Japan

Acre, Mark

Acre was an outstanding baseball and basketball player in high school in Corning, California. He then played basketball for the College of the Siskiyous and baseball and basketball for New ... [more]

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Choi Yong Sul

Choi was born in Choong Chung province, Korea, then under Japanese occupation. A Japanese shopkeeper in his village, who had no sons, kidnapped Choi when he was about eight years old and to... [more]

Geisha

Geisha are professional entertainers in Japan, with their main centers in Tokyo and Kyoto. The tradition is centuries old and continues today, although the heyday of the geisha was before W... [more]

Hokusai

Hokusai's first few years are a mystery, but he was born near Tokyo, and when he was four or five he was adopted by a mirror-polisher named Nakajima Ise. There is speculation that Nakajima ... [more]

Kano Sanraku

Sanraku was the last of the great Momoyama decorative painters of Japan, head of the Kano school of painting in Kyoto from 1614 on, and the adopted son of Eitoku, another great artist. He w... [more]

Kano Sansetsu

Sansetsu was raised by the colony of Kano artists in Kyoto, and later adopted by the master Kano Sanraku , whose daughter he also married. He was leader of the Kano school from 1635 to his... [more]

Kishi Nobusuke

Kishi was adopted as a child by his uncle in a form of adoption similar to classical Roman adoption (see Roman Empire ), where a childless or sonless couple adopts a boy or man as their he... [more]

Momotaro

In one of the best-loved of all Japanese folk tales, an elderly childless Japanese couple find a baby inside a large peach floating down the river, whom they name Momotaro ("Peach Boy&... [more]

Muko Yoshi

In Japan a family which has daughters but no sons may adopt the husband of one of the daughters. He will take on his wife's family's surname and the obligations of a born-to son to his pare... [more]

Okada Keishu

Okada is the adoptive daughter (some sources say daughter-in-law; both may be true) of Okama Kotama. Her adoptive father left a Shinto-based religion called Sekai Kyusei Kyo and founded a s... [more]

Saigo Siro

Saigo was the extramarital birth son of Saigo Tanomo (1830-1905), lord of the Aizu samurai clan of Japan and master of the Daito-Ryu aikijujutsu martial art, hereditary in the clan. In 1885... [more]

Seki Takakazu Kowa

Seki was born into a samurai warrior family, the second son of Nagaakira Utiyama, but was adopted as a young boy by another noble family, the Seki Gorozayemon. He was a self-educated chi... [more]

Soseki, Natsume

Born to a large family in modern-day Tokyo, Soseki was fostered for the first nine years of his life, before returning to his birth family. At college he studied first Chinese and then Engl... [more]

Xianzi (under Chinese Qing Dyansty)

For nearly 200 years the Qing dynasty practiced a form of adoption to secure orderly succession to the throne when the emperor was childless. It was instituted by the Yong Zheng Empero... [more]

Yoshida Shigeru

Yoshida's birth father, Takeuchi Tsuna, was a samurai noble, and his mother was his mistress, possibly a geisha. He was adopted as a baby or small child by his father's friend, Yoshida Kenz... [more]