NEWSWORTHY
'Spectacular Accumulation' explains three warlords' obsession with objects
In "Spectacular Accumulation" Morgan Pitelka relates the thrilling interactions between three "unifiers" of Japan in the tumultuous decades of the late 16th century and early 17th century. This trio of warlords includes the bloodthirsty Oda Nobunaga, the vainglorious Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu who ...
Battle of Sekigahara: a war set in stone
The open valley basins of Gifu Prefecture at the very center of Honshu, where the town of Sekigahara lies, were easily co-opted as theaters of war. It's no coincidence, given the martial history of the region, that the town of Seki was once known ...
The Vatican has agreed to recognize Takayama Ukon, one of Japan's best-known Christian warlords, as beatus or "blessed," the stage before being declared a saint, Vatican sources said. A beatification ceremony will be held next year in Japan following an official announcement later this year ...
Kyoto construction site yields apparent ruins of Hideyoshi's 'phantom castle'
Parts of stone walls and gold-plated roof tiles believed to be the ruins of Shigetsu Castle have been discovered at the construction site for a new apartment complex in Fushimi Ward, Kyoto, a private research firm has announced. Feudal leader Toyotomi Hideyoshi began construction on ...
The government's announcement of its intention to make Christian sites in Nagasaki its official candidate for UNESCO World Heritage status in 2016 spotlights a side of Japanese history that many around the world have little awareness of.
Under the beat of the Taiko in Kyoto
Kyoto's long history has ensured that it has seen its fair share of giants. Yet few of these legends have marked the city's physical appearance to the extent of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, despite the man's reputedly smallish stature. The most obvious of these landmarks was the ...
Chishaku-in: a Kyoto garden of deep repose
As a garden, Chishaku-in has many of the attributes of Japanese landscape design that should attract a good number of visitors. The fact that the temple in Kyoto's southeastern Higashikawara-cho district is rarely crowded, and that scant attention is paid to it in guidebooks, ...
Sweet times beside a scary Kyoto mound
"You have big hands, so make it a little larger," Kataoka-san said, referring to the piece of sweet mochi (glutinous rice cake) I'd been shaping as dexterously as I could manage. After stretching it out a little more, I again showed it to her. She ...
The Emperor and the general: a visit to Fushimi Momoyama
On the evening of Sept. 13, 1912, a cart decorated in gold leaf and lacquer and solemnly hauled by a team of oxen left the Imperial Palace in Tokyo along with a phalanx of people carrying banners, torches and weapons and beating drums and ...
The rarely, if ever, told story of Japanese sold as slaves by Portuguese traders
The subject of this slim volume is “a series of events that are essential in understanding Japanese history” — events “totally unknown, incredible, and unpleasant to read.”
Fake names were to the fore in many a rise from humblest to highest
Here's a beguiling irony: Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-98), architect of Tokugawa Japan's rigid class structure and the author, in 1587, of a firm ban (not firmly enforced) on surnames for commoners, was himself born without a surname. "Toyotomi," the family name under which his memory survives, ...
