title: Scoville scale

text: "Capsicum" chili peppers are commonly used to add pungency in cuisines worldwide. The range of pepper heat reflected by a Scoville score is from 500 or less (sweet peppers) to over 1.5 million (Carolina Reaper) (table below; Scoville scales for individual chili peppers are in the respective linked article). Some peppers such as the Guntur chilli and Rocoto are excluded from the list due to their very wide SHU range. Others such as Pepper X, Dragons Breath, and Chocolate 7-pot have not been officially verified.


title: Scoville scale

text: The class of compounds causing pungency in plants such as chili peppers is called capsaicinoids, which display a linear correlation between concentration and Scoville scale, and may vary in content during ripening. Capsaicin is the major capsaicinoid in chili peppers.


title: Scoville scale

text: The Scoville scale may be used to express the pungency of other, unrelated TRPV1 agonists, sometimes with extrapolation for much hotter compounds. One such substance is resiniferatoxin, an alkaloid present in the sap of some species of euphorbia plants (spurges). Since it is 1000 times as hot as capsaicin, it would have a Scoville scale rating of 16 billion. In the table below, non-capsaicinoid compounds are italicized.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: Fifth Harmony, often shortened to 5H, are an American girl group based in Miami, composed of Ally Brooke, Normani, Dinah Jane, Lauren Jauregui, and previously Camila Cabello until her departure from the group in December 2016. The group signed a joint record deal with Simon Cowell's label Syco Records and L.A. Reid's label Epic Records after forming and finishing third in the second season of the American singing competition series "The X Factor" in 2012.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: The group released their debut single "Miss Movin' On", preceding their extended play "Better Together". In 2015, The group released their debut studio album "Reflection", which was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It spawned the singles "Boss", "Sledgehammer" and "Worth It"; the latter of which was certified 3x


title: Fifth Harmony

text: Platinum by RIAA, and reached the top ten in thirteen countries. In 2016, the group released "Work from Home", the lead single from their second album "7/27", which peaked at number four on the "Billboard" Hot 100, making it the first top five single by a girl group in a decade on that chart. They released their self-titled third album in 2017. The group went on indefinite hiatus in March 2018, allowing its members to pursue solo projects.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: Fifth Harmony has sold nearly 15 million RIAA certified units, and are one of the best-selling girl groups of all time with a reported 33 million copies sold. They are known for their vocal range and songs with themes of female empowerment, self positivity, confidence, and unity. As of 2016, they have earned 1.6 billion on-demand streams, according to Nielsen SoundScan. "Billboard" named them the biggest girl group of the 2010s. In 2017, "Time" referred to them as arguably "the biggest girl group in the world".


title: Fifth Harmony

text: Fifth Harmony have earned the most top ten albums on the U.S. "Billboard" 200 for any girl group in the 21st century. Their accolades include an American Music Award, three MTV Europe Music Awards, three Guinness World Records, four MTV Video Music Awards, four iHeartRadio Music Awards, the first ever "Billboard" Women in Music Group of the Year award, a record five Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards (the most for a girl group), and ten Teen Choice Awards.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: In 2012, Ally Brooke, Camila Cabello, Normani Kordei, Dinah Jane and Lauren Jauregui auditioned as solo contestants on the second season of the American televised singing competition "The X Factor". The latter four failed to progress in the "Teens" category, with Brooke failing to enter the "Young Adults" category. However, they were later brought back and put together to form a five-piece girl group at The Fillmore, in Miami, Florida on July 27, thus qualifying for the "Groups" category. Judges Demi Lovato, L.A. Reid, Britney Spears and Simon Cowell helped form the group. For their qualifying song at the "judges' houses", and their first song as a group, the girls sang an acoustic version of "Impossible" by Shontelle. Afterwards, Marc Anthony called the performance "unbelievable" with Cowell sharing similar sentiments saying that they were "clearly one great group". Initially, the group's name was "Lylas" (an acronym for Love You Like a Sister), but another group called "The Lylas" (which consists of four of Bruno Mars' sisters) claimed that the show stole their name. Thereafter, Lylas changed their name to 1432 (a colloquial term for I Love You Too), which was announced on the first live show on October 31, during which 1432 performed "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" by Taylor Swift. Cowell and Reid were critical of the new name, and Cowell suggested that the group be renamed again. During the first live results show on November 1, 1432 performed "Skyscraper" by Demi Lovato in a sing-off with three-piece girl group Sister C. Cowell decided to send 1432 through to the Top 12 and announced that they would be renamed via the viewers online. The name chosen by the public was announced: "Fifth Harmony".


title: Fifth Harmony

text: In the semi-finals stage of the show, the group performed Ellie Goulding's "Anything Could Happen" as well as "Impossible" for the second time during the competition. However, their performance of "Impossible" received mostly negative reviews from the judges because the group had previously performed the song at Cowell's home (although not on "The X Factor" concert stage). Three members of the group (Camila, Lauren, and Ally) sang parts of the song in fluent Spanish. The following night's public vote results advanced Fifth Harmony to the final three along with Tate Stevens and Carly Rose Sonenclar. On the Top three live show, Fifth Harmony performed "Anything Could Happen" for the second time as their "Song of the Series" song. Their second song was a duet with "The X Factor" judge Demi Lovato singing "Give Your Heart a Break". Their final song of the night (and their last on the show) was "Let It Be" by the Beatles, billed as their "$5 million song". After the first round of the finals, they did not receive enough votes from the public to advance to the Top two, and they finished in third place on December 20, 2012.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: Approximately one month following "The X Factor" season two finale, on January 17, 2013, Fifth Harmony was officially signed by their mentor Simon Cowell to his record label, Syco Music, in a joint deal with fellow judge L.A. Reid's label, Epic Records. "Popdust" awarded them the "Next Pop Superstar of 2013" recognition, an annual competition held for rising artists. They began recording covers of songs which were uploaded on the video sharing platform, YouTube. Three of their covers received public praise from the original artists, including Ed Sheeran, Ariana Grande and Mikky Ekko. Fifth Harmony was also featured on Boyce Avenue's extended play, "Cover Collaborations, Volume 2", singing covers of "Mirrors" by Justin Timberlake and "When I Was Your Man" by Bruno Mars.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: Their debut single "Miss Movin' On" was released on July 16, 2013, as the lead from their debut EP and peaked on the "Billboard" Hot 100 at number 76, formerly the highest-charting single from an "X Factor" contestant to appear on the chart. Their debut extended play "Better Together" was released on October 22, selling 28,000 copies in its first week and peaking on the "Billboard" 200 at number six. Spanish versions of the EP, "Juntos" and "Juntos Acoustic" were released on peaking at number 2 and 12 respectively on the "Billboard" Top Latin Albums chart. The song was certified Gold in the United States for selling 500,000 digital downloads and streams combined. The extended play's promotional single, "Me & My Girls" charted on the "Billboard" Hot Digital Songs chart at 53.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: Throughout July and August 2013, Fifth Harmony performed at various shopping malls across the United States in a promotional tour titled "Harmonize America". On August 5, 2013, the girl group celebrated their one-year anniversary by performing five shows in New York City. The pop-up concerts throughout the city included performances at the iHeartRadio Theater and Madison Square Park. The group was one of the opening acts for Cher Lloyd during her I Wish Tour which started on September 6, 2013. On September 11, 2013, the group announced their first concert hall tour titled "Fifth Harmony 2013", playing in concert halls in Canada and the United States. Their opening act was indie pop band AJR. On November 24, they performed "Better Together" on the red carpet at the 2013 American Music Awards. They supported Demi Lovato's Neon Lights Tour as one of three opening acts playing 27 arenas across North America.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: On January 23, 2014, Fifth Harmony headlined the MTV Artists To Watch concert, an annual concert which showcases breakout artists that will be promoted by MTV during the year. The concert also featured performances by Tori Kelly, Rixton, Echosmith and Jake Miller. In early 2014, Fifth Harmony confirmed reports that recording had begun for their full-length debut album with record producers Julian Bunetta, Daylight, Joe London and multi-instrumentalist songwriter Ricky Reed. The group stated the album is less pop, "more rhythmic" and has a more mature sound than "Better Together". Fifth Harmony's fourth headlining promo tour was revealed at the end of March 2014, titled Fifth Times a Charm Tour, with dates in Puerto Rico and the United States.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: The album's lead single, "Boss", was released on July 7, 2014, peaked at number 43 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart with first-week sales of 75,000, and received a platinum certification by the United States for selling a million digital downloads and streams combined. The second single from "Reflection", the Meghan Trainor-penned "Sledgehammer", was released on October 28, 2014, and went on to become the group's first top 40 entry on the "Billboard" Hot 100, and was also certified platinum in the United States. On December 4, 2014, the group was invited to sing at the White House for the National Christmas Tree Lighting, where they performed a cover of Mariah Carey's hit Christmas song, "All I Want for Christmas Is You". It was announced by "Billboard" that a representative from Epic Records had confirmed that the album release was moved from December 16, 2014, to January 27, 2015.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: Their debut studio album, "Reflection" was ultimately released on February 3, 2015. After a full week of sales, the album entered the "Billboard" 200 at number five with 80,000 units (with 62,000 coming from traditional album sales) and was eventually certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America in February 2016. The third single from the album, "Worth It", featuring American rapper Kid Ink, was released on March 2, 2015, and became the group's most successful single at the time, peaking at number 12 on the "Billboard" Hot 100, earning the group a triple platinum certification. The song charted in the top ten in thirteen countries and received certifications from twelve. The success of "Worth It" was largely impacted with televised performances on the season finale of "Dancing with the Stars", and their debut late night appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" on June 18, 2015, alongside Kid Ink for the first time. The album was supported by the group's first major headlining tour, the Reflection Tour, visiting 63 cities in North America and 6 cities in Europe Fifth Harmony returned to the White House on April 6, 2015, to perform at the annually-held White House Easter Egg Roll, where they sang "Happy Birthday" as part of the Fifth anniversary of First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" initiative.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: Later that year, the group released "I'm in Love with a Monster" on September 25, 2015, a song for the film "Hotel Transylvania 2" which was featured in the trailer and included in the movie as well. On December 11, 2015, Fifth Harmony received the Group of the Year award at "Billboard" Women in Music 2015 ceremony, honoring the industry's most influential women. Critically, "Reflection" landed in several mid-year and year-end lists, including "Rolling Stone" and "Complex" who ranked the album at 39 and 9 in the exclusively pop category, respectively. Several critics noted the group's experimentation with grungy hip-hop and retro R&B that was previously not heard on their extended play.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: On September 23, 2015, the group announced they had started recording for their second studio album. After a winter break, it was announced on February 25, 2016, that Fifth Harmony would be releasing their second studio album "7/27" on May 20, 2016. The album is named after the day they were formed on "The X Factor". It was later announced that the album's release had been pushed back a week to May 27 to keep with the album's theme of 27. The lead single, "Work from Home", which features American rapper Ty Dolla Sign was released on February 26, 2016, along with its music video. The single peaked at number four on the "Billboard" Hot 100 and became the group's highest-charting single in the United States, while reaching the top 10 in twenty-two other countries. The single also became the first top-five for an all-female group in almost a decade, following The Pussycat Dolls' song, "Buttons" which peaked at number three.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: "7/27" was released on May 27, 2016, debuting at number four on the "Billboard" 200 with 74,000 album-equivalent units (49,000 in pure album sales), making it the group's highest-charting album to date. The album also marked the group's debut in Japan and South Korea, while also managing top ten peaks in fifteen other countries. The track "All in My Head (Flex)" was released on May 31, 2016, as the second single from the album. The song interpolates Mad Cobra's 1995 single "Flex" and was co-written by all five members. The album was supported with The 7/27 Tour which commenced on June 22, 2016, in Lima, Peru, visiting South America, North America and Europe with supporting artists Victoria Monét and JoJo. The group won two MTV Video Music Awards for "Work from Home" and "All in My Head (Flex)" and was named by "Billboard" the "hottest young stars" under 21 for 2016. They performed their third single "That's My Girl" on the American Music Awards and won their first award from this show in the Collaboration of the Year category for "Work from Home". By November 2016, the album had sold 1.6 million equivalent units, that included sales, streaming and album tracks consumption. The group's last performance of 2016 and as a quintet was on the previously taped Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, during which they performed "Worth It", "Work from Home" and "That's My Girl". On December 18, 2016, the group announced that Cabello had left the group and that the remaining four members would continue as a four-piece.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: The group made their first appearance since Cabello's departure at the 43rd People's Choice Awards on January 17, 2017. There, they performed an edited version of "Work from Home", went on to win the award for Favorite Group for the second consecutive year. On May 29, 2017, the group announced their new single, "Down", featuring guest vocals from rapper Gucci Mane. The song was released on June 2, 2017, and peaked at number 42 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. On July 24, 2017, during an appearance on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon", the group announced that their third studio album would be titled "Fifth Harmony." The album was released on August 25, 2017, and debuted at number four on the "Billboard" 200. The girls performed on the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards, where they started with the promotional single "Angel", before transitioning to "Down" featuring Mane. On August 9, they announced that they would embark on their third and final official concert tour in support of the album. The group released the second single from the album, titled "He Like That". The music video for the song was released on August 25, 2017, and as a single to radio on September 19, 2017. The group performed their single from the album for "Good Morning America" and "The Late Late Show with James Corden".


