All About Japan

KAPPA 河童. One of the Suijin 水神 ( water kami, water deities) of Shinto mythology. Suijin are found in lakes, ponds, springs, wells, and irrigation waterways. They are often depicted as a snake, a dragon , an eel, a fish, a turtle , or a kappa. One of the most curious Suijin in Japan manifests itself as the water-cleansing bacteria in sewage water ( details here ). According to the Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics (Kokugakuin University), women have played an important role in the history of Suijin worship in Japan. With the introduction of Buddhism in the 6th century AD, however, Japan's many Shinto water kami begin to slowly absorb Buddhist attributes. Not surprisingly, this ongoing mixture of traditions makes it difficult to identify the origins of these "syncretic" deities. This difficulty is compounded by the lack of Shinto artwork or written records prior to the 8th century. For details on Japan's SUIJIN traditions, please see the Suijin Page (aka S...

Short-story writer, poet, and essayist, one of the first Japanese modernists translated into English. Akutagawa published no full-length novel. He was a stylistic perfectionist, who often favored macabre themes. His short stories 'In a Grove' and 'Rashomon' inspired Akira Kurosawa 's classic film from 1950. In 1935, the writer's friend Kikuchi Kan established the Akutagawa Prize, which is generally considered among the most prestigious Japanese literary awards for aspiring writers. "Yes, sir. Certainly, it was I who found the body. This morning, as usual, I went to cut my daily quota of cedars, when I found the body in a grove in a hollow in the mountains. The exact location? About 150 meters off the Yamashina stage road. It's an out-of-the-way grove of bamboo and cedars." (from Rashomon and Other Stories , tr. by M. Kuwata, Takashi Kojima) Akutagawa Ryonosuke was born in Tokyo into a family which had lived for generations in the shitamachi d...

Jujutsu ( 柔術 , jūjutsu ? ) , literally meaning the " art of softness ", or "way of yielding" is a collective name for Japanese martial art styles consisting of grappling and striking techniques. Jujutsu evolved among the samurai of feudal Japan as a method for dispatching an armed and armored opponent in situations where the use of weapons was impractical or forbidden. Due to the difficulty of dispatching an armored opponent with striking techniques, the most efficient methods for neutralizing an enemy took the form of pins, joint locks, and throws. These techniques were developed around the principle of using an attacker's energy against him, rather than directly opposing it, and came to be known as jujutsu. There are many variations of the art, which leads to a diversity of approaches. Jujutsu schools ( ryū ) may utilize all forms of grappling techniques to some degree (i.e. throwing , trapping, joint locking , holds , gouging, biting, disengagements, st...