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Oyakoba
Located at , Atlasov Island, known in Japanese as Oyakoba, is the northernmost island of the Kuril islands, part of the Sakhalin Oblast in Russia. The Russian name is sometimes rendered in English as Atlasova Island or Ostrov Atlasova. Other names for the island include Uyakhuzhach, Araito and Alaid.
The island is named after Vladimir Atlasov, a 17th century Russian explorer who incorporated the nearby Kamchatka Peninsula into Russia. It is essentially the cone of a submarine volcano protruding above the Sea of Okhotsk to a height of 2339 m (7672 ft). The island has an area of 119 km² (46 sq mi), but is currently uninhabited.
Its near perfect shape gave rise to many legends about the volcano among the peoples of the region, such as the Itelmens and Kuril Ainu. The Russian scientist Stepan Krasheninnikov was told the story that it was once a mountain in Kamchatka, but the neighbouring mountains became jealous of its beauty and exiled it to the sea, leaving behind Lake Kuril in southern Kamchatka. Geographically, this story is not without evidence, as after the last Ice Age most of the icecaps melted, raising the world's water level, and possibly submerging a landbridge to the volcano.
Ito Osamu (1926) described it as more exquisitely shaped than Mt. Fuji.
External links
- [http://www.theoceanadventure.com/KIIE/KI6.html The Russian Kuril Islands Expedition to Atlasov]
Category:Kuril Islands
Category:Islands of Russia
ja:阿頼度島
ko:아틀라소프 섬
Japanese language
Japanese (Japanese: 日本語Nihongo, ) is a language spoken by over 127 million people, mainly in Japan, but also by Japanese emigrant communities around the world. It is considered an agglutinative language and is distinguished by a system of honorifics reflecting the hierarchical nature of Japanese society, with verb forms and particular vocabulary which indicate the relative status of speaker and listener. The sound inventory of Japanese is relatively small, and it has a lexically-distinctive pitch accent system.
Though the two languages are completely unrelated, Japanese has been heavily influenced by Chinese over a period of at least 1,500 years. Japanese is written with a mix of Chinese characters (kanji) and a modified syllabary, kana, also originally based on Chinese characters. Much vocabulary has been imported from Chinese, or created on Chinese models.
Classification
Historical linguists who specialize in Japanese agree that it is one of the two members of the Japonic language family, but remain divided as to the origins of the Japonic languages. An older view, still widely held by some linguists and many non-linguists, is that Japanese is a language isolate.
As for its relation to other languages, there are several theories (presented roughly in descending order of certainty):
- Japanese is a relative of extinct languages spoken by historic cultures in what are now the Korean peninsula and Manchuria. The best attested of these is the language of Goguryeo (a.k.a. Koguryo), with the more poorly-attested languages of Baekje (a.k.a. Paekche) and Buyeo (a.k.a Puyo) hypothesized to also be related. The limited data on these languages, as well as these cultures' historic ties, are the primary evidence.
- Japanese is a relative of Korean. This theory is based on the high degree of similarity between Japanese and Korean grammar. Proponents of this theory have also put proposed Japanese-Korean cognates. The idea of a Japanese-Korean relationship has been largely subsumed into the Altaic theory.
- Japanese is a member of the Altaic language family. Other languages in this group include Mongolian, Tungusic, Turkish, and (according to most proponents) Korean. Evidence for this theory lies in the fact that like Turkish and Korean, Japanese is an agglutinative language. Additionally, there are a suggestive number of apparently regular correspondences in basic vocabulary, such as ishi "stone" to Turkic daş, yon "four" to Turkic dört, kura "saddle" to Turkic kürtün, kiru "to cut" to Turkic kir-, inu "dog" to Turkic it, kumo "cloud" to Turkic köl "shadow", etc. These examples originate from [http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/query.cgi?root=config&basename=\data\alt\altet this database], which contains a comprehensive list of comparisons and theoretical Altaic etymologies.
- Japanese is a creole language. Phonological similarities and geographical proximity to Austronesian languages have led to the theory that Japanese may be a kind of creole, with an Altaic substratum and an Austronesian superstratum, or vice versa.
- Japanese is a purely Austronesian language. This theory enjoys little currency, since the grammar and lexis of Japanese are vastly different from those of any known Austronesian language.
- Ono Susumu has suggested a possible relationship between Japanese and Tamil, a member of the Dravidian language family spoken in southern India.
Specialists in Japanese historical linguistics all agree that Japanese is related to the Ryukyuan languages (including Okinawan); together, Japanese and Ryukyuan are grouped in the Japonic languages. Among these specialists, the possibility of a genetic relation to Goguryeo has the most evidence; relationship to Korean is considered plausible but is still up to debate; the Altaic hypothesis has somewhat less currency, though it has grown significantly more respectable in recent years, primarily due to the work of Sergei Starostin, et al. Almost all specialists reject the idea that Japanese could be genetically related to Austronesian/Malayo-Polynesian languages or Sino-Tibetan languages, and the idea that Japanese could be related to Tamil is almost entirely excluded.
It should be noted that linguistic studies, like all fields, can be strongly affected by national politics and other non-academic factors. For example, most linguists would say that Romanian and Moldovan are essentially the same language, and that they are known as two different languages for political reasons. Japan's long-standing rivalries and enmities with virtually all of its neighbours make the study of linguistic connection particularly fraught with such political tensions. However, these tensions are less prevalent among non-Japanese researchers.
