title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: "Sopra il ritratto di una bella donna scolpito nel monumento sepolcrale della medesima" ("On the portrait of a beautiful woman sculpted in her sepulchral monument") is basically an extension of the above.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: The poet, drawing his inspiration from a funerary sculpture, evokes the image of a beautiful woman and compares her breathtaking beauty to the heart-rendingly sad image that she has become; one that is no more than mud, dust and skeleton. As well as being centred on the transience of beauty and of human things, the poem points to the specular antinomy between human ideals and natural truth. Leopardi does not deny—if anything, he emphasizes—the beauty of the human species in general, and by the end of the poem extends his point to all possible forms of beauty, intellectual as well as aesthetic. However, this universal beauty remains unattainable to a human nature that is nothing but "polvere e ombra" ("dust and shadow"), and that may touch—but never possess—the ideals that it perceives, remaining rooted to the natural world in which it was born, as well as to its demands.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In 1836, while staying near Torre del Greco in a villa on the hillside of Vesuvius, Leopardi wrote his moral testament as a poet, "La Ginestra" ("The Broom"), also known as "Il Fiore del Deserto" ("The flower of the desert"). The poem consists of 317 verses and uses free strophes of hendecasyllables and septuplets as its meter. It is the longest of all the "Canti" and has an unusual beginning. In fact, among all the Leopardian canti only this one begins with a scene of desolation, to be followed by an alternation between the enchantment of the panorama and of the starry night sky. On the literary level, it is the maximum realization of that anti-idyllic ""new poetic"" with which Leopardi had already experimented from the 1830s.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Leopardi, after having described the nothingness of the world and of man with respect to the universe; after having lamented the precariousness of the human condition threatened by the capriciousness of nature, not as exceptional evils but as continuous and constant; and after having satirized the arrogance and the credulity of man, who propounds ideas of progress and hopes, even while knowing he is mortal, to render himself eternal, concludes with the observation that reciprocal solidarity is the only defence against the common enemy which is nature (see "Operette morali", "Dialogo di Plotino e Porfirio").


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In this canto, in which Leopardi expresses his vast thought about mankind, history, and nature, autobiographical elements can be found: both direct (the places described are those who surround the poet in his late years) and indirect, in the image of a man who is poor, weak, but courageous enough to be aware of his real condition. The humble plant of ginestra, living in desolate places without surrendering to the force of Nature, resembles this ideal man, who rejects any illusions about himself and does not invoke from Heaven (or Nature) an impossible help.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Vesuvius, the great mountain which brings destruction, dominates the entire poem. The only attainable truth is death, toward which man must inexorably advance, abandoning every illusion and becoming conscious of his own miserable condition. Such awareness will placate the mutual hatreds.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: It is a vast poem, symphonically constructed with brilliant alternations of tone, from the grandiose and tragic painting of the volcano threatening destruction and of extensions of infertile lava, to the sharp ideological argumentation, to the cosmic sparks which project the nothingness of the earth and of man in the immensity of the universe, to the vision of the infinite passage of centuries of human history on which the immutable threat of nature has always weighed, to the gentle notes dedicated to the "flower in the desert", in which are compressed complex symbolic meanings: pity toward the sufferings of man and the dignity which should be characteristic of man when confronted with the invincible force of a nature which crushes him.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: An essential change occurs with the "Ginestra", which closes the poetic career of Leopardi along with "Il tramonto della Luna", which takes up the old themes of the fall of youthful illusions. The poem reiterates and reaffirms the sharp anti-optimistic and anti-religious polemic, but in a new and democratic register. Here, Leopardi no longer denies the possibility of "civic" progress: he seeks to construct an idea of progress founded precisely on his pessimism.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: "Il tramonto della Luna" ("The Waning of the Moon"), the last canto, was composed by Leopardi in Naples shortly before his death. The moon wanes, leaving nature in total darkness, just as youth passes away leaving life dark and derelict. The poet seems to presage the imminence of his own death.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In 1845, Ranieri published the definitive edition of the "Canti" according to the will of the author.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In the "Palinodia al marchese Gino Capponi" ("Palinody to Marquis Gino Capponi"), Leopardi fakes a retraction ("Palinodia") of his pessimism. The work, written in 1835, was intended to be satirical (he first believes that man is unhappy and miserable, but now progress has made him reconsider his position), but the thought of the inevitable destruction to which nature condemns everything leads him to express bitter conclusions in spite of himself. Regarding this work, the Marquis Capponi wrote in a letter to Leopardi that he shared, at least in part, many of his ideas and thanked him for the "noble verses". However, in a letter addressed to Viesseux, he expressed himself in rather different terms: "Now it behoves that I write [back] to that damned hunchback who has put it into his head to mock me."