title: Fifth Harmony

text: Fifth Harmony took over "TRL" performing two songs "He Like That" and "Don't Say You Love Me". The group recorded the song, "Can You See", for the biblical computer animated movie "The Star". They released a lyric video for the song on October 17, 2017. The soundtrack album for "The Star" was released on October 24, 2017. On October 26, they released "Por Favor", a duet with rapper Pitbull, as the third single from the Spotify re-release of the album and performed it at the 2017 Latin American Music Awards. The group performed their song, "Can You See" for The Wonderful World of Disney: Magical Holiday Celebration on November 30, 2017. They performed the song again for the Showtime at the Apollo Christmas special hosted by Steve Harvey on December 14, 2017. The group began their PSA Tour on September 29 in Santiago, Chile, with Becky G serving as opening act in several Latin American countries, including Mexico and Argentina. Lost Kings were also planned to support the group on their Australian tour dates before the dates were canceled. The group performed their single "Por Favor" with Pitbull on the "Showtime at the Apollo" show hosted by Steve Harvey on March 1, 2018.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: On March 19, 2018, the group made their decision to take an indefinite hiatus to pursue solo projects. Before their hiatus, the group completed a final run of shows, and released a music video for their song "Don't Say You Love Me". As of September 2018, all members have released solo singles and confirmed debut albums.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: Fifth Harmony is a pop and R&B girl group. They have explored other genres such as trap, tropical house, hip hop, Rnbass, EDM, dancehall, dance-pop, and reggae. They have described their music as having a "retro feel" to it as well. The group lists the Spice Girls, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston and Destiny's Child as their main influences. Lana Del Rey, Adele, Janet Jackson, Celine Dion, Taylor Swift, Brandy, Jennifer Lopez, Patti LaBelle, Cher Lloyd, Carrie Underwood, Jessie J, Beyoncé, Alicia Keys, Christina Aguilera, Selena, Celia Cruz, Demi Lovato, Ed Sheeran and Leona Lewis have influenced individual members of the group.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: Fifth Harmony have been referred to as "the biggest girl group of the 2010s" by "Billboard", "America's premiere girl group" by "Vulture", "the current standard-bearers for girl group success" by Gold Derby, and "the biggest girl group in a generation" by The Recording Academy. Fifth Harmony's success was compared to the impact Spice Girls made in the 1990s, with "MIC" dubbing them as "The Spice Girls of the 21st Century". Fifth Harmony have also been referred to as one of the best girl groups of all time by "US Magazine", in 2022.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: Writer Jason Lipshutz of "Billboard", wrote that the group "encouraged young women to embrace self-care and confidence with an effectiveness that few other pop artists have been able to match this decade ... Fifth Harmony represented much more than a handful of hits to a young generation of music listeners. They mattered, and they will for a long time to come."


title: Fifth Harmony

text: In 2016, journalist Hugh McIntyre of "Forbes", declared "It's safe to say that Fifth Harmony doesn't have any real competition worth speaking of in the girl group lane". "The Daily Trojan" stated that "Fifth Harmony established themselves as the most popular girl group of the new generation — a void that desperately needed to be filled after the dissolution of the Pussycat Dolls and Danity Kane. The girls found their niche: empowered women of color who didn’t shy away from sexuality, feminism or achievement. Their songs echoed with dynamism and fierceness, and their vocal talents shined through in every hit".


title: Fifth Harmony

text: American toy company Mattel produced Barbie-themed celebrity dolls modeled after each member of the group. The group have appeared on Spotify's list of the 'Top 10 Most Influential Artists Under 25' (2015), as well as "Billboard"'s 21 Under 21 list three times (2014, 2015, 2016), including ranking atop the list in 2016. That same year, they became the first female act to be crowned MTV's Hottest Summer Superstar with over 67 million votes, narrowly beating out Beyoncé. Additionally, Fifth Harmony performed twice for former United States President Barack Obama, during his tenure at the White House. They also hold the title for the best-selling girl group in their generation.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: All three of the group's studio albums, as well as their extended play charted within the top ten of the US "Billboard" 200, making them the girl group with the most entries on the chart in the 21st century; they are also tied with Destiny's Child, for the third most top ten entries on the chart by a girl group overall, following behind The Chicks and The Supremes. Three members of Fifth Harmony (Camila Cabello, Normani, and Lauren Jauregui) have charted on the "Billboard" Hot 100 as soloist, which made them the fourth girl group to achieve this. Additionally, they are one of three groups to have two soloist (Camila Cabello and Normani) reach number one on the Mainstream Top 40 chart.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: Their biggest hit "Work from Home", became the highest-charting single in the United States and the first top-five entry from an all-female group to chart in ten years since "Buttons" by The Pussycat Dolls, which peaked at number 3. in 2017, "Work from Home" ranked at number 14 on the list of '100 Greatest Girl Group Songs of All Time: Critics' Picks' by "Billboard". "Rolling Stone" named it one of the best songs of the 2010s. In 2019, the song was placed fourth on the U.K. Official Charts Company's list of the 'Top 100 girl band singles of the last 25 years', which was the highest position for an international or American act. The music video for the song was the most watched of 2016 on YouTube.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: Fifth Harmony's single "Worth It", was the first music video by a girl group to surpass one billion views on YouTube. It has amassed over two billion views on YouTube, becoming the group's second music video to achieve this following "Work From Home".


title: Fifth Harmony

text: Ally Brooke became a spokesperson for the mother and child health organization March of Dimes in November 2015, in honor of Prematurity Awareness Month and World Prematurity Day. Camila Cabello also partnered with Save the Children to show her care for Syria's children. Lauren Jauregui was involved in Do Something's campaign #LoseYourVCard to help and encourage new adults to vote and to help guide them in the process so the youth of the United States could be more involved in the outcome. Normani Kordei was named the Diversity Ambassador of Cybersmile foundation after being abused online on the basis of her race.


title: Fifth Harmony

text: Sony Music Entertainment announced that they would be launching endorsement deals between Fifth Harmony and a number of companies, including two clothing lines with Wet Seal. The first clothing line with Wet Seal was launched in August 2014 in 200 stores across America, featuring a collection from each member based on their individual style. During the summer of 2015, Fifth Harmony were named as the faces of the clothing brand Candie's.


