Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

0-9

Ko ... Koechlin, Charles

Ko: one of the four major schools of floral art in Japan. Dating from the Tokugawa period (1603-1868), the Ko school developed the shoka style of the earlier Ikenobo school into a more naturalistic type of arrangement. Calling the arrangements seika ...
Ko Hui-dong: Korean artist who pioneered in the application of Western techniques to traditional painting styles. After World War II he became a member of the South Korean government of Syngman Rhee.
Ko Hung: perhaps the best-known Taoist alchemist of China, who tried to combine Confucian ethics with the occult doctrines of Taoism.
Ko-chiu: city in southern Yunnan sheng (province), China. Ko-chiu lies near the Vietnamese border and is the site of China's most important tin-mining industry.
koala: tree-dwelling marsupial of coastal eastern Australia. The koala is about 60 to 85 cm (24 to 33 inches) long and weighs up to 14 kg (31 pounds) in the southern part of its range (Victoria) but only about half that ...
Koami Family: Japanese lacquerware artists who were eminent for 19 generations in the Muromachi, Azuchi-Momoyama, and Tokugawa periods.
koan: in Zen Buddhism of Japan, a succinct paradoxical statement or question used as a meditation discipline for novices, particularly in the Rinzai sect. The effort to "solve" a koan is intended to exhaust the analytic intellect and the egoistic will, ...
kob: antelope species of the genus Kobus (q.v.).
Kobayashi Hideo: one of the most influential critics in the Japanese cultural world.
Kobayashi Issa: Japanese poet whose works in simple, unadorned language captured the spiritual loneliness of the common man. His most common subjects were insects and small animals (with whom he identified) and his own poverty. Out of a life of adversity he ...
Kobayashi Kiyochika: Japanese printmaker who adopted the effects of Western lithography and engraving, especially in his wood-block prints.
Kobayashi Kokei: artist who greatly contributed to modern Japanese painting.
Kobayashi Masaki: Japanese motion-picture director whose 9 12-hour trilogy, Ningen no joken (The Human Condition: No Greater Love, 1959; Road to Eternity, 1959; A Soldier's Prayer, 1961), a monumental criticism of war, constitutes the best example of his films of social concern.
Kobayashi Takiji: outstanding writer of the proletarian literary movement in pre-World War II Japan.
kobdas: magic drum used for trance induction and divination by the Lapp shaman, or noiade. The drum consisted of a wooden frame, ring, or bowl over which a membrane of reindeer hide was stretched. The hide was usually covered with figures ...
Kobe: city and capital of Hyogo ken (prefecture), west-central Honshu, Japan. Kobe, its neighbouring city Osaka, and nearby Kyoto are the centres of the Keihanshin Industrial Zone, the second largest urban and industrial agglomeration in Japan.
Kobe Steel, Ltd.: major Japanese manufacturer of iron and steel, nonferrous metal products, and machinery. Headquarters are in Kobe with offices in Tokyo and Osaka.
Koblenz: city, Rhineland-Palatinate Land (state), western Germany. It lies at the junction of the Rhine and Moselle (Mosel) rivers (hence its Roman name, Confluentes) and is surrounded by spurs from the Eifel, Hunsruck, Westerwald, and Taunus mountains. A ...
kobold: in German folklore, mischievous household spirit who usually helps with chores and gives other valuable services but who often hides household and farm tools or kicks over stooping persons. He is temperamental and becomes outraged when he is not properly ...
koboz: short-necked lute of Middle East origin; it was known in Byzantium as the pandourion and made its way into neighbouring regions from Persia by means of Islamic conquests and migrations. The Spanish Christians called it a Moorish guitar, and it ...
Kobuk Valley National Park: large wilderness area in northwestern Alaska, U.S. It is part of a vast region of national parks, monuments, and preserves located north of the Arctic Circle that stretches for hundreds of miles from west to east. It is bordered to ...
Kobus: genus of antelopes, family Bovidae (order Artiodactyla), containing about six species-the waterbucks and lechwes, the kob, and the puku.
Kocaeli: il (province), of northwestern Turkey, with an area of 1,428 sq mi (3,698 sq km), bounded on the north by the Black Sea and on the west by the Sea of Marmara. It is drained by the lower course of ...
Koch: ethnic group of the Bodo people, dispersed over parts of Assam and Bengal. While their original language is a Tibeto-Burman dialect, large sections of the group in the 20th century spoke Bengali or other Indo-Aryan languages. In the 16th century ...
Koch, Frederick Henry: founder of the Carolina Playmakers at the University of North Carolina and considered the father of American folk drama.
Koch, Ilsa: German wife of the commandant of Buchenwald concentration camp (1939-42), notorious for her perversion and cruelty.
