Tag Archives: asian-pacific history

“Ryukyu Islands: Island chain, Japan. It extends in an arc 600 miles (979 kilometers) long from southern Japan to the northern tip of Taiwan. The 55 islands and islets have a total land area of 870 square miles (2,254 square kilometers). In ancient times it was an independent kingdom, but Chinese and Japanese sovereignty were successively imposed on the archipelago from the 14^th to the 19^th centuries. In 1879 the Ryukyus became an integral part of Japan. After Japan’s defeat in World War II, the U.S. took control of the islands; it returned them all by 1972. The U.S. maintains military bases on Okinawa. The islands are primarily rural, and agriculture is the dominant occupation.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

“shoin-zukuri: Style of Japanese domestic architecture. The name is taken from a feature called the shoin, a study alcove with a built-in desk. Other common features included the toko-no-ma and chigai-dana (built-in shelves). The style, derived from Zen Buddhist monastic dwellings, gradually replaced the shinden-zukuri style during the Muromachi period (1338-1573). It is characterized by a new modesty of scale (forced on the aristocracy by loss of income), asymmetry and an irregular flowing together of masses, and the use of solid wall construction and sliding shoji rather than the movable partitions that divided the main living space in the shinden.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.