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: The satiric tone adopted by Leopardi through much of the "Operette morali" is also evinced in some of his late poetic texts, such as the "Palinodia" and "I nuovi credenti". But the clearest demonstration of his mastery of this art form is probably the "Paralipomeni della Batracomiomachia", a brief comic-heroic poem of eight stanzas of eight lines each. Leopardi wrote it between 1831 and 1835, beginning it during his last stay in Florence and finishing it in Naples. The publication took place, posthumously, in Paris in 1842, provoking a universal reaction of outrage and condemnation, as much for the cutting and anti-heroic representation of the events of the Risorgimento as for the numerous materialistic philosophical digressions.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: The term "Paralipòmeni" is Greek for "things left undone or unsaid". "Batracomiomachìa" means "war between the frogs and the mice". Batracomiomachia was also the title of a pseudo-Homeric poem which was actually written in the 4th or 5th century BC and translated by Leopardi between 1815 and 1826. The title therefore alludes to an integration of the original work, which is taken up again where it left off and the narrative progresses. The subject is a fable regarding the conflict between the mice that inhabit the nation of Topaia and the invading crabs. But behind the plot, there is hidden a robust sarcastic and polemical motivation. The animals and their doings have an allegorical value. In the crabs, portrayed unsympathetically and with monstrous characteristics, are to be recognized the Austrians; in the mice, sometimes generous but mostly ingenuous and cowardly, the liberal Italians. The poem represents the historical events that took place between 1815 and 1821: the climate of the Restoration desired by the Holy Alliance and the fruitless attempts at insurrection of 1820–21. Even the revolutionary movements of 1831 are included by Leopardi, who was able to follow them by way of the moderate Tuscan circles which he frequented and who perhaps provided him with the inspiration for the work.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: The adoption of the poetic genre required the abandonment of the lyric style and the adoption of a narrative pace marked by a constant critical-satirical tension toward the ideological and philosophical beliefs of contemporary culture: Christian spiritualism, faith in progress, and anthropocentrism. Even the slogans of the political struggle of the liberals are derided, both in their expression of expectation of foreign intervention and in their faith in the model of a constitutional monarchy. In this fashion, the "Paralipomeni" represent another part of Leopardi's polemical war with the present, and above all an exceptional sally into the territory of historical/political commentary, generally not confronted by Leopardi in a direct form. Of the Italian Risorgimento, he delineates the fundamental limits here with an extraordinary tempestivity: the tendency to compromise with ancient interests and constituted powers, the vanity, the opportunism, the ideological ingenuousness, the lack of an opportune pragmatic awareness. The style generally renounces the expressive concentration of the lyric texts and extends itself in a wide and relaxed discursive pace, with alterations between adventurous moments and ferociously caricatural and polemical points, of description and philosophical digressions.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In March 1837, shortly before his death, Leopardi announced that he would gather into one volume some "thoughts" ("pensieri") on man and society. Such a collection was supposed to be part of a French edition of the complete works of Leopardi. A few months later (on 14 June) the poet died, leaving the work incomplete and the fragments were published by his friend Ranieri, who also provided the title.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: The bulk of the contents of "Pensieri" are derived from the "Zibaldone". The tone is sharply argumentative with respect to humanity, which Leopardi judges to be malevolent and it almost seems as if the poet wants to take his final revenge on the world.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: The "Zibaldone di pensieri" (see also Commonplace book#Zibaldone) is a collection of personal impressions, aphorisms, philosophical observations, philological analyses, literary criticism and various types of notes which was published posthumously in seven volumes in 1898 with the original title of "Pensieri di varia filosofia e di bella letteratura" ("Miscellaneous Thoughts on Philosophy and Literature").


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: The publication took place thanks to a special governmental commission presided over by Giosuè Carducci in occasion of the centennial anniversary of the poet's birth. It was only in 1937, after the republication of the original text enriched with notes and indices by the literary critic Francesco Flora, that the work definitively took on the name by which it is known today.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In the "Zibaldone", Leopardi compares the innocent and happy state of nature with the condition of modern man, corrupted by an excessively developed faculty of reason which, rejecting the necessary illusions of myth and religion in favor of a dark reality of annihilation and emptiness, can only generate unhappiness. The "Zibaldone" contains the poetic and existential itinerary of Leopardi himself; it is a miscellanea of philosophical annotations, schemes, entire compositions, moral reflections, judgements, small idylls, erudite discussions and impressions. Leopardi, even while remaining outside of the circles of philosophical debate of his century, was able to elaborate an extremely innovative and provocative vision of the world. It is not much of a stretch to define Leopardi as the father of what would eventually come to be called nihilism.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Schopenhauer, in mentioning the great minds of all ages who opposed optimism and expressed their knowledge of the world's misery, wrote:


title: Area code 773

text: Originally, all of Chicago and its suburbs were in area code 312. Then, in 1989, area code 708 was created for the suburbs, leaving the city itself in area code 312.