Geographic distribution
Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has been and is still sometimes spoken in countries besides Japan. When Japan occupied Korea, Taiwan, parts of China, and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries were forced to learn Japanese in empire-building programmes. As a result, there are still many people in these countries who speak Japanese instead of or as well as the local languages. In addition, emigrants from Japan, the majority of whom are found in Brazil, where the biggest Japanese community outside Japan is found, Australia (especially Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne), and the United States (notably California and Hawaii), also frequently speak Japanese. There is also a small community in Davao, Philippines. Their descendants (known as nikkei 日系, literally Japanese descendants), however, rarely speak Japanese fluently. There are estimated to be several million non-Japanese studying the language as well.
Official status
Japanese is the de facto official language of Japan, and Japan is the only country to have Japanese as an official working language. There are two forms of the language considered standard: or standard Japanese, and or the common language. As government policy has modernized Japanese, many of the distinctions between the two have blurred. Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications, and is the version of Japanese discussed in this article.
Dialects
Dozens of dialects are spoken in Japan. The profusion is due to the mountainous island terrain and Japan's long history of both external and internal isolation. Dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent, inflectional morphology, vocabulary, particle usage, and pronunciation. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this is uncommon.
Dialects from less central regions, such as the Tōhoku or Tsushima dialect may be unintelligible to speakers from other parts of the country. The dialect used in Kagoshima in southern Kyūshū is famous for being unintelligible not only to speakers of standard Japanese but to speakers of nearby dialects elsewhere in Kyūshū as well. Kagoshima dialect is 84% cognate with standard Tokyo dialect.
The Ryukyuan languages are spoken in the islands of Okinawa Prefecture. Not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryukyuan languages. Due to the close relationship of Ryukyuan and Japanese, they are still sometimes said to be only dialects of one language, but modern scholars consider them to be separate languages.
Recently, Standard Japanese has become prevalent nationwide, due not only to television and radio, but also to increased mobility within Japan due to its system of roads, railways, and airports. Young people usually speak their local dialect and the standard language, though in most cases, the local dialect is influenced by the standard, and regional versions of "standard" Japanese have local-dialect influence.
Sounds
Japanese vowels are "pure" sounds, similar to their Italian or Spanish counterparts. The only unusual vowel is the high back vowel , which is like , but unrounded. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, so each one has both a short and a long version.
Some Japanese consonants have several allophones, which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese of the first half of the twentieth century, was palatalized to , approximately chi; however, now and are distinct, as evidenced by words like paatii "party" and tii "tea."
The syllabic structure and the phonotactics are very simple: the only consonant clusters allowed within a syllable consist of one of a subset of the consonants plus /y/. However, consonant clusters across syllables within the word are common, though limited in type.
Grammar
The basic Japanese word order is Subject Object Verb. Subject and object are usually marked by particles which come after the word.
The basic sentence structure is topic-comment. For example, Kochira wa Tanaka san desu. Kochira ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by the particle wa. The verb is desu ("be"). As a phrase, Tanaka san desu is the comment. This sentence loosely translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mr./Mrs./Ms. Tanaka". Thus Japanese, like Chinese and Korean, is often called a topic-prominent language, which means it indicates the topic separately from the subject, and the two do not always coincide. The sentence Zō wa hana ga nagai. literally means, "As for elephants, the nose is long." The topic is zō "elephant," and the subject is hana "nose."
Japanese nouns have neither number nor gender. Thus hon may mean "book" or "books". It is possible to explicitly indicate more than one, either by using numbers, often with a counter. Words for people are usually singular. Thus Tanaka san usually means Mr/Ms Tanaka. Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate groups with noun suffixes that indicate groups, such as -tachi. Though some words, like hitobito "people," always refer to more than one, Japanese has no true plurals.
Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present, or non-past, which is used for the present and the future. For some verbs, that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) tense. For others, that represent a change of state, the -te iru form indicates a perfect tense. For example, kite iru means "He has come (and is still here)", but tabete iru means "He is eating".
Questions are formed by adding a question element to the end of the verb, usually ka. For example,
:Kore de ii desu. "This is OK."
becomes
:Kore de ii desu ka. "Is this OK?"
Negatives are formed with verb endings. For example,
:Pan o taberu. "I will eat bread."
becomes
:Pan o tabenai. "I will not eat bread."
with taberu "to eat" changing to the negative form tabenai "to not eat".
The word desu/da is the copula verb. It corresponds approximately to the English be, but often takes on other roles. A separate function of "to be" is to indicate existence, as in "there is", for which the verbs aru and iru are used for inanimate and animate things, respectively. For example,
:Neko ga iru. "There's a cat.",
and
:Ii kangae ga nai. "I haven't got a good idea."
The verb "to do" (suru, polite form shimasu) is often used to make verbs from nouns (ai suru "to love", benkyō suru "to study", etc.). Japanese also has a huge number of compound verbs (e.g. tobidasu "to fly out, to flee," from tobu "to fly, to jump" + dasu "to go out").
There are three types of adjective:
#keiyōshi, or i adjectives, which have a conjugating ending i which can become, for example, past, or negative. For example atsui ("to be hot")
#:atsui hi "a hot day".
#keiyōdōshi, or na adjectives, which are followed by a form of the copula, usually na. For example hen (strange)
#:hen na hito "a strange person".
