Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Yama-no-kami ... Yang-ch'uan

Yama-no-kami: in Japanese popular religion, any of numerous gods of the mountains. These kami are of two kinds: (1) gods who rule over mountains and are venerated by hunters, woodcutters, and charcoal burners and (2) gods who rule over agriculture and ...
Yamaga Soko: military strategist and Confucian philosopher who set forth the first systematic exposition of the missions and obligations of the samurai (warrior) class and who made major contributions to Japanese military science. Yamaga's thought became the central core of what later ...
Yamagata: prefecture (ken), northern Honshu, Japan, on the Sea of Japan. Much of its 3,601 sq mi (9,327 sq km) is mountainous. Bandai-Asahi National Park, stretching from north to south, includes the Dewa Sangan (Three Mountains of Dewa [Gassan, Yudono-san, Haguro-san]), ...
Yamagata Aritomo: Japanese soldier and statesman who exerted a strong influence in Japan's emergence as a formidable military power at the beginning of the 20th century. He was the first prime minister under the parliamentary regime, serving in 1889-91 and 1898-1900.
Yamaguchi: prefecture (ken), extreme western Honshu, Japan, bordered by the Sea of Japan (north), the Shimonoseki-kaikyo (Shimonoseki Strait; southwest), and the Inland Sea (south). Most of its 2,355-sq-mi (6,100-sq-km) area is composed of plateaus and hills, and there are no extensive ...
Yamal Peninsula: lowland region in northwestern Siberia, west-central Russia, bounded on the west by the Kara Sea and Baydarata Bay, on the east and southeast by the Gulf of Ob, and on the north by the Malygina Strait. The peninsula has a ...
Yamalo-Nenets: autonomous okrug (district), Tyumen oblast (province), in western Siberia, north-central Russia. It was established in 1930 as an autonomous okrug for the Nenets, or Samoyed, people, although by 1979 they constituted only 11 percent of the population. The okrug covers ...
Yamamoto Gonnohyoe, Count: Japanese naval officer who served two terms as prime minister of his country (1913-14; 1923-24).
Yamamoto Isoroku: Japanese naval officer who conceived of the surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
Yamana: South American Indian people, very few in number, who were the traditional occupants of the south coast of Tierra del Fuego and the neighbouring islands south to Cape Horn. In the 19th century they numbered between 2,500 and 3,000. The ...
Yamana Mochitoyo: head of the most powerful warrior clan in western Japan in the 15th century.
Yamanashi: landlocked ken (prefecture), central Honshu, Japan. Much of its area is mountainous, including the peaks of Mount Shirane (10,472 feet [3,192 m]) in the northwest and Mount Fuji (12,388 feet) on the southern border. The prefecture is drained by the ...
Yamanouchi Family: family of Japanese feudal lords who from 1600 to 1868 dominated the important fief of Tosa on the island of Shikoku.
Yamanoue Okura: one of the most individualistic, even eccentric, of Japan's classical poets, who lived and wrote in an age of bold experimentation when native Japanese poetry was developing rapidly under the stimulus of Chinese literature. His poems are characterized by a ...
Yamantaka: in northern Buddhism, one of the eight fierce protective deities. See dharmapala.
Yamasaki, Minoru: American architect whose buildings, notable for their appeal to the senses, departed from the austerity often associated with post-World War II modern architecture.
Yamasee War: (1715-16), in British-American colonial history, conflict between Indians, mainly Yamasee, and British colonists in the southeastern area of South Carolina, resulting in the collapse of Indian power in that area. Embittered by settlers' encroachment upon their land and by unresolved ...
Yamashita Tomoyuki: Japanese general known for his successful attacks on Malaya and Singapore during World War II.
Yamato: city, Kanagawa ken (prefecture), Honshu, Japan, in the eastern part of the Sagamihara Plateau. During the Tokugawa period (1603-1867) it was a local trade centre for the surrounding sericultural region. An air base of the Imperial Japanese Army, established in ...
Yamato Takeru: . His tomb at Ise is known as the Mausoleum of the White Plover.
Yamato-e: (Japanese: "Japanese painting"), style of painting important in Japan during the 12th and early 13th centuries. It is a Late Heian style, secular and decorative with a tradition of strong colour. The Yamato-e style was partly native in inspiration and ...
Yamato-Koriyama: (Koriyama-Goldfish), city, Nara ken (prefecture), western Honshu, Japan. It is located 3 miles (5 km) southwest of Nara city. A prehistoric settlement, it became a castle town during the last decade of the 15th century. With the opening of a ...
Yamazaki Ansai: propagator in Japan of the philosophy of the Chinese neo-Confucian philosopher Chu Hsi (1130-1200). Ansai reduced neo-Confucianism to a simple moral code, which he then blended with the native Shinto religious doctrines. This amalgamation was known as Suika Shinto.
Yamazaki Sokan: Japanese renga ("linked-verse") poet of the late Muromachi period (1338-1573) who is best known as the compiler of Inu tsukuba shu (c. 1615; "Mongrel Renga Collection"), the first published anthology of haikai (comic renga).
Yambol: town, east-central Bulgaria, on the Tundzha (Tundja) River. North of the present town are the ruins of Kabyle (or Cabyle), which originated as a Bronze Age settlement in the 2nd millennium BC and was conquered by the Macedonians under Philip ...