title: Eric Stonestreet

text: Eric Allen Stonestreet (born September 9, 1971) is an American actor and comedian. He is best known for portraying Cameron Tucker in the ABC mockumentary sitcom "Modern Family", for which he received two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series out of three nominations.


title: Eric Stonestreet

text: Stonestreet first rose to prominence in a recurring role on "". He has appeared in films and telefilms including; "Bad Teacher" (2011), "Identity Thief" (2013), "The Loft" (2013), and "Confirmation" (2016). He also provides the voice of Duke in "The Secret Life of Pets" film franchise (2016-2019).


title: Eric Stonestreet

text: Stonestreet was born in Kansas City, Kansas, the son of Jamey Anne ("née" Ball), a teacher's aide, and Vincent Anthony "Vince" Stonestreet who owned a retail business.


title: Eric Stonestreet

text: During his childhood he wanted to become a clown. As a child he created a clown character named Fizbo, and by age 11 was performing at 6- and 7-year-olds' birthday parties; Stonestreet recalled in 2012, "I don't know where the name Fizbo came from. I do know one day that's what my dad was calling me and that's the name that I printed on my business cards." The name Fizbo was used for a clown character he periodically played on "Modern Family".


title: Eric Stonestreet

text: Stonestreet graduated from Piper High School and Kansas State University where he was a brother of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, graduating with a degree in sociology in 1996.


title: Eric Stonestreet

text: While at KSU, he performed in plays including his first, "Prelude to a Kiss", for which he auditioned on a dare and won the smallest role; "All My Sons"; and "Twelfth Night". He went on to study improv at ImprovOlympic and The Second City Training Center in Chicago, and moved to Los Angeles to begin his professional acting career.


title: Eric Stonestreet

text: Stonestreet played Cameron Tucker in ABC's "Modern Family". He is also notable for his role as Ronnie Litre on "". He also guest starred in television shows, such as "Dharma & Greg", "ER", "Malcolm in the Middle", "The Mentalist", "NCIS", "Nip/Tuck", "Party of Five", "Spin City", "The West Wing", "Pushing Daisies", "Greg the Bunny", "Providence", "Close to Home", "Crossing Jordan", "Bones", "Monk", and "American Horror Story". Early in his career Stonestreet was featured in Northwestern University's 1996 football TV commercial campaign as the "purple pride guy."


title: Eric Stonestreet

text: He made his film debut in "Almost Famous", as desk clerk Sheldon. He also played Dr. Benson in "Girls Will Be Girls", Ed the Trucker in "The Island", and Courtney's Neighbor in "Ninja Cheerleaders". In 2007, Stonestreet appeared in the short film "Vinny's Vault," which was produced during the reality show "On the Lot". He also appeared in the movies "Identity Thief" as Big Chuck, and "Bad Teacher" as Kirk.


title: Eric Stonestreet

text: In his role as Cameron on "Modern Family", Stonestreet earned three consecutive Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series (2010, 2011 and 2012), winning the award in 2010 and 2012. He also received three Golden Globe Award nominations (2010, 2011 and 2013) for his work on the series.


title: Eric Stonestreet

text: In 2013, he appeared in a series of advertisements for Australian retail store Big W. In the fall of the same year, Stonestreet played the "Fan Coach" in the AT&T "Be A Fan" commercial series that ran during the college football season, in addition to appearing in a MasterCard/Stand Up 2 Cancer commercial as himself. In 2014, he performed in "Weird Al" Yankovic's music video for "Tacky," a parody of Pharrell's "Happy". In the same year he also starred in the remake of the Belgian thriller The Loft. He regularly appears onstage at IO West improv Theatre in Los Angeles.


title: Eric Stonestreet

text: In 2020, Stonestreet appeared as a guest judge for a taping of auditions for the fifteenth season of "America's Got Talent", in place of Heidi Klum. In the same year he appeared in the music video for Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber's song "Stuck with U".


title: Eric Stonestreet

text: In March 2021, it was announced that Stonestreet would be hosting "Domino Masters" for Fox. The competition series premiered on March 9, 2022.


title: Eric Stonestreet

text: In June 2016, Stonestreet began dating pediatric nurse Lindsay Schweitzer whom he met during the Big Slick charity event weekend in Kansas City. On August 22, 2021, the couple became engaged.


title: Eric Stonestreet

text: Although he played a gay character in "Modern Family", Stonestreet is heterosexual and has lightheartedly described himself as "openly straight". His "Modern Family" co-star, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who plays Stonestreet's character's husband Mitchell Pritchett, and who is gay in real life, jokingly called Stonestreet "gay-for-pay".. In addition, Stonestreet is a supporter of the LGBT community, having once declined to be photographed with Rick Santorum due to Santorum’s opposition of same-sex marriage.


title: Eric Stonestreet

text: Stonestreet enjoys attending sporting events and openly supporting his hometown teams (including the Kansas City Chiefs), and has driven the pace car at several NASCAR events. He continues to frequent football games at his alma mater and stays active with several organizations there. In 2019, it was announced that Stonestreet was part of the new ownership group of the Kansas City Royals; Royals legend George Brett was once a guest star in a season nine episode of "Modern Family" where Cameron in-character considered him his favorite baseball player.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: , born , was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, nationalist, and founder of the , an unarmed civilian militia. Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century. He was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, but the award went to his countryman and benefactor Yasunari Kawabata. His works include the novels and , and the autobiographical essay . Mishima's work is characterized by "its luxurious vocabulary and decadent metaphors, its fusion of traditional Japanese and modern Western literary styles, and its obsessive assertions of the unity of beauty, eroticism and death", according to author Andrew Rankin.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima's political activities made him a controversial figure, which he remains in modern Japan. From his mid-30s, Mishima's right-wing ideology was increasingly revealed. He was proud of the traditional culture and spirit of Japan, and opposed what he saw as western-style materialism, along with , globalism, and communism, worrying that by embracing these ideas the Japanese people would lose their "national essence" ("kokutai") and their distinctive cultural heritage (Shinto and Yamato-damashii) to become a "rootless" people. Mishima formed the Tatenokai for the avowed purpose of restoring sacredness and dignity to the Emperor of Japan. On 25 November 1970, Mishima and four members of his militia entered a military base in central Tokyo, took its commandant hostage, and unsuccessfully tried to inspire the Japan Self-Defense Forces to rise up and overthrow Japan's 1947 Constitution (which he called "a constitution of defeat"). After his speech and screaming of "Long live the Emperor!", he committed seppuku.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: , later known as , was born in Nagazumi-cho, Yotsuya-ku of Tokyo City (now part of Yotsuya, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo). He chose his pen name when he was 16. His father was , a government official in the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, and his mother, , was the daughter of the 5th principal of the Kaisei Academy. Shizue's father, , was a scholar of the Chinese classics, and the Hashi family had served the Maeda clan for generations in Kaga Domain. Mishima's paternal grandparents were , the third Governor-General of Karafuto Prefecture, and . Mishima received his birth name Kimitake (公威, also read "Kōi" in on-yomi) in honor of who was a benefactor of Sadatarō. He had a younger sister, , who died of typhus in 1945 at the age of 17, and a younger brother, .


