- Manjirō Nakahama: From Castaway to Samurai (hakaimagazine.com)
On October 4, 1987, the town of Fairhaven, Massachusetts (population 16,000), had a pair of unlikely visitors: Akihito, crown prince of Japan (today, the emperor), and his wife, Princess Michiko. Why would Japanese royalty visit this small American whaling and fishing port? The events that forged the unlikely connection between Japan and Fairhaven began 146 years earlier.
- Indian Mounds Regional Park (Saint Paul, Minnesota) (Wikipedia)
Indian Mounds Regional Park is a public park in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States, featuring six burial mounds overlooking the Mississippi River. The oldest mounds were constructed about 2,500 years ago by local Indigenous people linked to the Archaic period, who may have been inspired by the burial style known as the Hopewell Tradition. Mdewakanton Dakota people are also known to have interred their dead here well into that period. At least 31 mounds were destroyed by development in the late 19th century. This burial mound group includes the tallest mounds constructed by people Indigenous to Minnesota and Wisconsin (except for the unique 45-foot (14 m) Grand Mound outside International Falls, Minnesota). Indian Mounds Regional Park is a component of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, a unit of the National Park System…
- Samurai (Wikipedia)
Samurai (侍) were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in the 1870s during the Meiji era. They were the well-paid retainers of the daimyo, the great feudal landholders. They had high prestige and special privileges.
Samurai drawing