#rentaishi, also called true adjectives, such as onaji "the same"
#:onaji hi "the same day".
Both keiyōshi and keiyōdōshi may predicate sentences. For example,
:Gohan ga atsui. "The rice is hot."
:Kare wa hen da. "He's strange."
Both inflect, though they do not show the full range of conjugation found in true verbs.
The rentaishi are few in number, and unlike the other words, are limited to modifying nouns. They never predicate sentences. Examples include ookina "big" and onaji "the same" (although there is a noun onaji that can be followed by da, as in onaji da).
Both keiyōdōshi and keiyōshi form adverbs, by following with ni in the case of keiyōdōshi:
:hen ni naru "become strange",
and by changing i to ku in the case of keiyōshi:
:atsuku naru "become hot".
The grammatical function of nouns is indicated by postpositions, also called particles. These include
- no for possession,
:watashi no kamera "my camera"
- ga for subject,
:Kare ga yatta. "He did it."
- o for direct object
:Nani o tabemasu ka? "What will (you) eat?"
- ni for indirect object,
:Tanaka san ni kiite kudasai "Please ask Mr./Ms. Tanaka",
- wa for the topic
and many others.
Japanese has many words that are translated as pronouns in English, such as watashi or boku, both meaning "I". Which is used depends upon many factors, including the sex and status of the speaker, who is being spoken to, and the social setting. Their use is often optional, since Japanese is described as a so-called pro-drop language, i.e., one in which the subject of a sentence does not always need to be stated. For example, instead of saying
:Watashi wa byōki desu. "I am sick.",
if the speaker is understood to be the subject, one could simply say Byōki desu. A single verb can be a complete sentence:
:yatta! "(I / we / they / etc) did (it)!".
Politeness
Unlike most western languages, Japanese has an extensive grammatical system to express politeness and formality.
Broadly speaking, there are three main politeness levels in spoken Japanese: the plain form (kudaketa 砕けた), the simple polite form (teineigo 丁寧語) and the advanced polite form (keigo 敬語).
Since most relationships are not equal in Japanese society, one person typically has a higher position. This position is determined by a variety of factors including job, age, experience, or even psychological state (e.g., a person asking a favour tends to do so politely). The person in the lower position is expected to use a polite form of speech, whereas the other might use a more plain form. Strangers will also speak to each other politely. Japanese children rarely use polite speech until they are teens, at which point they are expected to begin speaking in a more adult manner. See uchi-soto
The plain form in Japanese is recognized by the shorter, dictionary form of verbs, and the da form of the copula. At the teinei level, verbs end with the helping verb -masu, and the copula desu is used. The advanced polite form, keigo, actually consists of two kinds of politeness: honorific language (sonkeigo) and humble (kenjōgo) language. Whereas teineigo is an inflectional system, keigo often employs many special (often irregular) honorific and humble verb forms.
The difference between honorific and humble speech is particularly pronounced in the Japanese language. Humble language is used to talk about oneself or one's own group (company, family) whilst honorific language is mostly used when describing the interlocutor and his group. For example, the -san suffix ("Mr", "Mrs" or "Ms") is an example of honorific language. It is not used to talk about oneself or when talking about someone from one's company to an external person, since the company is the speaker's "group".
Most nouns in the Japanese language may be made polite by the addition of o- or go-; as a prefix. o- is generally used for words of native Japanese origin, whereas go- is affixed to words of Chinese derivation. In some cases, the prefix has become a fixed part of the word, and is included even in regular speech, such as gohan 'cooked rice; meal.' Such a construction often indicates deference to either the item's owner or to the object itself. For example, the word tomodachi 'friend,' would become o-tomodachi when referring to the friend of someone of higher status (though mothers often use this form to refer to their children's friends). On the other hand, a female speaker may sometimes refer to mizu 'water' as o-mizu merely to show politeness; this contrasts with the more abrupt speech of men (though men may also use very polite forms when speaking to superiors). See Gender differences in spoken Japanese.
Many researchers report that since the 1990s, the use of polite forms has become rarer. Needless to say, many older people disapprove of this trend.
Most Japanese people employ politeness to indicate a lack of familiarity. That is, they use polite forms for new acquaintances, but if a relationship becomes more intimate, they no longer use them. This occurs regardless of age, social class, or gender.
Young people usually receive extensive training in the "proper" use of polite language when they start to work for a company.
Vocabulary
The original language of Japan was the so-called yamato kotoba. In addition to this original language, Japanese also has a great number of words that were either borrowed from Chinese or constructed on Chinese patterns. These words entered the language from the fifth century onwards via contact with Chinese culture. Chinese based words comprise as much as seventy percent of the total vocabulary of the Japanese language and form as much as thirty to forty percent of words used in speech.
A much smaller number of words has been borrowed from Korean and Ainu. Japan has also borrowed a number of words from other languages, gairaigo. This began with borrowings from Portuguese in the 16th century, followed by borrowing from Dutch during Japan's long isolation of the Edo period. With the Meiji restoration and the reopening of Japan in the 19th century, borrowing occurred from German, French and English. Currently, words of English origin are the most commonly borrowed.