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima's childhood home was a rented house, though a fairly large two-floor house that was the largest in the neighborhood. He lived with his parents, siblings and paternal grandparents, as well as six maids, a houseboy, and a manservant. His grandfather was in debt, so there were no remarkable household items left on the first floor.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima's early childhood was dominated by the presence of his grandmother, Natsuko, who took the boy and separated him from his immediate family for several years. She was the granddaughter of , the "daimyō" of Shishido, which was a branch domain of Mito Domain in Hitachi Province; therefore, Mishima was a direct descendant of the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, , through his grandmother. Natsuko's father, , had been a Supreme Court justice, and Iwanojō's adoptive father, , had been a bannerman of the Tokugawa House during the Bakumatsu. Natsuko had been raised in the household of Prince Arisugawa Taruhito, and she maintained considerable aristocratic pretensions even after marrying Sadatarō, a bureaucrat who had made his fortune in the newly opened colonial frontier in the north, and who eventually became Governor-General of Karafuto Prefecture on Sakhalin Island. Sadatarō's father, , and grandfather, , had been farmers. Natsuko was prone to violent outbursts, which are occasionally alluded to in Mishima's works, and to whom some biographers have traced Mishima's fascination with death. She did not allow Mishima to venture into the sunlight, engage in any kind of sport, or play with other boys. He spent much of his time either alone or with female cousins and their dolls.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima returned to his immediate family when he was 12. His father Azusa had a taste for military discipline, and worried Natsuko's style of childrearing was too soft. When Mishima was an infant, Azusa employed parenting tactics such as holding Mishima up to the side of a speeding train. He also raided his son's room for evidence of an "effeminate" interest in literature, and often ripped his son's manuscripts apart. Although Azusa forbade him to write any further stories, Mishima continued to write in secret, supported and protected by his mother, who was always the first to read a new story.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: When Mishima was 13, Natsuko took him to see his first Kabuki play: "Kanadehon Chūshingura," an allegory of the story of the 47 Rōnin. He was later taken to his first Noh play ("Miwa", a story featuring Amano-Iwato) by his maternal grandmother . From these early experiences, Mishima became addicted to Kabuki and Noh. He began attending performances every month and grew deeply interested in these traditional Japanese dramatic art forms.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima was enrolled at the age of six in the elite Gakushūin, the Peers' School in Tokyo, which had been established in the Meiji period to educate the Imperial family and the descendants of the old feudal nobility. At 12, Mishima began to write his first stories. He read myths (Kojiki, Greek mythology, etc.) and the works of numerous classic Japanese authors as well as Raymond Radiguet, Jean Cocteau, Oscar Wilde, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann, Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Baudelaire, l'Isle-Adam, and other European authors in translation. He also studied German. After six years at school, he became the youngest member of the editorial board of its literary society. Mishima was attracted to the works of the Japanese poet , poet and novelist , and poet , who inspired Mishima's appreciation of classical Japanese "waka" poetry. Mishima's early contributions to the Gakushūin literary magazine included haiku and waka poetry before he turned his attention to prose.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: In 1941, at the age of 16, Mishima was invited to write a short story for the "Hojinkai-zasshi", and he submitted , a story in which the narrator describes the feeling that his ancestors somehow still live within him. The story uses the type of metaphors and aphorisms that became Mishima's trademarks. He mailed a copy of the manuscript to his Japanese teacher for constructive criticism. Shimizu was so impressed that he took the manuscript to a meeting of the editorial board of the prestigious literary magazine , of which he was a member. At the editorial board meeting, the other board members read the story and were very impressed; they congratulated themselves for discovering a genius and published it in the magazine. The story was later published as a limited book edition (4,000 copies) in 1944 due to a wartime paper shortage. Mishima had it published as a keepsake to remember him by, as he assumed that he would die in the war.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: In order to protect him from potential backlash from Azusa, Shimizu and the other editorial board members coined the pen-name Yukio Mishima. They took "Mishima" from Mishima Station, which Shimizu and fellow "Bungei Bunka" board member Hasuda Zenmei passed through on their way to the editorial meeting, which was held in Izu, Shizuoka. The name "Yukio" came from "yuki" (雪), the Japanese word for "snow," because of the snow they saw on Mount Fuji as the train passed. In the magazine, Hasuda praised Mishima's genius as follows:This youthful author is a heaven-sent child of eternal Japanese history. He is much younger than we are, but has arrived on the scene already quite mature.Hasuda, who became something of a mentor to Mishima, was an ardent nationalist and a fan of Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801), a scholar of "kokugaku" from the Edo period who preached Japanese traditional values and devotion to the Emperor. Hasuda had previously fought for the Imperial Japanese Army in China in 1938, and in 1943 he was recalled to active service for deployment as a first lieutenant in the Southeast Asian theater. At a farewell party thrown for Hasuda by the "Bungei Bunka" group, Hasuda offered the following parting words to Mishima: I have entrusted the future of Japan to you.According to Mishima, these words were deeply meaningful to him, and had a profound effect on the future course of his life.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Later in 1941, Mishima wrote in his notebook an essay about his deep devotion to Shintō, titled . Mishima's story , published in 1946, describes a homosexual love he felt at school and being teased from members of the school's rugby union club because he belonged to the literary society. Another story from 1954, , was also based on Mishima's memories of his time at Gakushūin Junior High School.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: On 9 September 1944, Mishima graduated Gakushūin High School at the top of the class, and became a graduate representative. Emperor Hirohito was present at the graduation ceremony, and Mishima later received a silver watch from the Emperor at the Imperial Household Ministry.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: On 27 April 1944, during the final years of World War II, Mishima received a draft notice for the Imperial Japanese Army and barely passed his conscription examination on 16 May 1944, with a less desirable rating of "second class" conscript. He had a cold during his medical check on convocation day (10 February 1945), and the young army doctor misdiagnosed Mishima with tuberculosis, declared him unfit for service, and sent him home. Scholars have argued that Mishima's failure to receive a "first class" rating on his conscription exam (reserved only for the most physically fit recruits), in combination with the illness which led him to be erroneously declared unfit for duty, contributed to an inferiority complex over his frail constitution that later led to his obsession with physical fitness and bodybuilding.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: The day before his failed medical exam, Mishima wrote a farewell message to his family, ending with the words , and prepared clippings of his hair and nails to be kept as mementos by his parents. The troops of the unit that Mishima was supposed to have joined were sent to the Philippines, where most of them were killed. Mishima's parents were ecstatic that he did not have to go to war, but Mishima's mood was harder to read; Mishima's mother overheard him say he wished he could have joined a "Special Attack" (, "tokkō") unit. Around that time, Mishima admired kamikaze pilots and other "special attack" units in letters to friends and private notes.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima was deeply affected by Emperor Hirohito's radio broadcast announcing Japan's surrender on 15 August 1945, and vowed to protect Japanese cultural traditions and help rebuild Japanese culture after the destruction of the war. He wrote in his diary: Only by preserving Japanese irrationality will we be able contribute to world culture 100 years from now.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: On 19 August, four days after Japan's surrender, Mishima's mentor Zenmei Hasuda, who had been drafted and deployed to the Malay peninsula, shot and killed a superior officer for criticizing the Emperor before turning his pistol on himself. Mishima learned of the incident a year later and contributed poetry in Hasuda's honor at a memorial service in November 1946. On 23 October 1945 (Showa 20), Mishima's beloved younger sister Mitsuko died suddenly at the age of 17 from typhoid fever by drinking untreated water. Around that same time he also learned that , a classmate's sister whom he had hoped to marry, was engaged to another man. These tragic incidents in 1945 became a powerful motive force in inspiring Mishima's future literary work.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: At the end of the war, his father Azusa "half-allowed" Mishima to become a novelist. He was worried that his son could actually become a professional novelist, and hoped instead that his son would be a bureaucrat like himself and Mishima's grandfather Sadatarō. He advised his son to enroll in the Faculty of Law instead of the literature department. Attending lectures during the day and writing at night, Mishima graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1947. He obtained a position in the Ministry of the Treasury and seemed set up for a promising career as a government bureaucrat. However, after just one year of employment Mishima had exhausted himself so much that his father agreed to allow him to resign from his post and devote himself to writing full time.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: In 1945, Mishima began the short story and continued to work on it through the end of World War II. After the war, it was praised by whom Mishima respected.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: After Japan's defeat in World War II, the country was occupied by the U.S.-led Allied Powers. At the urging of the occupation authorities, many people who held important posts in various fields were purged from public office. The media and publishing industry were also censored, and were not allowed to engage in forms of expression reminiscent of wartime Japanese nationalism. In addition, literary figures, including many of those who had been close to Mishima before the end of the war, were branded "war criminal literary figures". Some people denounced them and converted to left-wing politics, whom Mishima criticized as "opportunists" in his letters to friends. Some prominent literary figures became leftists, and joined the Communist Party as a reaction against wartime militarism and writing socialist realist literature that might support the cause of socialist revolution. Their influence had increased in the Japanese literary world following the end of the war, which Mishima found difficult to accept. Although Mishima was just 20 years old at this time, he worried that his type of literature, based on the 1930s , had already become obsolete.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima had heard that famed writer Yasunari Kawabata had praised his work before the end of the war. Uncertain of who else to turn to, Mishima took the manuscripts for and with him, visited Kawabata in Kamakura, and asked for his advice and assistance in January 1946. Kawabata was impressed, and in June 1946, following Kawabata's recommendation, "The Cigarette" was published in the new literary magazine , followed by "The Middle Ages" in December 1946. "The Middle Ages" is set in Japan's historical Muromachi Period and explores the motif of "shudō" (衆道, man-boy love) against a backdrop of the death of the ninth Ashikaga shogun in battle at the age of 25, and his father 's resultant sadness. The story features the fictional character Kikuwaka, a beautiful teenage boy who was beloved by both Yoshihisa and Yoshimasa, who fails in an attempt to follow Yoshihisa in death by committing suicide. Thereafter, Kikuwaka devotes himself to spiritualism in an attempt to heal Yoshimasa's sadness by allowing Yoshihisa's ghost to possess his body, and eventually dies in a double-suicide with a "miko" (, shrine maiden) who falls in love with him. Mishima wrote the story in an elegant style drawing upon medieval Japanese literature and the "Ryōjin Hishō", a collection of medieval "imayō" songs. This elevated writing style and the homosexual motif suggest the germ of Mishima's later aesthetics. Later in 1948 Kawabata, who praised this work, published an autobiographical work describing his experience of falling in love for the first time with a boy two years his junior.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: In 1946, Mishima began his first novel, , a story about two young members of the aristocracy drawn towards suicide. It was published in 1948, and placed Mishima in the ranks of the Second Generation of Postwar Writers. The following year, he published , a semi-autobiographical account of a young homosexual man who hides behind a mask to fit into society. The novel was extremely successful and made Mishima a celebrity at the age of 24. Around 1949, Mishima also published a literary essay about Kawabata, for whom he had always held a deep appreciation, in .


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima enjoyed international travel. In 1952, he took a world tour and published his travelogue as . He visited Greece during his travels, a place which had fascinated him since childhood. His visit to Greece became the basis for his 1954 novel , which drew inspiration from the Greek legend of Daphnis and Chloe." The Sound of Waves", set on the small island of "Kami-shima" where a traditional Japanese lifestyle continued to be practiced, depicts a pure, simple love between a fisherman and a . Although the novel became a best-seller, leftists criticized it for "glorifying old-fashioned Japanese values", and some people began calling Mishima a "fascist". Looking back on these attacks in later years, Mishima wrote, "The ancient community ethics portrayed in this novel were attacked by progressives at the time, but no matter how much the Japanese people changed, these ancient ethics lurk in the bottom of their hearts. We have gradually seen this proven to be the case."