title: Area code 773

text: By the mid-1990s, Chicago's continued growth and the proliferation of cell phones and pagers made it apparent that the city needed a new area code. It was decided to split off all of the city outside the downtown area as 773. The new area code went into effect on October 12, 1996. Permissive dialing of 312 continued across Chicago until January 11, 1997. On August 10, 2007, the Illinois Commerce Commission announced that area code 872 would overlay area codes 312 and 773; it went into service on November 7, 2009.


title: Area code 773

text: The Illinois side of the Chicago area–312/773/872, 708, 847/224, 630/331 and portions of 815/779–is one of the largest local calling areas in the United States; with few exceptions, no long-distance charges are applied from one portion of the metro area to another.


title: Sonic Gems Collection

text: Sonic Gems Collection is a 2005 compilation of Sega video games, primarily those in the "Sonic the Hedgehog" series. The emulated games span multiple genres and consoles—from the Sega Genesis to the Sega Saturn—and retain the features and errors of their initial releases with minimal edits. Player progress is rewarded with demos of other "Sonic" games, videos, and promotional artwork spanning the history of the "Sonic" franchise. While its 2002 predecessor, "Sonic Mega Collection", comprised the more popular "Sonic" games, "Gems Collection" focuses on more obscure games, such as "Sonic CD" and "Sonic the Fighters". Other non-"Sonic" games are included, but some, such as the "Streets of Rage" trilogy, are omitted in the Western localization.


title: Sonic Gems Collection

text: Developer Sonic Team conceived the compilation to introduce younger players to older "Sonic" games. One game they wished to include, "SegaSonic the Hedgehog", was excluded due to emulation difficulties. Sega released "Gems Collection" for the GameCube and PlayStation 2 in August 2005. Reviews were mixed or average; critics were divided over whether the package would satisfy players. They preferred "Sonic CD" and "Vectorman", but found "Sonic the Fighters" and "Sonic R" mediocre, and disliked the Game Gear games. Some were disappointed by the absence of the "Streets of Rage" games in the International version and other "Sonic" games like "Knuckles' Chaotix" and "Sonic the Hedgehog Pocket Adventure".


title: Sonic Gems Collection

text: "Sonic Gems Collection" is a compilation of obscure video games published by Sega for various consoles, such as the Sega CD, Sega Saturn, and Game Gear. It primarily focuses on "Sonic the Hedgehog" games, such as "Sonic CD" (1993), "Sonic the Fighters" (1996), and "Sonic R" (1997). It also includes six of the twelve "Sonic" games released for the Game Gear, with the other six having been included in the previous compilation release, "Sonic Mega Collection Plus". These games encompass various genres, such as platforming, fighting, pinball, and puzzle. Additionally, players can unlock several Sega Genesis games unrelated to "Sonic", including the two "Vectorman" games (1995 and 1996). Four games, "Bonanza Bros." (1990) and the "Streets of Rage" trilogy (1991–1994), only appear in the Japanese version and are not included in any international releases. Each game is mostly identical to its initial release, but some were changed; for example, "Sonic R" runs at a higher frame rate. Players can view scans of the original instruction manuals for each game, along with hints and cheat codes.


title: Sonic Gems Collection

text: The compilation features an extensive museum section in which players can view content—such as promotional artwork, videos, screenshots, and remixed music—unlocked after obtaining achievements. Time-limited demos of the Genesis "Sonic" games and the other six Game Gear games can also be unlocked. In each demo, the player begins in the respective game's final level and can play until the time limit is met.


title: Sonic Gems Collection

text: "Sonic Gems Collection" was developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega for the GameCube and PlayStation 2. According to Sonic Team director Yojiro Ogawa, the compilation (and its 2002 predecessor "Sonic Mega Collection") was conceived to introduce young players to older games in the "Sonic" franchise. While "Sonic Mega Collection" focused on the original Genesis games to showcase what made the franchise a success, "Sonic Gems Collection" focused on games Sega considered rare and obscure. Although Sonic Team was responsible for "Sonic Gems Collection"s creation, they had limited involvement in the development of the games included on the compilation; for example, Sega AM2 made "Sonic the Fighters", and "Sonic R" was primarily developed by Traveller's Tales. Most of the games included are emulated, but "Sonic the Fighters" is a port.


title: Sonic Gems Collection

text: At the beginning of "Gems Collection"s development, Sonic Team made a list of the most wanted games for the compilation. The team considered the games they felt were high quality in graphics, gameplay, and overall nature. "Sonic CD" and "Vectorman" were considered for inclusion in "Mega Collection", but were deferred to "Gems Collection". Producer Yuji Naka said storage constraints prevented "Sonic CD" from inclusion in "Mega Collection". AM3's "SegaSonic the Hedgehog" (1993) was omitted due to problems emulating its trackball controls. AM2 assisted in porting "Sonic the Fighters", marking its first release on a home console. The Windows versions of "Sonic CD" and "Sonic R" were used in "Sonic Gems Collection". Both games received visual upgrades: "Sonic CD"s opening sequence is presented in fullscreen and "Sonic R" has higher resolution textures.


