Word: edo
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When Commodore Matthew Perry entered Edo Bay aboard the steam frigate Susquehanna just 130 years ago this summer, most of the awestruck Japanese had never before seen such a vessel, much less a whole flotilla of what they called "the black ships of evil mien...
Deliberately self-isolated for more than two centuries from the upheavals of the "barbarian" outside world, they lived in an almost medieval state. The turmoil of the industrial revolution was all but unknown to them. The shogun's court at Edo received various dispatches from pairs of strong-legged runners, one of whom carried state documents in a lacquered box while the other bore a lantern marked "official business." In imperial Kyoto, the Empress and her ladies followed a custom of blackening their teeth...
...clan leaders had no intention of really restoring imperial rule, and they themselves were to govern as a new oligarchy for the next half-century. To symbolize the change, though, they decided to move the young Emperor, Mutsuhito, out of Kyoto and into the shogun's castle at Edo, which they renamed "eastern capital": Tokyo. A British infantry unit, on guard in a new European settlement, piped the Emperor to his new home to the tune of The British Grenadiers. The Emperor took for his reign the name Meiji (enlightened rule), and so in 1868 began the Meiji Restoration...
...looks like someone too proper to chip a teacup, never mind revolutionize an old and hallowed art form. She wears a blue-and-white kimono of her own design. Its patterns, she explains, are from Edo, meaning the period of the Tokugawa shoguns, before her city was renamed Tokyo in 1868. Her black hair is pulled back from her face, which is virtually free of lines and wrinkles. Except for the gold-rimmed spectacles perched low on her nose (this visionary is apparently nearsighted), Shinoda could have stepped directly from a 19th century Meiji print...
...Francisco Symphony. Another West Coast success story is the San Francisco Symphony's rise to prominence, not as spectacular as that of the Los Angeles Philharmonic but no less sure. Dutch Conductor Edo de Waart, 41, is no match for Giulini in glamour, and in a city still carrying a torch for De Waart's splashy predecessor, Ozawa, De Waart is often criticized for not being exciting enough. But his tireless work with his orchestra since the 1977-78 season has paid off in an alert, responsive ensemble, and the results show up handsomely in music close...