- published: 03 Sep 2011
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Japan i/dʒəˈpæn/ (Japanese: 日本 Nihon or Nippon; formally 日本国
Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku, literally the State of Japan) is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The characters that make up Japan's name mean "sun-origin", which is why Japan is sometimes referred to as the "Land of the Rising Sun".
Japan is an archipelago of 6,852 islands. The four largest islands are Honshū, Hokkaidō, Kyūshū and Shikoku, together accounting for ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area. Japan has the world's tenth-largest population, with over 127 million people. The Greater Tokyo Area, which includes the de facto capital city of Tokyo and several surrounding prefectures, is the largest metropolitan area in the world, with over 30 million residents.
Archaeological research indicates that people lived in Japan as early as the Upper Paleolithic period. The first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other nations followed by long periods of isolation has characterized Japan's history. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victory in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since adopting its revised constitution in 1947, Japan has maintained a unitary constitutional monarchy with an emperor and an elected parliament called the Diet.
Tin drum and similar may mean:
Toni Childs, David Ricketts
there's an old man talkin
to a young boy weepin
to an old man shaking his head
there's a cool gentle breeze
in the night full of light
as the red glow wavers in the stead
there's a black man crying
and a white man dyin
and a black man's head in the air
the shock of life
feeds the fight
the fight that's in my head
holding tight in the stillness of the night
in the stillness of my thoughts
yet, I know I've only started
beating on a tin drum marching to a sound
what is it I think?
am I beating on a tin drum marching to a cause
when I don't know what it is I believe
lonely peeping chick
calling to his mother
runs amuck
in a sunken black ditch
and wilham's with the widow
while martha's in the meadow
and the lamb is a layin in sick
and the boy in back
is talking some slack
to the king of auld lang syne
and my heart goes out
but I cannot spout what I do not know inside
holding tight in the stillness of my mind
in the stillness of my thought