title: Sonic Gems Collection

text: During development, Sonic Team hoped that each region's version of "Sonic Gems Collection" would be identical in content. However, the "Streets of Rage" games and "Bonanza Bros." had to be omitted from the North American localization, due to fears of a "Teen" rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB). The PAL release was impacted as well. The team also wished to include both the Japanese and North American "Sonic CD" soundtracks, but storage and licensing problems resulted in Japan only receiving its respective soundtrack and all other regions using the North American version. "Sonic Gems Collection" was announced in May 2005, and was playable at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). It was released on August 11, 2005 in Japan, August 16, 2005 in North America, and September 30, 2005 in Europe. The PlayStation 2 version was not released in North America. Those who ordered the game through Sega's online store Sega Direct received an exclusive "Sonic"-themed yo-yo.


title: Sonic Gems Collection

text: According to Metacritic, a video game review aggregator, "Sonic Gems Collection" received "mixed or average" reviews. By November 22, 2005, the compilation sold 200,000 copies outside Japan. In 2006, the GameCube version was branded a Player's Choice game, indicating it sold a million units.


title: Sonic Gems Collection

text: Reviewers considered "Sonic CD" the compilation's strongest feature, so much that "Nintendo Power"s Steve T. and "Electronic Gaming Monthly" ("EGM") said it was worth buying for "Sonic CD" alone. Juan Castro ("IGN") found that "Sonic CD" "still holds its own against modern platformers", praising its unique, time-travel oriented gameplay, level design, visuals, and sound. Castro called it one of the best games in the "Sonic" series and was no less fun than its original release. Ryan Davis ("GameSpot") found "Sonic CD" superior to the other games in the compilation, and Tom Bramwell ("Eurogamer") declared "rejoice for "Sonic CD"... Just don't rejoice for anything else, because it's mostly rubbish". Many reviewers were also pleased by the inclusion of the "Vectorman" games. Castro called it "the pinnacle of 16-bit gaming", praising its melding of boss fights, action, and platforming and saying it aged well. Bramwell and Phil Theobald ("GameSpy") agreed.


title: Sonic Gems Collection

text: Critics generally felt "Sonic R" and "Sonic the Fighters" were mediocre. Castro, Theobald, and Davis compared "Sonic the Fighters" unfavorably to the "Virtua Fighter" games, with Davis calling it dated and simplistic. "Jeuxvideo.com"s Superpanda, in a negative review of the compilation, argued that "Sonic the Fighters" was too short and had control issues, but that "Sonic R" was on par with "Sonic CD" in terms of quality, praising the game's graphics and claiming that it was the compilation's most beautiful game. Castro was less positive: he found its ideas clever and considered it an interesting departure from normal racing games, but thought the ideas were poorly implemented and the controls were awkward. However, he still thought the game was enjoyable and that its soundtrack was unique. Theobald voiced a similar opinion, considering it "a concept that works better in theory than in practice". Conversely, Davis said "Sonic R"s "laughably bad soundtrack" was its "only redeeming quality". Bramwell considered it too odd and short to be worth the player's time.


title: Sonic Gems Collection

text: The six Game Gear "Sonic" games were criticized for their uneven quality and poor emulation. Theobald liked that the games were available from the start, but was puzzled why the other six games were left out. He also considered the selection random ("why "Sonic 2", but no "Sonic"?"). Castro was intrigued that they were all on one disc, but thought their screen displays were bad and said "you'd probably be better off dusting your old [Game Gear] and finding those old games" rather than playing them on "Sonic Gems Collection". Of the Game Gear games, Davis preferred "Sonic 2", "Sonic Triple Trouble", and "Tails Skypatrol", but disliked the rest. He heavily criticized their emulation quality, noting their frequent frame rate drops. Bramwell joked they were present on the disc for "educational" purposes. He lambasted their resolutions and encouraged readers to ignore them entirely.


title: Sonic Gems Collection

text: Some reviewers found the compilation incomplete. Davis and Theobald both criticized the exclusion of the "Streets of Rage" games in the North American version. Davis stated he preferred them over "Vectorman" and Theobald said Sega should have just let the compilation get a Teen rating from the ESRB. Theobald was also disappointed that the compilation lacked "SegaSonic the Hedgehog", "Knuckles' Chaotix", and the other Game Gear games. Jeremy Parish ("1UP.com") said even combining "Sonic Mega Collection" and "Sonic Gems Collection" would provide players an incomplete "Sonic" collection, lambasting the exclusion of "Knuckles' Chaotix" and "Sonic the Hedgehog Pocket Adventure" and feeling the Master System "Sonic" games should have been included, not the Game Gear ones. Superpanda said he would have preferred "Knuckles' Chaotix" over the Game Gear games and also considered its exclusion of the Saturn version of "Sonic 3D Blast" a disappointment.