In the Meiji era, the Japanese also coined many neologisms using Chinese patterns to translate Western concepts. The Chinese and Koreans imported many of these pseudo-Chinese words into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese via their kanji characters in the late 19th and early 20th century. For example, 政治 seiji ("politics"), and 化学 kagaku ("chemistry"). As a result, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese share a large common corpus of vocabulary in the same way a large number of Greco-Roman words is shared among European languages.
In the past few decades, wasei-eigo (made-in-Japan English) has become a prominent phenomenon. Words such as wanpataan (< one + pattern, "to be in a rut", "to have a one-track mind") and sukinshippu (< skin + -ship, "physical contact"), although coined from English, are nonsensical in a non-Japanese context. A small number of such words, such as anime and cosplay, have been borrowed back into English.
Additionally, many native Japanese words have become commonplace in English, due to the popularity of many Japanese cultural exports. Words such as sushi, judo, karate, sumo, karaoke, origami, samurai, haiku, ninja, sayonara, rickshaw (from 人力車 jinrikisha), futon, and many others have become part of the English language. See list of English words of Japanese origin for more.
Writing system
Modern Japanese is written in a mixture of three main scripts: kanji, characters of Chinese origin used to represent both Chinese loanwords into Japanese and a number of native Japanese morphemes; and two syllabaries: hiragana and katakana. The Roman alphabet (romaji) is also sometimes used.
Learning Japanese
Learning Japanese involves understanding grammar, pronunciation, the writing system, and acquiring adequate vocabulary. While the sound system is simple to master compared with those of other languages, the writing system poses a challenge for those not used to Chinese characters. On the other hand one learns a lot about Japanese culture by studying kanji characters. Japanese students begin to learn kanji characters from their first grade of an elementary school. A guideline created by the Japanese Ministry of Education, the kyōiku kanji, specifies the 1,006 simple characters a child is to learn by the end of sixth grade. Children continue to study another 939 characters in a junior high school, which totally covers 1,945 jōyō kanji (common kanji) characters, which are usually considered sufficient for everyday life.
Japanese can be learned without studying Chinese characters. However, Japanese borrowed thousands upon thousands of words from Chinese, and for various reasons, many of these Chinese-based words are now homophones (words pronounced identically) in Japanese. This may make it necessary to learn the characters if one wants to learn an extended vocabulary, although blind Japanese people who cannot read any characters are able to function in the spoken language without problems, since most words, even if not written down, can be understood by the context. "Nihon" (にほん) can mean "two long, thin objects" (二本) as well as "Japan" (日本). However, these two words have different accents, and are distinct even in isolation.
Major universities throughout the world provide Japanese language courses. Moreover, South Korea, Australia, France, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Denmark and some states of the United States provide the language course at high schools or lower level schools. About 2.3 million people studied the language worldwide in 2003. 900,000 South Koreans, 389,000 Chinese people, 381,000 Australians, and 140,000 Americans study Japanese in lower and higher educational institutions. The Japanese government provides standard tests to measure spoken and written comprehension of Japanese for second language learners; the most prominent is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). The Japanese External Trade Organization JETRO organizes the Business Japanese Proficiency Test, to test ability to understand Japanese in a business setting.
In Japan, more than 90,000 foreign students study at Japanese universities and Japanese language schools, including 77,000 Chinese and 15,000 South Koreans in 2003. Furthermore, local governments and some NPO groups provide free Japanese language classes for foreign residents, including Japanese Brazilians and foreign wives married to Japanese nationals.
See also List of resources for learning Japanese.
See also
- Common phrases in different languages (Japanese)
- Henohenomoheji
- Japanese culture
- Japanese language and computers
- Japanese literature
- Japanese name
- The lists of Japanese words and words in other languages that have been derived from Japanese at Wiktionary, the free dictionary and Wikipedia's sibling project
- Japanese dictionaries
External links
- [http://users.tmok.com/~tumble/jpp/japor.html Origin of the Japanese People and Language]
- [http://web.archive.org/web/20030618070124/http%3A//www-lib.icu.ac.jp/LibShuppan/lecture/6-2-1.html North Kyushu Creole] – A hypothesis concerning the multilingual formation of Japanese
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=1263 Ethnologue report for Japanese]
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=jpn Ethnologue report for language code JPN]
Bibliography
- Bloch, Bernard. (1946). Studies in colloquial Japanese I: Inflection. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 66, 97-109.
- Bloch, Bernard. (1946). Studies in colloquial Japanese II: Syntax. Language, 22, 200-248.
- Chafe, William L. (1976). Giveness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view. In C. Li (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 25-56). New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-1244-7350-4.
- Kuno, Susumu. (1973). The structure of the Japanese language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0-2621-1049-0.
- Kuno, Susumu. (1976). Subject, theme, and the speaker's empathy: A re-examination of relativization phenomena. In Charles N. Li (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 417-444). New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-1244-7350-4.
- Martin, Samuel E. (1975). A reference grammar of Japanese. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-3000-1813-4.
- McClain, Yoko Matsuoka. (1981). Handbook of modern Japanese grammar: 口語日本文法便覧 [Kōgo Nihon bumpō]. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press. ISBN 4-5900-0570-0; ISBN 0-8934-6149-0.
- Miller, Roy. (1967). The Japanese language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Miller, Roy. (1980). Origins of the Japanese language: Lectures in Japan during the academic year, 1977-78. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ISBN 0-2959-5766-2.
