Theater has remained such a modern theater, the Continue reading

THEORIES OF "NIHONDZINRON" IN JAPANESE BILLS
In the near future, the Japanese government plans to put into circulation new-type banknotes with new "faces." Gradually, such money will supersede the existing banknotes of the 1984 model. An…

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Mores in Japan
If it’s good, one isn’t enough, and if it’s bad, two are enough. The first man and first woman, in the understanding of the Japanese, is the god Idaanami and…

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Japanese beauty
Nothing is easier than seeing Mount Fuji. There is a way to examine it in detail - to come over the weekend, to stay in one of the hotels nearby…

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