title: Sonic Gems Collection

text: Reviewers were generally divided over whether "Sonic Gems Collection" would leave players satisfied. "EGM" summed it up as a "woefully uneven mix", but one "Sonic" fans should check out if they wanted "Sonic CD". Castro said the compilation was "decent" and worth its price tag, but was not as solid as "Sonic Mega Collection". Theobald found it weak and that only "Sonic CD" and "Vectorman" would appeal to casual gamers. Bramwell was sarcastic: "if this sort of thing matters to you, if you still can't bear to unplug your Dreamcast, and you do own "Virtua Fighter 4" and all the others and think they're brilliant, this is for you". When "Famitsu" named the best games of 2005, it ranked "Sonic Gems Collection" among the bottom of the PlayStation 2 and GameCube releases.


title: Shah Nawaz Bhutto

text: Shah Nawaz Bhutto was born on 8 March, 1888 in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh in Ratodero Taleka in the Larkana District of the Sind region, within the Bombay Presidency of British India (now in Sindh, Pakistan) into a Sindhi Muslim family of the Bhutto clan of Bhati Rajputs to father Ghulam Murtaza Bhutto. He was also the youngest brother of Nawab Nabi Bux Khan Bhutto.


title: Shah Nawaz Bhutto

text: The Bhutto family owned 250,000 acres of land spread across Sindh, in Larkana, Sukkur and Jacobabad. Shah Nawaz got his early education and later at St. Patrick's High School in Karachi, and then at Sindh Madressa, also in Karachi.


title: Shah Nawaz Bhutto

text: Bhutto entered the Legislative Council of the Bombay Province, of which Sindh was a part, in 1921 at the age of 33. He continued till 1936. During this time, he received the honours of CIE followed by knighthood. In 1934, he became a minister in the Bombay government.


title: Shah Nawaz Bhutto

text: Bhutto attended the Round Table Conference in 1931 as a leader of Sindhi Muslims demanding separation of Sind from the Bombay province. This was eventually granted in the Government of India Act 1935, with Sind becoming a separate province on 1 April 1936. Bhutto was appointed as a chief advisor to the Governor of Sind.


title: Shah Nawaz Bhutto

text: In preparation for the provincial elections in 1937, the Sind United Party was formed by Haji Abdullah Haroon and Bhutto joined it as the vice-chairman of the party. It was modeled after the Punjab Unionist Party and claimed to represent all Sindhis irrespective of religion. Nevertheless, Bhutto brought leading "pirs" (Sufi saints) to influence the voters 'religiously' to cast their votes in his favour. The Sind United Party emerged as the largest party in the elections, winning 21 out of 60 seats. However, both Harron and Bhutto failed to get elected. The Larkana seat, which Bhutto had contested, was won by Sheikh Abdul Majid Sindhi. The Governor invited Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah, the leader of the Sind Muslim Party and a political rival of Bhutto in Sind, to form a government. Large scale defections took place in the Assembly, Bhutto resigned from the party and Haroon eventually merged his party into the All-India Muslim League. Bhutto returned to Bombay to become the Chairman of the Bombay-Sind Public Service Commission.


title: Shah Nawaz Bhutto

text: Early in 1947, Bhutto joined the council of ministers of Muhammad Mahabat Khan III the Nawab of Junagadh in the modern-day province of Gujarat, becoming its Dewan, or prime minister in May. At the time of the independence of India in 1947, the princely states were asked by the British to decide whether to join the newly independent states of India or Pakistan or to remain autonomous and outside them. The Constitutional Advisor to the Nawab, Nabi Baksh, indicated to Lord Mountbatten that he was recommending that the State should join India. However, the Nawab did not make a decision. Early in 1947, Bhutto was invited to join the Council of Ministers of the Nawab. In May, when the Dewan Abdul Khadir Muhammad Hussain went abroad for medical treatment, Bhutto was appointed as the Dewan. On 15 August 1947, the State announced that it had acceded to Pakistan. On 13 September 1947, the Government of Pakistan accepted the accession.


title: Shah Nawaz Bhutto

text: However, the Hindu citizens of the State revolted, leading to several events and also a plebiscite, resulting in the integration of Junagadh into India. Nawab Muhammad Mahabat Khan III of Junagadh (erstwhile Babi Nawab dynasty of Junagadh) fled to Sindh, Pakistan. As Dewan of Junagarh; it was Shah Nawaz Bhutto who wrote and signed the letter addressed to Indian Government to come and take over the administration of the Junagadh state.


title: Shah Nawaz Bhutto

text: Shah Nawaz Bhutto moved to Larkana District, where his land-ownership made him among the wealthiest and most influential people in Sindh. Bhutto was a good friend of Governor General (later President) Iskander Mirza, who was a regular guest for the annual hunt in Larkana, staying at the Bhutto family home called "Al-Murtaza". In the winter of 1955-1956, Mirza brought General Ayub Khan with him to Larkana for the hunt.