- Mizutani, Osmau; & Mizutani, Nobuko. (1987). How to be polite in Japanese: 日本語の敬語 [Nihongo no keigo]. Tokyo: Japan Times. ISBN 4-7890-0338-8; ISBN 4-7890-0338-9.
- Shibatani, Masayoshi. (1990). Japanese. In B. Comrie (Ed.), The major languages of east and south-east Asia. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-4150-4739-0.
- Shibatani, Masayoshi. (1990). The languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-5213-6070-6 (hbk); ISBN 0-5213-6918-5 (pbk).
- Shibamoto, Janet S. (1985). Japanese women's language. New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-1264-0030-X. Graduate Level
- Tsujimura, Natsuko. (1996). An introduction to Japanese linguistics. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-6311-9855-5 (hbk); ISBN 0-6311-9856-3 (pbk). Upper Level Textbooks
- Tsujimura, Natsuko. (Ed.) (1999). The handbook of Japanese linguistics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-6312-0504-7. Readings/Anthologies
zh-min-nan:Ji̍t-pún-oē
ko:일본어
ms:Bahasa Jepun
ja:日本語
simple:Japanese language
th:ภาษาญี่ปุ่น
Kuril Islands
:For the political history of the sovereignty conflict, see Kuril Islands dispute.
The Kuril Islands (Russian:
Кури́льские острова́ / Kuril'skie ostrova) or Kurile Islands in Russia's Sakhalin Oblast region, stretch approximately 1,300 km (700 miles) northeast from Hokkaidō, Japan, to Kamchatka, Russia, separating the Sea of Okhotsk from the North Pacific Ocean. There are 56 islands in total.
The Kuril Islands are known in Japanese as the Chishima Islands (Kanji: 千島列島 / Hepburn Romaji: Chishima rettō, literally, Thousand Islands Archipelago), also known as the Kuriru Islands (Kanji: クリル列島 / Hepburn Romaji: Kuriru rettō, literally, Kuril Archipelago). The name Kuril originates from the autonym of the aboriginal Ainu: "kur", meaning man.
The islands were inhabited primarily by the Ainu and were being explored and settled by the Russians and Japanese in the 18th and 19th centuries. The border between the two empires was established in 1875, when Japan inherited the islands (Treaty of Saint Petersburg) in exchange for ceding Sakhalin to Russia. Russia reclaimed them after World War II (Treaty of San Francisco), but Japan maintains a claim to the four southernmost islands of Kunashiri, Etorofu, Shikotan, and the Habomai rocks, together called the Northern Territories (see Kuril Islands Dispute).
The Kuril Islands form a volcanic island arc as a result of plate tectonics and are home to over 100 volcanoes, about 35 of which are active. The Kuril Trench is an oceanic trench that runs about 200 km east of the Kuril Islands. The islands themselves are summits of stratovolcanoes that rise from the seabed. There are frequent earthquakes.
The islands are renowned for their fogginess, but are rich in seaweed and marine life, such as fish and sea otters. The northernmost, Atlasov Island (Oyakoba to the Japanese), is an almost perfect volcanic cone rising sheer out of the sea, and has led to many Japanese eulogies in haiku, wood-block prints, etc., extolling its beauty, much as they do the more well-known Mt. Fuji.
Today, roughly 30,000 people (ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Tatars, Koreans, Nivkhs, Oroch, and Ainu) inhabit the Kuril Islands. About half of the population lives below the poverty line, according to the regional administration. Fishing is the primary occupation. The islands have strategic and economic value, in terms of fisheries and also mineral deposits of pyrite, sulfur, and various polymetallic ores.
While in Russian sources the islands are mentioned for the first time in 1646, the earliest detailed information about them was provided by the explorer Vladimir Atlasov in 1697. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Kuril Islands were explored by Danila Antsiferov, I.Kozyrevsky, Ivan Yevreinov, Fyodor Luzhin, Martin Shpanberg, Adam Johann von Krusenstern, and Vasily Golovnin.
From north to south, the main islands are:
- Shumshu (Shumushu)
- Atlasov Island (Oyakoba or Araito)
- Paramushir (Paramushiro or Poromushiri)
- Makanru (Makanrushiri)
- Onekotan (Onnekotan)
- Kharimukotan (Harumokotan)
- Antsinferova (Shirinki)
- Ekarma (Ekaruma)
- Shiashkotan (Shashukotan)
- Chirinkotan (Chirinkotan)
- Raykoke (Raikoke)
- Matua (Matsuwa)
- Rasshua (Rasuwa)
- Ketoy (Ketoe or Ketoi)
- Yankicha (Yankisha)
- Ushishir (Ushishiri or Ushichi)
- Lovushiki (Mushiri)
- Simushir (Shimushiro or Shinshiru)
- Broutona (Buroton)
- Ostrova Chorniie Brata
- Chirpoy (Chirinhoi or Burato-Chiripoi)
- Urup (Uruppu)
- Iturup (Etorofu)
- Kunashir (Kunashiri)
- Shikotan (Shikotan)
- Poloskogo (Habomai)
- Seleni (Shibotsu)
- Taraku
- Yuri
- Akiyuri
- Suisho
- Zelioni (Kaigara)
- Oodoke
- Moeshiri
- Shirinki
See also
- Chishima Province
- Karafuto
- Japanese administration of the Kuril Islands
- Organization of Hokkai(North) Army
- Organization of Kita and Minami Fortresses
- Governor-General of Karafuto
- Political Division of Karafuto Province(1905-1945)
- Organization of Karafuto Fortress
- Evacuation of Karafuto and Kuriles
External links
- [http://www.oceandots.com/pacific/kuril/ Kuril Islands at Ocean Dots.com] (includes space imagery)
- http://artedi.fish.washington.edu/okhotskia/ikip/index.htm
- http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/europe/russia/territory/index.html
Category:Islands of Russia
Category:Disputed territories
Category:Ainu
ko:쿠릴 열도
ja:千島列島
Sakhalin Oblast
Sakhalin Oblast () is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). It comprises the island of Sakhalin and Kuril Islands.
