Iaidō (居合道), abbreviated iai (居合), is a Japanese martial art that emphasizes being aware and capable of quickly drawing the sword and responding to sudden attacks.
Budō is a Japanese term describing modern Japanese martial arts. Literally translated it means the "Martial Way", and may be thought of as the "Way of War" or the "Way of Martial Arts".
Ko-ryū is a Japanese term for any kind of Japanese school of traditional arts. The term literally translates as "oldschool" or "traditional school". It is sometimes also translated as "old style".
Kobudō is a collective term for Japanese traditional techniques for the use of armour, blades, firearms, and techniques related to combat and horse riding. The kanji 古流武術 and 古武術 are other ways of writing it. The general umbrella term ko-ryū is also used to describe these ancient arts.
Sir Arthur Henry Hugh Cortazzi, was a British diplomat. He was also a distinguished international businessman, academic, author and prominent Japanologist. He was Ambassador from the United Kingdom to Japan (1980–84), President of the Asiatic Society of Japan (1982–1983) and Chairman of the Japan Society of London (1985–95).
Seison Maeda was the art-name of a nihonga painter in the Taishō and Shōwa periods of Japan. His legal name was Maeda Renzō. He is considered one of the greatest contemporary Japanese painters, and one of the leaders of the Nihonga movement.
Sokei-an Shigetsu Sasaki, born Yeita Sasaki, was a Japanese Rinzai monk who founded the Buddhist Society of America in New York City in 1930. Influential in the growth of Zen Buddhism in the United States, Sokei-an was one of the first Japanese masters to live and teach in America and the foremost purveyor in the U.S. of Direct Transmission. In 1944 he married American Ruth Fuller Everett. He died in May 1945 without leaving behind a Dharma heir. One of his better known students was Alan Watts, who studied under him briefly. Watts was a student of Sokei-an in the late 1930s.
Hokuetsu Seppu is a late Edo-period encyclopedic work of human geography describing life in the Uonuma area of Japan's old Echigo Province, a place known for its long winters and deep snow.
Josiah Conder was a British architect who was hired by the Meiji Japanese government as a professor of architecture for the Imperial College of Engineering and became architect of Japan's Public Works. He started his own practice after 1888.
Okada Hankō was a Japanese painter of the Edo period, who worked in the Nanga style of painting. He was the son of the noted individualist Nanga painter and rice merchant, Okada Beisanjin. Hankō was part of the third generation of literati painters in Japan, which had better access to Chinese paintings than had earlier painters, so they were no longer dependent on painting handbooks and copies of Chinese originals. Many of Hankō's paintings use sophisticated brushwork in complex compositions, with subtle colors added to the predominant black ink, but he also painted in ink with more vigorous brushwork and was a calligrapher of note.
Heinrich Dumoulin, S.J. was a Jesuit theologian, a widely published author on Zen, and a professor of philosophy and history at Sophia University in Tokyo, where he was Professor Emeritus. He was the founder of its Institute for Oriental Religions, as well as the first Director of the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture.
Abe ryū or Abe-tate-ryū (安倍立流), also known as Abe-ryū Kendō, is a Japanese sword school founded by Abe Yoritō (安倍頼任) in the 17th century. Abe was a disciple of Taisha-ryū, an offshoot of Shinkage-ryū. He was considered a Kengō and instructor to the Akizuki-han in Chikuzen Province.
Hiroaki Sato is a Japanese poet and prolific translator who writes frequently for The Japan Times. He has been called "perhaps the finest translator of contemporary Japanese poetry into American English". Sato received the Japan–U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature in 1999 for his translation of Breeze Through Bamboo by Ema Saikō and in 2017 for The Silver Spoon: Memoir of a Boyhood in Japan by Kansuke Naka.
Nihon Bijutsuin is a non-governmental artistic organization in Japan dedicated to Nihonga. The academy promotes the art of Nihonga through a biennial exhibition, the Inten Exhibition.
Sōiku Shigematsu is a Japanese priest of Myoshin-ji branch of Rinzai School of Zen Buddhism, abbot of Shōgen-ji Temple in Shimizu-ku, Shizuoka, author and translator of books and essays on Zen that were instrumental in spreading interest in Zen literary tradition to the West in the latter half of the 20th century. Shigematsu taught English literature at Shizuoka University also visiting the United States on several occasions, most notably in 1985-6 as a Fulbright scholar. He won the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from The American Poetry Review in 1987.
Itō Chūta was a Japanese architect, architectural historian, and critic. He is recognized as the leading architect and architectural theorist of early 20th-century Imperial Japan.
Ryūsenji (瀧泉寺) also known as the Meguro Fudō is a Buddhist temple located in Meguro, Tokyo, Japan. The temple currently belongs to the Tendai school of Japanese Buddhism, and its main image is a hibutsu statue of Fudō-myōō. The temple is 18th of the Kantō Sanjūroku Fudō pilgrimage route of 36 temples in the Kantō region dedicated to Fudō-myōō.
The Shibuya River is a river which flows through central Tokyo, Japan.
The Human Revolution is a roman à clef written by Daisaku Ikeda, the third and honorary president of the Soka Gakkai, chronicling the efforts of Jōsei Toda, the second president of the Soka Gakkai, to construct this Buddhist organization upon his release from Sugamo Prison at the end of World War II. The Human Revolution has sold millions of copies and served as the source of two films of the same name produced by Toho Company and directed by Toshio Masuda. The novel was printed in 30 volumes.
Jonathan Chaves, B.A. Brooklyn College, 1965; M.A. Columbia University, 1966; PhD Columbia University, 1971, is Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He is a translator of classic Chinese poetry.