Koch, Kenneth: American teacher and author noted especially for his witty, often surreal, sometimes epic, poetry. He was also an accomplished playwright.
Koch, Marita: East German athlete who collected a remarkable 16 individual and team world records in outdoor sprints, as well as 14 world records in indoor events. In her only Olympic Games, at Moscow in 1980, she won two medals.
Koch, Martin: Swedish novelist who was first among the "proletarian authors" to make a deep impression on Swedish readers.
Koch, Robert: German physician and one of the founders of bacteriology. He discovered the anthrax disease cycle (1876) and the bacteria responsible for tuberculosis (1882) and cholera (1883). For his discoveries in regard to tuberculosis, he received the Nobel Prize for Physiology ...
Koch, Rudolf: German calligrapher, type designer, and teacher.
Kochanowski, Jan: humanist poet who dominated the culture of Renaissance Poland.
Kochel, Ludwig, Ritter von: (knight of) Austrian scholar who compiled the most complete chronological catalog of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's works, which are identified almost universally by the letter "K" (for Kochel) or "KV" (for Kochel and Verzeichnis, "catalog") and their numerical position in the ...
Kocher, Emil Theodor: Swiss surgeon who won the 1909 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on the thyroid gland.
Kochi: ken (prefecture), southern Shikoku, Japan, stretching in an arc around Tosa Bay of the Pacific Ocean. It is the largest prefecture on the island, with an area of 2,744 square miles (7,107 square km). The population is concentrated on the ...
Kochia: genus of annual plants, of the goosefoot family (Chenopodiaceae), native primarily to Eurasia. The commonly cultivated garden species is summer cypress (K. scoparia), sometimes known as standing, or Belvedere, cypress. The most widely grown variety is the red summer cypress, ...
Kochian Stage: lowermost and oldest major division of the Lower Cretaceous rocks and time in Japan (the Cretaceous Period began about 136,000,000 years ago and lasted about 71,000,000 years). The Kochian Stage precedes the Aritan Stage and is correlated with the lower ...
Kochno, Boris: Russian-born writer and ballet librettist who collaborated with ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev during the last years of the Ballets Russes, then became a major influence on post-World War II French ballet.
Kochowski, Wespazjan: Polish poet and historian whose works helped spark Polish nationalism.
Kock, Charles-Paul de: prolific French author whose discreetly pornographic novels about Parisian life were, in his day, popular reading throughout Europe.
Kocu Bey: Turkish minister and reformer, a notable early observer of the Ottoman decline. Originally from Albania, Kocu Bey was sent to Constantinople, where he was educated in the Imperial Palace. He later entered the service of a number of Ottoman sultans, ...
Koda Rohan: Japanese novelist and essayist whose stories of heroic characters balanced the more romantic tendency of his rival, Ozaki Koyo, in creating a new literature for early modern Japan.
Kodaikanal: town, Madurai district, Tamil Nadu state, southeastern India, at an elevation of 7,300 ft (2,225 m) in the Palni Hills. Created in 1845 by U.S. missionaries and British civil servants as a hill station to which administrative offices were moved ...
Kodaira: city, Tokyo Metropolis (to), Honshu, Japan, in the Musashino Plateau, on the Shinjuku Line (railway). The surrounding area was developed as an agricultural region after the construction of a water supply system in the mid-1600s. The long, rectangular fields were ...
Kodaira Kunihiko: Japanese mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1954 for his work in algebraic geometry and complex analysis. See the table of Fields Medalists.
Kodaly, Zoltan: prominent composer and authority on Hungarian folk music. He was also important as an educator not only of composers but also of teachers and, through his students, contributed heavily to the spread of musical education in Hungary. He was a ...
Kodama Gentaro: (b. March 16, 1852, Tokuyama, Japan-d. July 23, 1906, Tokyo) Japanese army general and statesman of the Meiji period.
Kodiak: city, Kodiak Island, southern Alaska, U.S. It is situated on Chiniak Bay, on the northeastern coast of Kodiak Island. Founded in 1792 by Aleksandr Andreyevich Baranov, manager in America for the Northeastern Company (later the Russian-American Company), it was first ...
Kodiak bear: (Ursus arctos middendorffi), variety of grizzly bear found on Kodiak Island, off the coast of Alaska. It is the largest of living land carnivores. See grizzly bear.
Kodiak Island: island, southern Alaska, U.S. It lies in the Gulf of Alaska and is separated from the Alaska Peninsula by Shelikof Strait, 30 miles (50 km) off the Alaskan coast and some 250 miles (400 km) southwest of Anchorage. The largest ...
Koechlin, Charles: composer and teacher who had a strong impact on his own and younger generations of French composers, including the group called "Les Six" by critic Henri Collet.