The region has an area of 87,100 km² and a population of 546,695 (2002 All-Russian Population Census). Its administrative center and largest city is Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk with a population of around 170,000.
Besides from people from other parts of the former Soviet Union, Sakhalin is home to Nivkhs and Ainu, with the latter having lost their language in Sakhalin recently.
Some territories of Sakhalin Oblast (four islands, the southern ones of Kuril archipelago) are claimed by Japan.
Demographics
Population (2002): 546,695
Ethnic groups:
As per the 2002 census, ethnic Russians at 460,778 (84.3%) constitute by far the largest group of the population, followed by Koreans at 29,592 (5.41%), Ukrainians at 21,831 (4%) and a host of smaller groups (all in all, 127 distinct ethnic groups are listed for the oblast).
History
The indigenous people of Sakhalin are the Xianbei and Xiazhe tribes, who had a way of life based on fishing. The Chinese in the Ming dynasty knew the island as Kuyi (), and later as Kuye (). According to the Book of Shengmu (), the Ming sent 400 troops to Sakhalin in 1616, but later withdrew as it was considered there was no threat to Chinese control of the island. A Ming boundary stone still exists on the island.
The Qing Empire also claimed sovereignty over the island and Sakhalin was under formal Chinese rule from the Jin Dynasty onwards. However, as the Chinese governments did not have a military presence on the island, people from both Japan and Russia attempted to colonise the island. The Japanese settlement of Ootomari was established in 1679. Cartographers of the Matsumae clan created a map of the island and called it "Kita-Ezo" (Northern Ezo, Ezo is the old name of Hokkaido). The 1686 Nerchinsk Treaty reaffirmed Sakhalin as Chinese territory. Nevertheless Russia started occupying the island, with an army made up of convicts, from the 18th century onwards.
Sakhalin became known to Europeans from the travels of Ivan Moskvitin and Martin Gerritz de Vries in the 17th century, and still better from those of Jean-François de La Pérouse (1787) and Ivan Krusenstern (1805). Both, however, regarded it as a peninsula, and were unaware of the existence of the Mamiya Strait or Strait of Tartary, which was discovered in 1809 by Mamiya Rinzo.
Japan unilaterally proclaimed sovereignty over the whole island in 1845. However, the Russian navigator Gennady Nevelskoy in 1849 definitively recorded the existence and navigability of this strait and — in defiance of Qing claim — Russian settlers established coal mines, administration facilities, schools, prisons, churches on the island. The Xiazhes were killed or forced to move to the Asian mainland.
In 1855, Russia and Japan signed the Treaty of Shimoda, which declared that both nationals could inhabit the island: Russians in the north, and Japanese in the south, without a clear boundary between. Russia also agreed to dismantle its military base at Ootomari. Following the Opium War, Russia forced the Qing to sign the unequal Treaty of Aigun and Convention of Peking, under which China lost all territories north of Heilongjiang (Amur) and east of Ussuri, including Sakhalin, to Russia. A Czarist penal colony was established in 1857, but the southern part of the island was held by the Japanese until the 1875 Treaty of Saint Petersburg, when they ceded it to Russia in exchange for the Kuril islands. After the Russo-Japanese War, Russia and Japan signed the Treaty of Portsmouth of 1905, which resulted in the southern part of the island below 50° N reverting to Japan; the Russians retained the other three-fifths of the area. South Sakhalin was administrated by Japan as Karafuto-chō (樺太庁), with the capital Toyohara, todays Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.
In August 1945, the Soviet Union took over the control of Sakhalin. The Soviet attack on South Sakhalin started on August 11 1945, about a month before the Surrender of Japan. The 56th Rifle Corps consisting of the 79th Rifle Division, the 2nd Rifle Brigade, the 5th Rifle Brigade and the 214 Armored Brigade attacked the Japanese 88th Division. Although the Red Army outnumbered the Japanese by three times, they couldn't advance due to strong Japanese resistance. It was not until the 113th Rifle Brigade and the 365th Independent Naval Infantry Rifle Battalion from Sovietskaya Gavan (Советская Гавань) landed on Tōrō (塔路), a seashore village of western Sakhalin on August 16 that the Soviets broke the Japanese defense line. Japanese resistance grew weaker after this landing. Actual fightings continued until August 21 and these fightings were petty. From August 22 to August 23, most of the remaining Japanese units announced truce. The Soviets completed the conquest of Sakhalin on August 25 1945 by occupying the capital of Sakhalin, Toyohara. Japanese sources claim that 20.000 civilians were killed during the invasion.
Since January 2, 1947, the Sakhalin Region, in its present form, was officially defined and integrated as a part of the Russian Federation.