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima made use of contemporary events in many of his works. , published in 1956, is a fictionalization of the burning down of the Kinkaku-ji Buddhist temple in Kyoto in 1950 by a mentally disturbed monk.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: In 1959, Mishima published the artistically ambitious novel . The novel tells the interconnected stories of four young men who represented four different facets of Mishima's personality. His athletic side appears as a boxer, his artistic side as a painter, his narcissistic, performative side as an actor, and his secretive, nihilistic side as a businessman who goes through the motions of living a normal life while practicing "absolute contempt for reality". According to Mishima, he was attempting to describe the time around 1955 in the novel, when Japan was entering into its era of high economic growth and the phrase "The postwar is over" was prevalent. Mishima explained, ""Kyōko no Ie" is, so to speak, my research into the nihilism within me." Although the novel was well received by a small number of critics from the same generation as Mishima and sold 150,000 copies in a month, it was widely panned in broader literary circles, and was rapidly branded as Mishima's first "failed work". It was Mishima's first major setback as an author, and the book's disastrous reception came as a harsh psychological blow.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Many of Mishima's most famous and highly regarded works were written prior to 1960. However, until that year he had not written works that were seen as especially political. In the summer of 1960, Mishima became interested in the massive Anpo protests against an attempt by U.S.-backed Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi to revise the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security Between the United States and Japan (known as "Anpo" in Japanese) in order to cement the U.S.–Japan military alliance into place. Although he did not directly participate in the protests, he often went out in the streets to observe the protestors in action and kept extensive newspaper clipping covering the protests. In June 1960, at the climax of the protest movement, Mishima wrote a commentary in the "Mainichi Shinbun" newspaper, entitled "A Political Opinion". In the critical essay, he argued that leftist groups such as the Zengakuren student federation, the Socialist Party, and the Communist Party were falsely wrapping themselves in the banner of "defending democracy" and using the protest movement to further their own ends. Mishima warned against the dangers of the Japanese people following ideologues who told lies with honeyed words. Although Mishima criticized Kishi as a "nihilist" who had subordinated himself to the United States, Mishima concluded that he would rather vote for a strong-willed realist "with neither dreams nor despair" than a mendacious but eloquent ideologue.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Shortly after the Anpo Protests ended, Mishima began writing one of his most famous short stories, , glorifying the actions of a young right-wing ultranationalist Japanese army officer who commits suicide after a failed revolt against the government during the February 26 Incident. The following year, he published the first two parts of his three-part play , which celebrates the actions of the 26 February revolutionaries.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima's newfound interest in contemporary politics shaped his novel , also published in 1960, which so closely followed the events surrounding politician Hachirō Arita's campaign to become governor of Tokyo that Mishima was sued for invasion of privacy. The next year, Mishima published , a parody of the classical Noh play "Motomezuka", written in the 14th-century playwright Kiyotsugu Kan'ami. In 1962, Mishima produced his most artistically avant-garde work , which at times comes close to science fiction. Although the novel received mixed reviews from the literary world, prominent critic singled it out for praise as part of a new breed of novels that was overthrowing longstanding literary conventions in the tumultuous aftermath of the Anpo Protests. Alongside Kōbō Abe's , published that same year, Okuno considered "A Beautiful Star" an "epoch-making work" which broke free of literary taboos and preexisting notions of what literature should be in order to explore the author's personal creativity.""


title: Yukio Mishima

text: In 1965, Mishima wrote the play that explores the complex figure of the Marquis de Sade, traditionally upheld as an exemplar of vice, through a series of debates between six female characters, including the Marquis' wife, the Madame de Sade. At the end of the play, Mishima offers his own interpretation of what he considered to be one of the central mysteries of the de Sade story—the Madame de Sade's unstinting support for her husband while he was in prison and her sudden decision to renounce him upon his release. Mishima's play was inspired in part by his friend Tatsuhiko Shibusawa's 1960 Japanese translation of the Marquis de Sade's novel "Juliette" and a 1964 biography Shibusawa wrote of de Sade. Shibusawa's sexually explicit translation became the focus of a sensational obscenity trial remembered in Japan as the "Sade Case" (サド裁判, Sado saiban), which was ongoing as Mishima wrote the play. In 1994, "Madame de Sade" was evaluated as the "greatest drama in the history of postwar theater" by Japanese theater criticism magazine "".


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima was considered for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963, 1964, and 1965, and was a favorite of many foreign publications. However, in 1968 his early mentor Kawabata won the Nobel Prize and Mishima realized that the chances of it being given to another Japanese author in the near future were slim. In a work published in 1970, Mishima wrote that the writers he paid most attention to in modern western literature were Georges Bataille, Pierre Klossowski, and Witold Gombrowicz.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima was also an actor, and starred in Yasuzo Masumura's 1960 film, , for which he also sang the theme song (lyrics by himself; music by Shichirō Fukazawa). He performed in films like , and .


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima was featured as the photo model in photographer Eikoh Hosoe's book , as well as in Tamotsu Yatō's photobooks and . American author Donald Richie gave an eyewitness account of seeing Mishima, dressed in a loincloth and armed with a sword, posing in the snow for one of Tamotsu Yatō's photoshoots.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: In the men's magazine "Heibon Punch", to which Mishima had contributed various essays and criticisms, he won first place in the "Mr. Dandy" reader popularity poll in 1967 with 19,590 votes, beating second place Toshiro Mifune by 720 votes. In the next reader popularity poll, "Mr. International", Mishima ranked second behind French President Charles de Gaulle. At that time in the late 1960s, Mishima was the first celebrity to be described as a "superstar" ("sūpāsutā") by the Japanese media.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: In 1955, Mishima took up weight training to overcome an inferiority complex about his weak constitution, and his strictly observed workout regimen of three sessions per week was not disrupted for the final 15 years of his life. In his 1968 essay , Mishima deplored the emphasis given by intellectuals to the mind over the body. He later became very skilled (5th Dan) at kendo (traditional Japanese swordsmanship), and became 2nd Dan in battōjutsu, and 1st Dan in karate. In 1956, he tried boxing for a short period of time. In the same year, he developed an interest in UFOs and became a member of the . In 1954, he fell in love with , who became the model for main characters in and . Mishima hoped to marry her, but they broke up in 1957.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: After briefly considering marriage with , who later married Crown Prince Akihito and became Empress Michiko, Mishima married , the daughter of Japanese-style painter , on 1 June 1958. The couple had two children: a daughter named (born 2 June 1959) and a son named (born 2 May 1962). Noriko eventually married the diplomat .


title: Yukio Mishima

text: While working on his novel , Mishima visited gay bars in Japan. Mishima's sexual orientation was an issue that bothered his wife, and she always denied his homosexuality after his death. In 1998, the writer published an account of his relationship with Mishima in 1951, including fifteen letters (not love letters) from the famed novelist. Mishima's children successfully sued Fukushima and the publisher for copyright violation over the use of Mishima's letters. Publisher "Bungeishunjū" had argued that the contents of the letters were "practical correspondence" rather than copyrighted works. However, the ruling for the plaintiffs declared, "In addition to clerical content, these letters describe the Mishima's own feelings, his aspirations, and his views on life, in different words from those in his literary works."


title: Yukio Mishima

text: In February 1961, Mishima became embroiled in the aftermath of the . In 1960, the author had published the satirical short story in the mainstream magazine "Chūō Kōron". It contained a dream sequence (in which the Emperor and Empress are beheaded by a guillotine) that led to outrage from right-wing ultra-nationalist groups, and numerous death threats against Fukazawa, any writers believed to have been associated with him, and "Chūō Kōron" magazine itself. On 1 February 1961, , a seventeen-year-old rightist, broke into the home of , the president of "Chūō Kōron", killed his maid with a knife and severely wounded his wife. In the aftermath, Fukazawa went into hiding, and dozens of writers and literary critics, including Mishima, were provided with round-the-clock police protection for several months; Mishima was included because a rumor that Mishima had personally recommended "The Tale of an Elegant Dream" for publication became widespread, and even though he repeatedly denied the claim, he received hundreds of death threats. In later years, Mishima harshly criticized Komori, arguing that those who harm women and children are neither patriots nor traditional right-wingers, and that an assassination attempt should be a one-on-one confrontation with the victim at the risk of the assassin's life. Mishima also argued that it was the custom of traditional Japanese patriots to immediately commit suicide after committing an assassination.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: In 1963, the occurred within the theatrical troupe , to which Mishima belonged. He wrote a play titled , but star actress and other Communist Party-affiliated actors refused to perform because the protagonist held anti-communist views and mentioned criticism about a conspiracy of world communism in his lines. As a result of this ideological conflict, Mishima quit "Bungakuza" and later formed the troupe with playwrights and actors who had quit Bungakuza along with him, including , , and . When "Neo Littérature Théâtre" experienced a schism in 1968, Mishima formed another troupe, the , and worked with Matsuura and Nakamura again.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: During the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, Mishima interviewed various athletes every day and wrote articles as a newspaper correspondent. He had eagerly anticipated the long-awaited return of the Olympics to Japan after the 1940 Tokyo Olympics were cancelled due to Japan's war in China. Mishima expressed his excitement in his report on the opening ceremonies: "It can be said that ever since Lafcadio Hearn called the Japanese "the Greeks of the Orient," the Olympics were destined to be hosted by Japan someday."


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima hated Ryokichi Minobe, who was a communist and the governor of Tokyo beginning in 1967. Influential persons in the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), including Takeo Fukuda and Kiichi Aichi, had been Mishima's superiors during his time at the Ministry of the Treasury, and Prime Minister Eisaku Satō came to know Mishima because his wife, Hiroko, was a fan of Mishima's work. Based on these connections LDP officials solicited Mishima to run for the LDP as governor of Tokyo against Minobe, but Mishima had no intention of becoming a politician.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima was fond of manga and gekiga, especially the drawing style of , a mangaka best known for his samurai gekiga; the slapstick, absurdist comedy in Fujio Akatsuka's , and the imaginativeness of Shigeru Mizuki's . Mishima especially loved reading the boxing manga in "Weekly Shōnen Magazine" every week. "Ultraman" and "Godzilla" were his favorite kaiju fantasies, and he once compared himself to "Godzilla's egg" in 1955. On the other hand, he disliked story manga with humanist or cosmopolitan themes, such as Osamu Tezuka's .


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima was a fan of science fiction, contending that "science fiction will be the first literature to completely overcome modern humanism". He praised Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End" in particular. While acknowledging "inexpressible unpleasant and uncomfortable feelings after reading it," he declared, "I'm not afraid to call it a masterpiece."