title: Shah Nawaz Bhutto

text: Bhutto was a first cousin once removed of Wahid Baksh Bhutto, who in 1924 was made a sardar and in 1926 was elected to the Imperial Legislative Assembly from Sindh, a constituency of the Bombay Presidency, becoming the first member of the Bhutto family to be elected to public office. Shah Nawaz Bhutto was married to Khursheed Begum (born as Lakhi Bai), who was of a modest Hindu family. She converted from Hinduism to Islam before her marriage. Her brothers remained Hindu and eventually migrated to India. Their children included their first son, Sikandar, who died from pneumonia at the age of seven in 1914, their second child, Imdad Ali, died of cirrhosis at the age of thirty-nine in 1953. Their third son, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was born in his parents residence near Larkana, and later became the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Their fourth child, a daughter, Mumtaz Sahiba Bhutto, was married to Brigadier Muhammad Mustafa Khan Bahadur of the Sidi clan.


title: Shah Nawaz Bhutto

text: The British imperial government awarded Bhutto the title of "Khan Sahib", subsequently raising it to "Khan Bahadur". Bhutto was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, Civil Division (OBE) in the 1920 New Year Honours list, with a further appointment as a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) in the 1925 New Year Honours list. In the 1930 New Year Honours, Bhutto was knighted, and was invested with his knighthood on 27 February 1930 at Viceroy's House in New Delhi by the Viceroy of India, the Lord Irwin.


title: BrowserStack

text: BrowserStack is an Indian cloud web and mobile testing platform that provides developers with the ability to test their websites and mobile applications across on-demand browsers, operating systems and real mobile devices.


title: BrowserStack

text: The subscription-based service was founded by Ritesh Arora and Nakul Aggarwal in 2011 in Mumbai, India, and was originally started as a service to let developers test their websites on Internet Explorer. BrowserStack has over 25,000 paid customers and 2 million registered developers in more than 135 countries.


title: BrowserStack

text: In October 2015, BrowserStack was recognised as a Bootstrap Champ in "The Economic Times" Startup Awards.


title: BrowserStack

text: BrowserStack has offices in San Francisco, Mumbai and Dublin. Privately held, the company raised $50 million Series A from Accel in 2018.


title: BrowserStack

text: In July 2020, BrowserStack announced that they had acquired Percy, a San Francisco-based visual testing software provider.


title: BrowserStack

text: In June 2021, BrowserStack raised $200 million in a series B led by BOND and Insight Partners at a valuation of $4 billion.


title: BrowserStack

text: In December 2021, BrowserStack announced acquisition of open source, end-to-end testing automation framework, Nightwatch.js.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: The was the air arm of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). The organization was responsible for the operation of naval aircraft and the conduct of aerial warfare in the Pacific War.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: The Japanese military acquired their first aircraft in 1910 and followed the development of air combat during World War I with great interest. They initially procured European aircraft but quickly built their own and launched themselves onto an ambitious aircraft carrier building program. They launched the world's first purpose-built aircraft carrier, , in 1922. Afterwards they embarked on a conversion program of several excess battlecruisers and battleships into aircraft carriers. The IJN Air Service had the mission of national air defence, deep strike, naval warfare, and so forth. It retained this mission to the end.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: The Japanese pilot training program was very selective and rigorous, producing a high-quality and long-serving pilot corps, who were very successful in the air during the early part of World War II in the Pacific. However, the long duration of the training program, combined with a shortage of gasoline for training, did not allow the IJN to rapidly provide qualified replacements in sufficient numbers. Moreover, Japan, unlike the U.S. or Britain, never altered its program to speed up the training process of its recruits. The resultant decrease in quantity and quality, among other factors, resulted in increasing casualties toward the end of the war.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: Japanese navy aviators, like their army counterparts, preferred maneuverable aircraft, leading to lightly built but extraordinarily agile types, most famously the A6M Zero, which achieved its feats by sacrificing armor and self-sealing fuel tanks. Aircraft with armor and self-sealing fuel tanks, such as the Kawanishi N1K-J would not enter service until late 1944–1945, which was too late to have a meaningful impact. The Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service was equal in function to the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm (FAA).