Yamethin: town, central-northern Myanmar (Burma), occupying a high point on the central plain. For centuries it was an important junction on the caravan trade route between the Shan region to the east and Myingyan, 90 miles (145 km) northwest, on the ...
yamim nora'im: in Judaism, the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashana (on Tishri 1 and 2) and Yom Kippur (on Tishri 10), in September or October. Though the Bible does not link these two major festivals, the Talmud does. Consequently, yamim nora'im ...
Yamm: ancient West Semitic deity who ruled the oceans, rivers, lakes, and underground springs. He also played an important role in the Baal myths recorded on tablets uncovered at Ugarit, which say that at the beginning of time Yamm was awarded ...
Yamoussoukro: town and capital (de jure; administrative), south-central Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), located about 170 miles (274 km) northwest of the national capital, Abidjan. For more than three decades after Cote d'Ivoire achieved independence in 1960, Yamoussoukro served as the country's ...
Yamoussoukro Basilica: Roman Catholic basilica in Yamoussoukro, Cote d'Ivoire, that is the largest Christian church in the world. The basilica's rapid construction in 1986-89 was ostensibly paid for by Cote d'Ivoire's president, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, and the building is situated in his birthplace, ...
Yampa River: river, in the western United States, rising in the White River National Forest of northwestern Colorado, in the Rocky Mountains. Draining an area of approximately 9,500 square miles (24,600 square km) in south-central Wyoming and northwestern Colorado, the river flows ...
Yampi Sound: portion of the Indian Ocean off the north coast of Western Australia, between King Sound and Collier Bay. It contains the four island clusters of the Buccaneer Archipelago, named for the buccaneer William Dampier. High-grade iron-ore deposits occur on the ...
Yamuna River: river in Uttar Pradesh state, northern India, rising in the Himalayas near Jamnotri. It flows in a southerly direction through the Himalayan foothills and onto the northern Indian plain, along the Uttar Pradesh-Haryana state border. The Eastern and Western Yamuna ...
yan: type of ancient Chinese bronze steamer, or cooking vessel, used particularly for grain. It consisted of a deep upper bowl with a pierced bottom, which was placed upon or attached to a lower, legged vessel similar in shape to the ...
Yan Liben: one of the most famous Chinese figure painters in the early years of the Tang dynasty (618-907).
Yana: Hokan-speaking California Indians formerly living along the eastern tributaries of the upper Sacramento River, from the Pit River to southwest of Lassen Peak. Yana territory comprised a myriad of foothills and narrow, rugged canyons, partly wooded but mostly brush-covered and ...
Yanam: town, Pondicherry union territory, an enclave within northeastern Andhra Pradesh state, southern India, on the main mouth of the Godavari River.
Yanbu': town, western Saudi Arabia, on the Red Sea north of Jidda. It serves as the country's second Red Sea port, after Jidda, and is the main port for Medina, 100 miles (160 km) to the east. The economy of Yanbu' ...
Yancey, Jimmy: American blues pianist who established the boogie-woogie style with slow, steady, simple left-hand bass patterns. These became more rapid in the work of his students Albert Ammons and Meade "Lux" Lewis, who popularized the "Yancey Special."
Yancey, William Lowndes: American southern political leader and "fire-eater" who, in his later years, consistently urged the South to secede in response to Northern antislavery agitation.
Yanez, Agustin: Mexican novelist, short-story writer, and active political figure whose novels, explorations of their protagonists' social realities, established a major current in 20th-century Mexican fiction.
Yang Chu: one of the early Taoist philosophers. Yang has been infamous in Chinese history for what was thought to be his extreme hedonism. This characterization of Yang was fostered by the great Confucian philosopher Mencius (c. 371-289 BC), the second Sage ...
Yang Guifei: notorious beauty and concubine of the great Tang emperor Xuanzong (reigned 712-756). Because of her the emperor is said to have neglected his duties, and the Tang dynasty (618-907) was greatly weakened by a rebellion that ensued. Her story has ...
Yang Hsiu-ch'ing: organizer and commander in chief of the Taiping Rebellion, the political-religious uprising that occupied most of South China between 1850 and 1864.
Yang Hui: mathematician active in the great flowering of Chinese mathematics during the Southern Song dynasty.
Yang Ti: the second and penultimate emperor of the Sui dynasty (581-618). Under Yang Ti canals were built and great palaces erected.
Yang Xiong: Chinese poet and philosopher best known for his poetry written in the form known as fu.
Yang Yen: minister to the T'ang emperor Te Tsung (reigned 779/780-805).
Yang, Chen Ning: Chinese-born American theoretical physicist whose research with Tsung-Dao Lee showed that parity-the symmetry between physical phenomena occurring in right-handed and left-handed coordinate systems-is violated when certain elementary particles decay. Until this discovery it had been assumed by physicists that parity ...
yang-ch'in: Chinese dulcimer in which tone is produced by striking the strings with bamboo beaters covered with rubber or leather. The vibration of the strings is transmitted to a trapezoidal wooden soundboard by bridges, over which the strings are stretched.
Yang-ch'uan: city, eastern Shansi province (sheng), China. It is a prefecture-level municipality (shih) entirely surrounded by Chin-chung prefecture (ti-ch'u). Yang-ch'uan is located in the mountains of Shansi, west of the main range of the T'ai-hang Shan (mountains), at the eastern end ...