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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 very complex, and probably the peak of complexity was the events known as the Shimabar rebellion – after which the Shinto Christians were represented by bloody rebels, and the Christians bill the Shinto for their brutally tortured co-religionists.
Coming to Deus on the Islands
Christianity arrived in Japan with the Portuguese. Until the sixteenth century, Japan lived for a long time almost in isolation from world processes (although, for example, the Mongols tried to conquer it – but Continue reading
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
Secrets of “Japanese Disney”: Why Hayao Miyazaki’s cartoons are so different from Western
The great master of Japanese animation creates completely unique works. Each of his films immerses the viewer in a separate, fully-fledged world. It seems that outside the frame, its inhabitants continue to exist according to their laws. To better understand the famous animator, you should look into his creative laboratory, because Miyazaki creates special paintings and he does it by his own rules.
The fate of Hayao Miyazaki can serve as an example of the fact that “real talent will always break through,” because in childhood, it seemed, nothing could help this boy become a famous animator. He was born in 1941, and in the first years he was forced to experience all the horrors of the bombing and evacuation with his family. His father was the director of a factory for the manufacture of aircraft parts, his mother for many years suffered from a serious illness of the spine and was often in hospitals. Continue reading