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima traveled to Shimoda on the Izu Peninsula with his wife and children every summer from 1964 onwards. In Shimoda, Mishima often enjoyed eating local seafood with his friend Henry Scott-Stokes. Mishima never showed any hostility towards the US in front of foreign friends like Scott-Stokes, until Mishima heard that the name of the inn where Scott-Stokes was staying was Kurofune (), at which point his voice suddenly became low and he said in a sullen manner, "Why? Why do you stay at a place with such a name?". Mishima liked ordinary American people after the war, and he and his wife had even visited Disneyland as newlyweds. However, he clearly retained a strong sense of hostility toward the "black ships" of Commodore Matthew C. Perry, who forcibly opened Japan up to unequal international relations at the end of the Edo period, and had destroyed the peace of Edo, where vivid chōnin culture was flourishing.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima's nationalism grew towards the end of his life. In 1966, he published his short story , in which he denounced Emperor Hirohito for renouncing his own divinity after World War II. He argued that the soldiers who had died in the and the had died for their "living god" Emperor, and that Hirohito's renunciation of his own divinity meant that all those deaths had been in vain. Mishima said that His Imperial Majesty had become a human when he should be a God.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: In February 1967, Mishima joined fellow authors Yasunari Kawabata, Kōbō Abe, and Jun Ishikawa in issuing a statement condemning China's Cultural Revolution for suppressing academic and artistic freedom. However, only one Japanese newspaper carried the full text of their statement.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: In September 1967 Mishima and his wife visited India at the invitation of the Indian government. He traveled widely and met with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and President Zakir Hussain. He left extremely impressed by Indian culture, and what he felt was the Indian people's determination to resist Westernization and protect traditional ways. Mishima feared that his fellow Japanese were too enamored of modernization and western-style materialism to protect traditional Japanese culture. While in New Delhi, he spoke at length with an unnamed colonel in the Indian Army who had experienced skirmishes with Chinese troops on the Sino-Indian border. The colonel warned Mishima of the strength and fighting spirit of the Chinese troops. Mishima later spoke of his sense of danger regarding what he perceived to be a lack of concern in Japan about the need to bolster Japan's national defense against the threat from Communist China. On his way home from India, Mishima also stopped in Thailand and Laos; his experiences in the three nations became the basis for portions of his novel , the third in his tetralogy .


title: Yukio Mishima

text: In 1968, Mishima wrote a play titled , in which he depicted the historical figures of Adolf Hitler, Gustav Krupp, Gregor Strasser, and Ernst Röhm as mouthpieces to express his own views on fascism and beauty. Mishima explained that after writing the all-female play "Madame de Sade," he wanted to write a counterpart play with an all-male cast. Mishima wrote of "My Friend Hitler," "You may read this tragedy as an allegory of the relationship between Ōkubo Toshimichi and Saigō Takamori" (two heroes of Japan's Meiji Restoration who initially worked together but later had a falling out).


title: Yukio Mishima

text: That same year, he wrote , a humorous story about a man who, after failing to commit suicide, advertises his life for sale. In a review of the English translation, novelist Ian Thomson called it a "pulp noir" and a "sexy, camp delight," but also noted that, "beneath the hard-boiled dialogue and the gangster high jinks is a familiar indictment of consumerist Japan and a romantic yearning for the past."


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima was hated by leftists who said Hirohito should have abdicated to take responsibility for the loss of life in the war. They also hated him for his outspoken commitment to bushido, the code of the samurai in , his support for the abolition of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, and for his contention in his critique that preached the importance of the Emperor in Japanese cultures. Mishima regarded the postwar era of Japan, where no poetic culture and supreme artist was born, as an era of fake prosperity, and stated in "The Defense of Culture": In the postwar prosperity called Shōwa Genroku, where there are no Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Ihara Saikaku, Matsuo Bashō, only infestation of flashy manners and customs in there. Passion is dried up, strong realism dispels the ground, and the deepening of poetry is neglected. That is, there are no Chikamatsu, Saikaku, or Basho now. In other critical essays, Mishima argued that the national spirit which cultivated in Japan's long history is the key to national defense, and he had apprehensions about the insidious "indirect aggression" of the Chinese Communist Party, North Korea, and the Soviet Union. In critical essays in 1969, Mishima explained Japan's difficult and delicate position and peculiarities between China, the Soviet Union, and the United States. To put it simply, support for the Security Treaty means agreeing with the United States, and to oppose it means agreeing with the Soviet Union or the Chinese Communist Party, so after all, it's only just a matter of which foreign country to rely on, and therein the question of "what is Japan" is completely lacking. If you ask the Japanese, "Hey you, do you choose America, Soviet Union, or Chinese Communist Party?", if he is a true Japanese, he will withhold his attitude. In regards to those who strongly opposed the US military base in Okinawa and the Security Treaty: They may appear to be nationalists and right-wingers in the foreign common sense, but in Japan, most of them are in fact left-wingers and communists.Throughout this period, Mishima continued to work on his magnum opus, "The Sea of Fertility" tetralogy of novels, which began appearing in a monthly serialized format in September 1965. The four completed novels were "Spring Snow" (1969), "Runaway Horses" (1969), "The Temple of Dawn" (1970), and "The Decay of the Angel" (published posthumously in 1971). Mishima aimed for a very long novel with a completely different "raison d'être" from Western chronicle novels of the 19th and 20th centuries; rather than telling the story of a single individual or family, Mishima boldly set his goal as interpreting the entire human world. In "The Decay of the Angel", four stories convey the transmigration of the human soul as the main character goes through a series of reincarnations. Mishima hoped to express in literary terms something akin to pantheism. Novelist Paul Theroux blurbed the first edition of the English translation of "The Sea of Fertility" as "the most complete vision we have of Japan in the twentieth century" and critic Charles Solomon wrote in 1990 that "the four novels remain one of the outstanding works of 20th-Century literature and a summary of the author's life and work".