The status of the Kuril Islands remains disputed. Japan renounced its claims of sovereignty over southern Sakhalin in the Treaty of San Francisco (1952), but did not approve Russian sovereignty over it. From Japan's official position, Sakhalin's attribution is not determined yet, and it is marked as No Man's Land on Japanese maps. As of 2005, The issue remains a major strain on Japanese-Russian relations. Even now, no official peace treaty has been signed between the two nations.
On May 28 1995, an earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale occurred, killing 2,000 people of the town of Neftegorsk.
As per the 2002 census, 333 residents of the oblast still identified themselves as ethnic Japanese. Data on Ainu population is not available; "Ainu" may have been either included in the "Other" category or the Ainus may have identified themselves as "Japanese" during the census.
Districts
External link
- [http://www.adm.sakhalin.ru/ Official website of Sakhalin Oblast].
Category:History of Manchuria
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ko:사할린 주
ja:サハリン州
Vladimir AtlasovVladimir Vassilievich Atlasov (according to some accounts - Otlasov) (Атласов (Отласов), Владимир Васильевич in Russian)(born between 1661 and 1664 - died in 1711), Russian explorer, Siberian Cossack.
In 1697-1699 Atlasov, founder of the Anadyr settlement, led a group of 65 Cossacks and 60 Yukaghir natives to investigate the Kamchatka peninsula. As a result, he made the local Koryak and Itelmen population pay tribute to the Tsar and built two forts along the Kamchatka River which became trading posts for Russian fur trappers. At the beginning of 1701, Atlasov went to Moscow, where he was promoted to the rank of officer for Kamchatka's annexation. He was the first to present a detailed description of the region's nature and people, about the islands and lands near Kamchatka, Chukotka, and Japan.
Vladimir Atlasov was killed during an uprising of the service class people in Kamchatka.
Atlasov Island, an uninhabited volcanic island off the southern tip of Kamchatka, is named after him.
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ItelmensThe Itelmen, sometimes known as Kamchadal, are an ethnic group who are the original inhabitants living on the Kamchatka peninsula in the Russian Federation. The Itelmen language (ethnonym: Itelmen) was distantly related to Chukchi and Koryak, forming the Chukotko-Kamchatkan language family, but it is now virtually extinct, the vast majority of ethnic Itelmens being native speakers of Russian. A. P. Volodin has published a grammar of the Itelman language.
Theirs was a substantial hunter-gatherer and fishing society with up to fifty thousand natives inhabiting the peninsula before they were decimated by the Cossacks in the eighteenth century.
So much intermarriage took place between the natives and the Cossacks that Kamchadal now refers to the majority mixed population, and the term Itelmens at some point becane reserved for persisting speakers of the Itelmen language. By 1993, there were less than 100 elderly speakers of the language left, but some 2,400 people considered themselves ethnic Itelmen in the 1989 census. By 2002, this number had risen to 3,180, and there are attempts at reviving the language.
External links
- [http://www.eki.ee/books/redbook/itelmens.shtml The Itelmens]
- [http://www.indigenous.ru/english/people/e_itelm.htm Itelmen]
- [http://www.raipon.org/Web_Database/itelm.html Itelmen]
- [http://www.avachabay.com/factpages/fact4.htm Itelmen Origins]
Category:Ethnic groups of Russia
Category:Kamchatka
Category:Eurasian nomads
Category:Indigenous peoples of North Asia
Stepan Krasheninnikov
Stepan Petrovich Krasheninnikov (1711 - 1755) was a Russian explorer and geographer who gave the first full description of Kamchatka in the early eighteenth century. He was elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1750.
Krasheninnikov was educated in the Slavic Greek Latin Academy of Moscow (1724-32), where Lomonosov was his class-mate. He furthered his education in St Petersburg before embarking upon extensive travels in Siberia (1733-36) and Kamchatka Peninsula (1737-41).
On his return to the Russian capital, Krasheninnikov wrote detailed accounts of the plants and animals of the region, and also the language and culture of the indigenous Itelmen and Koryak peoples, who he reportedly got along extremely well with. His book "An Account of the Land of Kamchatka" was published after his death.
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Mt. Fuji
]
Mount Fuji (富士山 Fuji-san, IPA: ) is the highest mountain in Japan. It straddles the boundary between the prefectures of Shizuoka and Yamanashi just west of Tokyo, from which it can be seen on a clear day. It is located near the Pacific coast of central Honshu.
Mount Fuji is a well-known symbol of Japan and is frequently depicted in art and photographs, as well as visited by sightseers and climbers.
Geography
Mt. Fuji has five lakes around it: Lake Kawaguchiko, Lake Yamanakako, Lake Saiko, Lake Motosuko and Lake Shojiko. They, and nearby Lake Ashi, provide excellent views of the mountain. It is part of the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park.
Geology
Scientists have identified four distinct phases of volcanic activity in the formation of Mt. Fuji. The first phase, called Sen-komitake, is composed of an andesite core recently discovered deep within the mountain. Sen-komitake was followed by the "Komitake Fuji," a basalt layer believed to be formed several hundred thousand years ago. Approximately 100,000 years ago, "Old Fuji" was formed over the top of Komitake Fuji. The modern, "New Fuji" is believed to have formed over the top of Old Fuji by around 10,000 years ago. [http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20040404f1.htm]
The volcano is currently classified as active with low risk of eruption. The last recorded eruption occurred in 1707 during the Edo period. At this time, a new crater, along with a second peak, named Hōei-zan after the era name, formed halfway down its side.
