Yamato

Yamato (大和) was originally the area around today's Sakurai City in Nara Prefecture of Japan. Later the term was used as the name of the province and also as an ancient name of Japan. The term was semantically extended to mean "Japan" or "Japanese" in general.

Japanese history

People

Yamato (wrestler)

Masato Onodera (小野寺 正人, Onodera Masato, born September 10, 1981 in Ichinoseki, Iwate, Japan) is a Japanese professional wrestler and former mixed martial artist, better known by his ring name Yamato (stylized in all capital letters), who works for Dragon Gate.

Career

Dragon Gate

The 5th graduate of the Dragon Gate dojo, Onodera had previous professional fighting experience competing under his real name in Pancrase and was recruited into Final M2K directly after his debut. Yasushi Kanda gave him his "Gekokujoh" character, and inherited a lot of the Gekokujoh-era moves that Kanda had used during his own career. He later chose to leave Final M2K so he could grow along his own path, which was one of the reasons for the M2K break-up.

He won the first Nex-1 tournament, which earned him the right to travel to the U.S. His stay was brief, at under three months. He returned in May, aligning with his generation peers Shingo Takagi, BxB Hulk & Cyber Kong in New Hazard, dropping the Gekokujoh lineage completely and renaming himself to Yamato.

Japanese battleship Yamato

Yamato (大和) was the lead ship of the Yamato class of Imperial Japanese Navy World War II battleships. She and her sister ship, Musashi, were the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleships ever constructed, displacing 72,800 tonnes at full load and armed with nine 46 cm (18.1 inch) 45 Caliber Type 94 main guns. Neither ship survived the war.

Named after the ancient Japanese Yamato Province, Yamato was designed to counter the numerically superior battleship fleet of the United States, Japan's main rival in the Pacific. She was laid down in 1937 and formally commissioned a week after the Pearl Harbor attack in late 1941. Throughout 1942, she served as the flagship of the Japanese Combined Fleet, and in June 1942 Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto directed the fleet from her bridge during the Battle of Midway, a disastrous defeat for Japan. Musashi took over as the Combined Fleet flagship in early 1943, and Yamato spent the rest of the year, and much of 1944, moving between the major Japanese naval bases of Truk and Kure in response to American threats. Although present at the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944, she played no part in the battle.

Yamato period

The Yamato period (大和時代, Yamato-jidai) is the period of Japanese history when the Japanese Imperial court ruled from modern-day Nara Prefecture, then known as Yamato Province.

While conventionally assigned to the period 250–710, including both the Kofun period (c. 250–538) and the Asuka period (538–710), the actual start of Yamato rule is disputed. The Yamato court's supremacy was challenged during the Kofun period by other polities centered in various parts of Japan. At least it is certain that Yamato clans had major advantages over their neighbouring clans at the 6th century.

This period is divided into the Kofun and Asuka periods, by the relocation of the capital to Asuka, in modern Nara Prefecture. However, the kofun period is an archaeological period while the Asuka period is a historical period. Therefore, many think this is an old division and this concept of period division is not popular in Japan now.

At the era of Prince Shōtoku in the early 7th century, a new constitution was prescribed for Japan based on the Chinese model. After the fall of Baekje (660 AD), the Yamato government sent envoys directly to the Chinese court, from which they obtained a great wealth of philosophical and social structure. In addition to ethics and government, they also adopted the Chinese calendar and many of its religious practices, including Confucianism and Taoism (Japanese: Onmyo).

Wadaiko Yamato

Wadaiko Yamato 和太鼓倭　is a Japanese musical group of taiko drummers founded in 1993 by Masa Ogawa. In Japanese, the word 和太鼓 "wadaiko" translates as "Japanese drum" and "Yamato" was the former name of the city of Nara, the group's birthplace.

Since its creation, the group has made over two thousand, six hundred (2600) live performances to over one million people in more than 50 countries in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The group's international debut occurred in 1998 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where the group was awarded the "Spirit of the Fringe" award. The following year, the group embarked on three international tours, covering South America, six countries in Europe, and Israel. On September 28 and 29, 2007 the Wadaiko Yamato musical group performed at the 2007 Universal Forum of Cultures in Monterrey, Mexico.

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Yamato people

Yamato people (大和民族, Yamato minzoku, also in older literature Yamato race) and Wajin (和人, Wajin, literally "Wa people") are names for the dominant native ethnic group of Japan.

It is a term that came to be used around the late 19th century to distinguish the settlers of mainland Japan from other minority ethnic groups who have settled the peripheral areas of Japan, such as the Ainu, Ryukyuans, Nivkh, Oroks, as well as Koreans, Taiwanese, and Taiwanese aborigines who were incorporated into the Empire of Japan in the early 20th century. The name was applied to the Imperial House of Japan or "Yamato Court" that existed in Japan in the 4th century, and was originally the name of the region where the Yamato people first settled in Yamato Province (modern-day Nara Prefecture). Generations of Japanese historians, linguists, and archeologists have debated whether the word is related to the earlier Yamatai (邪馬台). The Yamato clan set up Japan's first and only dynasty.

Etymology