title: Yukio Mishima

text: In August 1966, Mishima visited Ōmiwa Shrine in Nara Prefecture, thought to be one of the oldest Shintō shrines in Japan, as well as the hometown of his mentor Zenmei Hasuda and the areas associated with the , an uprising against the Meiji government by samurai in 1876. This trip would become the inspiration for portions of , the second novel in the "Sea of Fertility" tetralogy. While in Kumamoto, Mishima purchased a Japanese sword for 100,000 yen. Mishima envisioned the reincarnation of Kiyoaki, the protagonist of the first novel "Spring Snow", as a man named Isao who put his life on the line to bring about a restoration of direct rule by the Emperor against the backdrop of the in 1932.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: From 12 April to 27 May 1967, Mishima underwent basic training with the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF). Mishima had originally lobbied to train with the GSDF for six months, but was met with resistance from the Defense Agency. Mishima's training period was finalized to 46 days, which required using some of his connections. His participation in GSDF training was kept secret, both because the Defense Agency did not want to give the impression that anyone was receiving special treatment, and because Mishima wanted to experience "real" military life. As such, Mishima trained under his birth name, Kimitake Hiraoka, and most of his fellow soldiers did not recognize him.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: From June 1967, Mishima became a leading figure in a plan to create a 10,000-man as a civilian complement to Japan's Self Defense Forces. He began leading groups of right-wing college students to undergo basic training with the GDSF in the hope of training 100 officers to lead the National Guard.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Like many other right-wingers, Mishima was especially alarmed by the riots and revolutionary actions undertaken by radical "New Left" university students, who took over dozens of college campuses in Japan in 1968 and 1969. On 26 February 1968, the 32nd anniversary of the February 26 Incident, he and several other right-wingers met at the editorial offices of the recently founded right-wing magazine , where they pricked their little fingers and signed a blood oath promising to die if necessary to prevent a left-wing revolution from occurring in Japan. Mishima showed his sincerity by signing his birth name, Kimitake Hiraoka, in his own blood.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: When Mishima found that his plan for a large-scale Japan National Guard with broad public and private support failed to catch on, he formed the on 5 October 1968, a private militia composed primarily of right-wing college students who swore to protect the Emperor of Japan. The activities of the Tatenokai primarily focused on martial training and physical fitness, including traditional kendo sword-fighting and long-distance running. Mishima personally oversaw this training himself. Initial membership was around 50, and was drawn primarily from students from Waseda University and individuals affiliated with "Controversy Journal". The number of Tatenokai members later increased to 100. Some of the members had graduated from university and were employed, while some were already working adults when they enlisted.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: On 25 November 1970, Mishima and four members of the Tatenokai—, , , and —used a pretext to visit the commandant of , a military base in central Tokyo and the headquarters of the Eastern Command of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. Inside, they barricaded the office and tied the commandant to his chair. Mishima wore a white "hachimaki" headband with a red "hinomaru" circle in the center bearing the kanji for , which was a reference to the last words of Kusunoki Masasue, the younger brother of the 14th century imperial loyalist samurai , as the two brothers died fighting to defend the Emperor. With a prepared manifesto and a banner listing their demands, Mishima stepped out onto the balcony to address the soldiers gathered below. His speech was intended to inspire a coup d'état to restore the power of the emperor. He succeeded only in irritating the soldiers, and was heckled, with jeers and the noise of helicopters drowning out some parts of his speech. In his speech Mishima rebuked the JSDF for their passive acceptance of a constitution that "denies (their) own existence" and shouted to rouse them, "Where has the spirit of the samurai gone?" In his final written that Morita and Ogawa scattered copies of from the balcony, Mishima expressed his dissatisfaction with the half-baked nature of the JSDF: It is self-evident that the United States would not be pleased with a true Japanese volunteer army protecting the land of Japan.After he finished reading his prepared speech in a few minutes' time, Mishima cried out three times. He then retreated into the commandant's office and apologized to the commandant, saying, "We did it to return the JSDF to the Emperor. I had no choice but to do this."Mishima then committed seppuku, a form of ritual suicide by disembowelment associated with the samurai. Morita had been assigned to serve as Mishima's second ("kaishakunin"), cutting off his head with a sword at the end of the ritual to spare him unnecessary pain. However, Morita proved unable to complete his task, and after three failed attempts to sever Mishima's head, Koga had to step in and complete the task.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: According to the testimony of the surviving coup members, originally all four Tatenokai members had planned to commit seppuku along with Mishima. However Mishima attempted to dissuade them and three of the members acquiesced to his wishes. Only Morita persisted, saying, "I can't let Mr. Mishima die alone." But Mishima knew that Morita had a girlfriend and still hoped he might live. Just before his seppuku, Mishima tried one more time to dissuade him, saying "Morita, you must live, not die." Nevertheless, after Mishima's seppuku, Morita knelt and stabbed himself in the abdomen and Koga acted as "kaishakunin" again.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Another traditional element of the suicide ritual was the composition of so-called death poems by the Tatenokai members before their entry into the headquarters. Having been enlisted in the Ground Self-Defense Force for about four years, Mishima and other Tatenokai members, alongside several officials, were secretly researching coup plans for a constitutional amendment. They thought there was a chance when was dispatched to subjugate the Zenkyoto revolt. However, Zenkyoto was suppressed easily by the Riot Police Unit in October 1969. These officials gave up the coup of constitutional amendment, and Mishima was disappointed in them and the actual circumstances in Japan after World War II. Officer , Mishima's training teacher, explained further: The officers had a trusty connection with the U.S.A.F. (includes U.S.F.J), and with the approval of the U.S. army side, they were supposed to carry out a security dispatch toward the Armed Forces of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. However, due to the policy change (reversal) of U.S. by Henry Kissinger who prepared for visiting China in secret (changing relations between U.S. and China), it became a situation where the Japanese military was not allowed legally.Mishima planned his suicide meticulously for at least a year and no one outside the group of hand-picked Tatenokai members knew what he was planning. His biographer, translator John Nathan, suggests that the coup attempt was only a pretext for the ritual suicide of which Mishima had long dreamed. His friend Scott-Stokes, another biographer, says that "Mishima is the most important person in postwar Japan", and described the shackles of the constitution of Japan: Mishima cautioned against the lack of reality in the basic political controversy in Japan and the particularity of Japan's democratic principles.Scott-Stokes noted a meeting with Mishima in his diary entry for 3 September 1970, at which Mishima, with a dark expression on his face, said: Japan lost its spiritual tradition, and materialism infested instead. Japan is under the curse of a Green Snake now. The Green Snake bites on Japanese chest. There is no way to escape this curse. Scott-Stokes told Takao Tokuoka in 1990 that he took the Green Snake to mean the U.S. dollar. Between 1968 and 1970, Mishima also said words about Japan's future. Mishima's senior friend and father heard from Mishima: Japan will be hit hard. One day, the United States suddenly contacts China over Japan's head, Japan will only be able to look up from the bottom of the valley and eavesdrop on the conversation slightly. Our friend Taiwan will say that "it will no longer be able to count on Japan", and Taiwan will go somewhere. Japan may become an orphan in the Orient, and may eventually fall into the product of slave dealers.Mishima's corpse was returned home the day after his death. His father Azusa had been afraid to see his son whose appearance had completely changed. However, when he looked into the casket fearfully, Mishima's head and body had been sutured neatly, and his dead face, to which makeup had been beautifully applied, looked as if he were alive due to the police officers. They said: "We applied funeral makeup carefully with special feelings, because it is the body of Dr. Mishima, whom we have always respected secretly." Mishima's body was dressed in the Tatenokai uniform, and the "guntō" was firmly clasped at the chest according to the will that Mishima entrusted to his friend . Azusa put the manuscript papers and fountain pen that his son cherished in the casket together. Mishima had made sure his affairs were in order and left money for the legal defence of the three surviving Tatenokai members—, , and Hiroyasu Koga. After the incident, there were exaggerated media commentaries that "it was a fear of the revival of militarism". The commandant who was made a hostage said in the trial, I didn't feel hate towards the defendants at that time. Thinking about the country of Japan, thinking about the JSDF, the pure hearts of thinking about our country that did that kind of thing, I want to buy it as an individual.The day of the Mishima Incident (25 November) was the date when Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) became regent and the Emperor Shōwa made the Humanity Declaration at the age of 45. Researchers believe that Mishima chose that day to revive the "God" by dying as a scapegoat, at the same age as when the Emperor became a human. There are also views that the day corresponds to the date of execution (after the adoption of the Gregorian calendar) of , whom Mishima respected, or that Mishima had set his period of for reincarnation because the 49th day after his death was his birthday, 14 January. On his birthday, Mishima's remains were buried in the grave of the Hiraoka Family at Tama Cemetery. In addition, 25 November is the day he began writing "Confessions of a Mask" (, "Kamen no kokuhaku"), and this work was announced as "Techniques of Life Recovery", "Suicide inside out". Mishima also wrote down in notes for this work, This book is a will for leave in the Realm of Death where I used to live. If you take a movie of a suicide jumped, and rotate the film in reverse, the suicide person jumps up from the valley bottom to the top of the cliff at a furious speed and he revives. Writer Takashi Inoue believes he wrote "Confessions of a Mask" to live in postwar Japan, and to get away from his "Realm of Death"; by dying on the same date that he began to write "Confessions of a Mask", Mishima intended to dismantle all of his postwar creative activities and return to the "Realm of Death" where he used to live.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Much speculation has surrounded Mishima's suicide. At the time of his death he had just completed the final book in his "Sea of Fertility" tetralogy. He was recognized as one of the most important post-war stylists of the Japanese language. Mishima wrote 34 novels, about 50 plays, about 25 books of short stories, at least 35 books of essays, one libretto, and one film.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima's grave is located at the Tama Cemetery in Fuchū, Tokyo. The Mishima Prize was established in 1988 to honor his life and works. On 3 July 1999, was opened in Yamanakako, Yamanashi Prefecture.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: The Mishima Incident helped inspire the formation of New Right (, "shin uyoku") groups in Japan, such as the , founded by , who was Mishima's follower. Compared to older groups such as Bin Akao's Greater Japan Patriotic Party that took a pro-American, anti-communist stance, New Right groups such as the Issuikai tended to emphasize ethnic nationalism and anti-Americanism.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: A memorial service deathday for Mishima, called , is held every year in Japan on 25 November by the and former members of the . Apart from this, a memorial service is held every year by former Tatenokai members, which began in 1975, the year after Masahiro Ogawa, Masayoshi Koga, and Hiroyasu Koga were released on parole.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: A variety of cenotaphs and memorial stones have been erected in honor of Mishima's memory in various places around Japan. For example, stones have been erected at Hachiman Shrine in Kakogawa City, Hyogo Prefecture, where his grandfather's permanent domicile was; in front of the 2nd company corps at JGSDF Camp Takigahara; and in one of Mishima's acquaintance's home garden. There is also a "Monument of Honor Yukio Mishima & Masakatsu Morita" in front of the Rissho University Shonan High school in Shimane Prefecture.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: The Mishima Yukio Shrine was built in the suburb of Fujinomiya, Shizuoka Prefecture, on 9 January 1983.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: A 1985 biographical film by Paul Schrader titled "" depicts his life and work; however, it has never been given a theatrical presentation in Japan. A 2012 Japanese film titled "" also looks at Mishima's last day. The 1983 gay pornographic film "Beautiful Mystery" satirised the homosexual undertones of Mishima's career.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: In 2014, Mishima was one of the inaugural honourees in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighbourhood noting LGBTQ people who have "made significant contributions in their fields".


title: Yukio Mishima

text: David Bowie painted a large expressionist portrait of Mishima, which he hung at his Berlin residence.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: In addition to contemporary-style plays such as "Madame de Sade", Mishima wrote for two of the three genres of classical Japanese theatre: Noh and Kabuki (as a proud Tokyoite, he would not even attend the Bunraku puppet theatre, always associated with Osaka and the provinces).


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Though Mishima took themes, titles and characters from the Noh canon, his twists and modern settings, such as hospitals and ballrooms, startled audiences accustomed to the long-settled originals.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Donald Keene translated (Tuttle, 1981; ). Most others remain untranslated and so lack an "official" English title; in such cases it is therefore preferable to use the rōmaji title.


title: Yukio Mishima

text: Mishima starred in multiple films. "Patriotism" was written and funded by himself, and he directed it in close cooperation with Masaki Domoto. Mishima also wrote a detailed account of the whole process, in which the particulars regarding costume, shooting expenses and the film's reception are delved into. "Patriotism" won the second prize at the Tours International Short Film Festival in January 1966.


title: Graphic design

text: Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art whose activity consists in projecting visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdisciplinary branch of design and of the fine arts. Its practice involves creativity, innovation and lateral thinking using manual or digital tools, where it is usual to use text and graphics to communicate visually.


title: Graphic design

text: The role of the graphic designer in the communication process is that of encoder or interpreter of the message. They work on the interpretation, ordering, and presentation of visual messages. Usually, graphic design uses the aesthetics of typography and the compositional arrangement of the text, ornamentation, and imagery to convey ideas, feelings, and attitudes beyond what language alone expresses. The design work can be based on a customer's demand, a demand that ends up being established linguistically, either orally or in writing, that is, that graphic design transforms a linguistic message into a graphic manifestation.


title: Graphic design

text: Graphic design has, as a field of application, different areas of knowledge focused on any visual communication system. For example, it can be applied in advertising strategies, or it can also be applied in the aviation world or space exploration. In this sense, in some countries graphic design is related as only associated with the production of sketches and drawings, this is incorrect, since visual communication is a small part of a huge range of types and classes where it can be applied.


title: Graphic design

text: With origins in antiquity and the Middle Ages, graphic design as applied art was initially linked to the boom of rise of printing in Europe in the 15th century and the growth of consumer culture in the industrial revolution. From there it emerged as a distinct profession in the West, closely associated with advertising in the 19th century and its evolution allowed its consolidation in the 20th century. Given the rapid and massive growth in information exchange today, the demand for experienced designers is greater than ever, particularly because of the development of new technologies and the need to pay attention to human factors beyond the competence of the engineers who develop them.