Mt. Fuji is where the Eurasian Plate (or the Amurian Plate), the Okhotsk Plate, and the Philippine Plate meet. They form the western part of Japan, the eastern part of Japan, and the Izu Peninsula respectively.
History
It is thought that the first ascent was in 663 by an anonymous monk. A sacred mountain since ancient times, Mt. Fuji's summit was forbidden to women until the Meiji Era. Today it is a popular tourist destination and common destination for mountain-climbing (see below).
Mt. Fuji is an attractive volcanic cone and a frequent subject of Japanese art. The most renowned work is Ukiyo-e painter Hokusai's masterpiece 36 views of Mt. Fuji. It is also mentioned in Japanese literature throughout the ages and the subject of many poems.
Mt. Fuji also houses a warrior tradition: ancient samurai used the base of the mountain as a remote training area, near the present day town of Gotemba. As of 2005, the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the United States Marine Corps operated military bases near Mount Fuji.
Name
Variations
Fuji-san is sometimes referred to as Fuji Yama in some Western texts, because the third character of its name, 山 meaning mountain, can also be pronounced "yama". (See Kanji readings.) However, this name is obsolete in Japan. In fact, the Japanese phrase "Fujiyama, geisha" means the Japan that is misunderstood by the West. The suffix -san, meaning a mountain, has nothing to do with the Japanese title -san used for people.
Other Japanese names for Mt. Fuji, which have become obsolete or poetic, include Fuji-no-Yama (ふじの山, the Mountain of Fuji), Fuji-no-Takane (ふじの高嶺, the High Peak of Fuji), Fuyō-hō (芙蓉峰, the Lotus Peak), and Fu-gaku (富岳 or 富嶽, the first character of 富士, Fuji, and 岳, mountain).
Etymology
The current kanji for Mt. Fuji, 富 and 士, mean wealth or abundant and warrior respectively, but it is likely these characters were applied to the already existent pronunciation.
The origin of the name Fuji is unclear, but it has been associated throughout history with various Chinese characters according to folk etymologies. One of the earlier folk etymologies claims that Fuji came from 不二 (not + two), meaning without equal or nonpareil. Another folk etymology claims that it came from 不尽 (not + exhaust), meaning neverending.
Perhaps the most popular folk etymology is the one that claims that the mountain's name means abounding with warriors, written with the Chinese characters 富士 (abundant or wealthy + warrior). See The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter.
Yet another folk etymology links the name to the Ainu huci, which has been proven wrong by linguists but still survives in non-academic sources.
Climbing Mount Fuji
The most popular period for people to hike up Mt. Fuji is from July 1 to August 27. The ascent can take anywhere between 3 and 7 hours while the descent can take from 2 to 5 hours. The hike is divided into ten stations and there are paved roads up to the fifth station, which is about 2300 meters above sea level. Thousands climb Mt. Fuji during this two-month period. Most climb during the night to watch the sun rise in the morning. The sheer number of climbers each year has created something of a trash problem on the road to the summit, but this has not decreased the mountain's popularity.
For more on climbing Mt. Fuji, see this Japan Times article, [http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fv20040702a1.htm Getting to the top in Japan], and our sister site Wikitravel below.
Trivia
- Singer Kyu Sakamoto once had bearers carry a grand piano to the summit for a concert.
See also
- Geography of Japan
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External links
- [http://www.city.fujiyoshida.yamanashi.jp/forms/info/info1.aspx?info_id=300 Live Webcams of Mt. Fuji]
- [http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=35.358467,138.726425&spn=0.166014,0.234180&t=k&hl=en Satellite picture by Google Maps]
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ko:후지 산
ja:富士山
Category:Islands of RussiaThe Islands of Russia
Category:Geography of Russia
Russia
ja:Category:ロシア連邦の島
ko:분류:러시아의 섬
Forestville/Mystery Cave State Park
Forestville/Mystery Cave State Park is a Minnesota state park. It contains the village of Forestville which has been restored to a nineteenth century appearance. The Minnesota Historical Society operates it as a historic site. Belowground the park contains Mystery Cave, the longest cave in the state which is open to the public. The park is located near Preston, Minnesota.
~The Cave~
The Cave is located in Forestville Minnesota; it includes stalactites, stalagmites and underground pools. It is a constant 48 degrees Fahrenheit underground. There are over 12 miles of passage in 2 rock layers. It is about 3,170 acres; there are 133,756 annual visits and 26,256 overnight visits.
~History~
About 2 to 5 million years ago there was material deposited in shallow seas and as the deposits increased in thickness, the layers on the bottom were compressed to form limestone, shale and sandstone. Now days these rocks are 1300 feet above the sea. Within the past few years caves and sinkholes have formed.
~Wildlife~
In this park you can find a lot of different wildlife, they have found rare glacial snails to timber rattlesnakes. There have also been sightings of deer, raccoon, beaver, mink, opossum, woodchucks, four species of squirrels, and red and grey fox. There have also been at least 175 species of birds recorded in the park.
External links
- [http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_parks/forestville_mystery_cave/index.html Forestville/Mystery Cave State Park website]
Category:Minnesota state parks
madrid accommodation finanse media technologie Szkolenia bhp
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