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: The beginnings of Japanese naval aviation were established in 1912, with the creation of a Commission on Naval Aeronautical Research ("Kaigun Kokūjutsu Kenkyūkai") under the authority of the Technical Department. The commission was charged with the promotion of aviation technology and training for the navy. Initially was focus was in non-rigid airships but it quickly moved on to the development of winged and powered aircraft. That year, the commission decided to purchase foreign winged aircraft and to send junior officers abroad to learn how to fly and maintain them. The navy purchased two seaplanes from the Glenn Curtiss factory in Hammondsport, New York, and two Maurice Farman seaplanes from France. To establish a cadre of naval aviators and technicians, the navy also dispatched three officers to Hammondsport and two to France for training and instruction. After their return to Japan at the end of 1912, two of the newly trained naval aviators made the first flights at Oppama on Yokosuka Bay, one in a Curtiss seaplane, the other in a Maurice Farman.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: In 1912, the Royal Navy had also informally established its own flying branch, the Royal Naval Air Service. The Japanese admirals, whose own Navy had been modeled on the Royal Navy and whom they admired, themselves proposed their own Naval Air Service. The Japanese Navy had also observed technical developments in other countries and saw that the airplane had potential. Within a year, the Imperial Japanese navy had begun the operational use of aircraft. In 1913, the following year, a Navy transport ship, "Wakamiya Maru" was converted into a seaplane carrier capable of carrying two assembled and two disassembled seaplanes. "Wakamiya" also participated in the naval maneuvers off Sasebo that year.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: On 23 August 1914, as a result of its treaty with Great Britain, Japan declared war on Germany. The Japanese, together with a token British force, blockaded then laid siege to the German colony of Kiaochow and its administrative capital Tsingtao on the Shandong peninsula. During the siege, starting from September, four Maurice Farman seaplanes "(two active and two reserve)" on board conducted reconnaissance and aerial bombardments on German positions and ships. The aircraft had crude bombsights and carried six to ten bombs that had been converted from shells, and were released through metal tubes on each side of the cockpit. On 5 September, during the first successful operation, two Farman seaplanes dropped several bombs on the Bismarck battery, the main German fortifications in Tsingtao. The bombs landed harmlessly in the mud, but the aircraft were able to confirm that was not at Tsingtao; this was intelligence of major importance to Allied naval command. On 30 September "Wakamiya" was damaged by a mine and later sent back to Japan for repairs. But the seaplanes, by transferring on to the shore, continued to be used against the German defenders until their surrender on 7 November 1914. "Wakamiya" conducted the world's first naval-launched aerial raids in history and was in effect the first aircraft carrier of the Imperial Japanese Navy. By the end of the siege the aircraft had conducted 50 sorties and dropped 200 bombs, although damage to German defenses was light.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: In 1916, the Commission on Naval Aeronautical Research was disbanded and the funds supporting it were reallocated for the establishment of three naval air units ("hikotai") which would fall under the authority of the Naval Affairs Bureau of the Navy Ministry. The first unit was established at Yokosuka in April 1916, however, the lack of a specific naval air policy in these early years was made apparent by the fact that the Yokosuka Air Group operated with the fleet only once a year when it was transported briefly to whatever training area the IJN was then using for maneuvers. Japanese naval aviation, though, continued to make progress. In 1917, officers at the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal designed and built the first Japanese seaplane, the Ro-Go Ko-gata reconnaissance seaplane, which was much more useful at sea and much safer than the Maurice Farman aircraft that the navy had been using up to that point. The aircraft was eventually mass-produced and became the mainstay of the navy's air arm until the mid-1920s. Japanese factories by the end of the war, in increasing numbers, were beginning to turn out engines and fuselages based on foreign designs. A major expansion in Japanese naval air strength was part of the 1918 naval expansion program which made possible a new air group and a naval air station at Sasebo. In 1918, the IJN secured land around Lake Kasumigaura in Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo. The following year, a naval air station for both land and sea aircraft was established, and subsequently, naval air training was transferred to Kasumigaura, from Yokosuka. After the establishment of a naval air training unit at Kasumigaura, the air station became the principal flight training center for the navy.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: The Japanese navy had closely monitored the progress of aviation of the three Allied naval powers during World War I and concluded that Britain had made the greatest advances in naval aviation. They had also learned a good deal about naval aviation through their contacts within the Royal Navy. In 1920, a representative had also been sent to Britain to observe air operations off the decks of . In 1921, the Japanese government formally requested that the British dispatch a naval air mission, in order to develop and to provide a professional edge to Japanese naval aviation. There were reservations on the part of the Admiralty, about granting the Japanese unrestricted access to British technology. Despite this the British government sent an unofficial civil aviation mission to Japan.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: The Sempill Mission led by Captain William Forbes-Sempill, a former officer in the Royal Air Force experienced in the design and testing of Royal Navy aircraft during the First World War. The mission consisted of 27 members, who were largely personnel with experience in naval aviation and included pilots and engineers from several British aircraft manufacturing firms. The British technical mission left for Japan in September with the objective of helping the Imperial Japanese Navy develop and improve the proficiency of its naval air arm. The British government also hoped it would lead to a lucrative arms deal. The mission arrived at Kasumigaura Naval Air Station the following month, in November 1921, and stayed in Japan for 18 months.