title: Graphic design

text: William Addison Dwiggins is often credited with first using the term "graphic design" in a 1922 article, although it appears in a 4 July 1908 issue (volume 9, number 27) of "Organized Labor", a publication of the Labor Unions of San Francisco, in an article about technical education for printers:


title: Graphic design

text: … The admittedly high standard of intelligence which prevails among printers is an assurance that with the elemental principles of design at their finger ends many of them will grow in knowledge and develop into specialists in graphic design and decorating. …


title: Graphic design

text: A decade later, the 1917–1918 course catalog of the California School of Arts & Crafts advertised a course titled Graphic Design and Lettering, which replaced one called Advanced Design and Lettering. Both classes were taught by Frederick Meyer.


title: Graphic design

text: In both its lengthy history and in the relatively recent explosion of visual communication in the 20th and 21st centuries, the distinction between advertising, art, graphic design and fine art has disappeared. They share many elements, theories, principles, practices, languages and sometimes the same benefactor or client. In advertising, the ultimate objective is the sale of goods and services. In graphic design, "the essence is to give order to information, form to ideas, expression, and feeling to artifacts that document the human experience."


title: Graphic design

text: In China, during the Tang Dynasty (618–907) wood blocks were cut to print on textiles and later to reproduce Buddhist texts. A Buddhist scripture printed in 868 is the earliest known printed book. Beginning in the 11th century in China, longer scrolls and books were produced using movable type printing, making books widely available during the Song dynasty (960–1279).


title: Graphic design

text: In the mid-15th century in Mainz, Germany, Johannes Gutenberg developed a way to reproduce printed pages at a faster pace using movable type made with a new metal alloy that created a revolution in the dissemination of information.


title: Graphic design

text: In 1849, Henry Cole became one of the major forces in design education in Great Britain, informing the government of the importance of design in his "Journal of Design and Manufactures". He organized the Great Exhibition as a celebration of modern industrial technology and Victorian design.


title: Graphic design

text: From 1891 to 1896, William Morris' Kelmscott Press was a leader in graphic design associated with the Arts and Crafts movement, creating hand-made books in medieval and Renaissance era style, in addition to wallpaper and textile designs. Morris' work, along with the rest of the Private Press movement, directly influenced Art Nouveau.


title: Graphic design

text: Will H. Bradley became one of the notable graphic designers in the late nineteenth-century due to creating art pieces in various Art Nouveau styles. Bradley created a number of designs as promotions for a literary magazine titled "The Chap-Book".


title: Graphic design

text: In 1917, Frederick H. Meyer, director and instructor at the California School of Arts and Crafts, taught a class entitled "Graphic Design and Lettering". Raffe's "Graphic Design", published in 1927, was the first book to use "Graphic Design" in its title.


title: Graphic design

text: The signage in the London Underground is a classic design example of the modern era. Although he lacked artistic training, Frank Pick led the Underground Group design and publicity movement. The first Underground station signs were introduced in 1908 with a design of a solid red disk with a blue bar in the center and the name of the station. The station name was in white sans-serif letters. It was in 1916 when Pick used the expertise of Edward Johnston to design a new typeface for the Underground. Johnston redesigned the Underground sign and logo to include his typeface on the blue bar in the center of a red circle.


title: Graphic design

text: In the 1920s, Soviet constructivism applied 'intellectual production' in different spheres of production. The movement saw individualistic art as useless in revolutionary Russia and thus moved towards creating objects for utilitarian purposes. They designed buildings, theater sets, posters, fabrics, clothing, furniture, logos, menus, etc.


title: Graphic design

text: Jan Tschichold codified the principles of modern typography in his 1928 book, "New Typography". He later repudiated the philosophy he espoused in this book as fascistic, but it remained influential. Tschichold, Bauhaus typographers such as Herbert Bayer and László Moholy-Nagy and El Lissitzky greatly influenced graphic design. They pioneered production techniques and stylistic devices used throughout the twentieth century. The following years saw graphic design in the modern style gain widespread acceptance and application.


title: Graphic design

text: The professional graphic design industry grew in parallel with consumerism. This raised concerns and criticisms, notably from within the graphic design community with the First Things First manifesto. First launched by Ken Garland in 1964, it was re-published as the First Things First 2000 manifesto in 1999 in the magazine "Emigre" 51 stating "We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication – a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design."


title: Graphic design

text: Graphic design can have many applications, from road signs to technical schematics and reference manuals. It is often used in branding products and elements of company identity such as logos, colors, packaging and text.


title: Graphic design

text: From scientific journals to news reporting, the presentation of opinion and facts is often improved with graphics and thoughtful compositions of visual information – known as information design. With the advent of the web, information designers with experience in interactive tools are increasingly used to illustrate the background to news stories. Information design can include data visualization, which involves using programs to interpret and form data into a visually compelling presentation, and can be tied in with information graphics.


title: Graphic design

text: A graphic design project may involve the creative presentation of existing text, ornament, and images.


title: Graphic design

text: The "process school" is concerned with communication; it highlights the channels and media through which messages are transmitted and by which senders and receivers encode and decode these messages. The semiotic school treats a message as a construction of signs which through interaction with receivers, produces meaning; communication as an agent.


title: Graphic design

text: Typography includes type design, modifying type glyphs and arranging type. Type glyphs (characters) are created and modified using illustration techniques. Type arrangement is the selection of typefaces, point size, tracking (the space between all characters used), kerning (the space between two specific characters) and leading (line spacing).


title: Graphic design

text: Typography is performed by typesetters, compositors, typographers, graphic artists, art directors, and clerical workers. Until the digital age, typography was a specialized occupation. Certain fonts communicate or resemble stereotypical notions. For example, 1942 Report is a font which types text akin to a typewriter or a vintage report.


title: Graphic design

text: Page layout deals with the arrangement of elements (content) on a page, such as image placement, text layout and style. Page design has always been a consideration in printed material and more recently extended to displays such as web pages. Elements typically consist of type (text), images (pictures), and (with print media) occasionally place-holder graphics such as a dieline for elements that are not printed with ink such as die/laser cutting, foil stamping or blind embossing.


title: Graphic design

text: In the mid-1980s desktop publishing and graphic art software applications introduced computer image manipulation and creation capabilities that had previously been manually executed. Computers enabled designers to instantly see the effects of layout or typographic changes, and to simulate the effects of traditional media. Traditional tools such as pencils can be useful even when computers are used for finalization; a designer or art director may sketch numerous concepts as part of the creative process. Styluses can be used with tablet computers to capture hand drawings digitally.


title: Graphic design

text: Designers disagree whether computers enhance the creative process. Some designers argue that computers allow them to explore multiple ideas quickly and in more detail than can be achieved by hand-rendering or paste-up. While other designers find the limitless choices from digital design can lead to paralysis or endless iterations with no clear outcome.


title: Graphic design

text: Most designers use a hybrid process that combines traditional and computer-based technologies. First, hand-rendered layouts are used to get approval to execute an idea, then the polished visual product is produced on a computer.


title: Graphic design

text: Graphic designers are expected to be proficient in software programs for image-making, typography and layout. Nearly all of the popular and "industry standard" software programs used by graphic designers since the early 1990s are products of Adobe Systems Incorporated. Adobe Photoshop (a raster-based program for photo editing) and Adobe Illustrator (a vector-based program for drawing) are often used in the final stage. Some designers across the world use CorelDraw. CorelDraw is a vector graphics editor software developed and marketed by Corel Corporation. Open source software used to edit the vector graphis is Inkscape. Primary file format used in Inkscape is Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). You can import or export the file in any other vector format. Designers often use pre-designed raster images and vector graphics in their work from online design databases. Raster images may be edited in Adobe Photoshop, vector logos and illustrations in Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw, and the final product assembled in one of the major page layout programs, such as Adobe InDesign, Serif PagePlus and QuarkXPress.


title: Graphic design

text: Powerful open-source programs (which are free) are also used by both professionals and casual users for graphic design, these include Inkscape (for vector graphics), GIMP (for photo-editing and image manipulation), Krita (for painting), and Scribus (for page layout).


title: Graphic design

text: Since the advent of personal computers, many graphic designers have become involved in interface design, in an environment commonly referred to as a Graphical user interface (GUI). This has included web design and software design when end user-interactivity is a design consideration of the layout or interface. Combining visual communication skills with an understanding of user interaction and online branding, graphic designers often work with software developers and web developers to create the look and feel of a web site or software application. An important aspect of interface design is icon design.


title: Graphic design

text: User experience design (UX) is the study, analysis, and development of creating products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. This involves the creation of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability, and function.


title: Graphic design

text: Experiential graphic design is the application of communication skills to the built environment. This area of graphic design requires practitioners to understand physical installations that have to be manufactured and withstand the same environmental conditions as buildings. As such, it is a cross-disciplinary collaborative process involving designers, fabricators, city planners, architects, manufacturers and construction teams.


title: Graphic design

text: Experiential graphic designers try to solve problems that people encounter while interacting with buildings and space (also called environmental graphic design). Examples of practice areas for environmental graphic designers are wayfinding, placemaking, branded environments, exhibitions and museum displays, public installations and digital environments.


title: Graphic design

text: Graphic design career paths cover all parts of the creative spectrum and often overlap. Workers perform specialized tasks, such as design services, publishing, advertising and public relations. As of 2017, median pay was $48,700 per year. The main job titles within the industry are often country specific. They can include graphic designer, art director, creative director, animator and entry level production artist. Depending on the industry served, the responsibilities may have different titles such as "DTP associate" or "Graphic Artist". The responsibilities may involve specialized skills such as illustration, photography, animation, visual effects or interactive design.