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: The Japanese were trained on several British aircraft such as the Gloster Sparrowhawk; as the mission also brought to Kasumigaura well over a hundred aircraft comprising twenty different models, five of which were then currently in service with the Royal Air Force, including the Sparrowhawk. These planes eventually provided the inspiration for the design of a number of Japanese naval aircraft. Technicians became familiar with the newest aerial weapons and equipment - torpedoes, bombs, machine guns, cameras, and communications gear. Naval aviators were trained in various techniques such as torpedo bombing, flight control and carrier landing and take-offs; skills that would later be employed in the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The mission also brought the plans of the most recent British aircraft carriers, such as HMS "Argus" and HMS "Hermes", which influenced the final stages of the development of the carrier "Hōshō". By the time the last members of the mission had returned to Britain, the Japanese had acquired a reasonable grasp of the latest aviation technology and the Sempill mission of 1921–22 marked the true beginning of an effective Japanese naval air force. Japanese naval aviation also, both in technology and in doctrine, continued to be dependent on the British model for most of the 1920s.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: The military in Japan were also aided in their quest to build up their naval forces by Sempill himself, who had become a Japanese spy. Over the next 20 years, the British Peer provided the Japanese with secret information on the latest British aviation technology. His espionage work helped Japan rapidly develop its military aircraft and its technologies before the Second World War.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: Japanese interest in the potential of carrier operations demonstrated by the observations on board led to the inclusion of an aircraft carrier in the eight-eight fleet program of 1918. The 7,470-ton was laid down in December 1919 at Yokohama. "Hōshō" was the second warship after the British to be designed from the keel up as an aircraft carrier and the first one to be completed as from the keel up.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: In the 1920s, the larger percentage of aircraft that were initially acquired and inducted into service were land based seaplanes whose main tasks were reconnaissance and anti-submarine patrols. The Japanese had drawn up plans for the formation of 17 squadrons of these aircraft, but budgetary constraints limited the units to eleven until 1931. Under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty two incomplete capital ships were allowed to be rebuilt as carriers, for the Japanese; and . However, "Amagi" was damaged during the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923 and became a replacement. "Akagi" was completed in 1927 while "Kaga" completed a year later. With these two carriers much of Imperial Japanese Navy's doctrines and operating procedures were established.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: When "Hōshō" was completed, little thought was given to naval aircraft in an offensive role and moreover with only one carrier there was insufficient consideration given to carrier doctrine within the Japanese naval establishment. However, in 1928 the First Carrier Division was formed with three carriers and the study of the role of aircraft carriers in a naval engagement was initiated. Because of the short range of carrier aircraft at the time, many in the naval hierarchy were still very much surface oriented. They viewed carrier aircraft to be employed as support for the main battle fleet and not as offensive weapons. Aircraft were to act as scouts and spotters, layers of smoke screens for naval gunfire, fleet air defense, and later (with the increase in aircraft performance) as a means to attack battleships and other surface targets.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: Naval aviators however, had a different perspective. Believing that a major aerial engagement to clear the space over the opposing fleets would precede the final surface battle, they increasingly considered the enemy's carriers as the main targets of naval air power. Hence, in the early 1930s, the Imperial Japanese Navy adhered to no unified doctrine as to how carriers would be utilized in a fleet action and had no clear vision as to the role of air power in naval warfare. But with the continued increase in the range and power of aircraft, carriers became acknowledged for their ability to strike at targets beyond the range of surface guns and torpedoes. Including gunnery staffs as well as naval aviators, the IJN became convinced that carrier aircraft should be used for a preemptive strike against the enemy's carriers to achieve air superiority in the proximity of the surface battle. Around 1932–33, the IJN began to shift its aerial focus from targeting the enemy's battleships to their aircraft carriers; and by the mid-30s, with the improved performance of bombing aircraft and particularly dive-bombers, the destruction of the enemy's carrier force became the primary focus of Japan's carrier forces. The emerging concept of a mass aerial attack also shifted the emphasis away from the protection of the main battle fleet to attacks on targets over the horizon. Essential to the implementation of such a tactic was the locating of the enemy before the enemy found the Japanese carriers. As a consequence, it was important to the Japanese that naval aircraft be able to ""outrange the enemy"" in the air, just as Japanese surface forces could do by naval gunnery and torpedo attacks. Subsequently, throughout the 1930s, Japanese naval aviation emphasized range in its specifications for new aircraft.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: In addition to developing carrier-based aviation, the IJN maintained many land-based air groups. In the early 1930s, the Japanese created a new category of aircraft termed "rikujo kogeki-ki" (land based attack aircraft) or "Rikko" for short. This was in keeping with the strategy of providing a rapid defense of the home islands against the possible westward advance of an American naval offensive across the Pacific. Land-based aircraft actually provided the bulk of Japanese naval aviation up to the eve of the Pacific War. In this regard, Japan was unique among the three major naval powers during the interwar period and the immediate prewar years with only the two air wings of the US Marine Corps being analogous to Japan's land based naval air units. The creation of these air units had begun at the end of World War I, when plans had been drawn up for 17 of them, however these plans were not fully implemented until 1931. They were to be located at six air stations around the Japanese home islands: Yokosuka, Sasebo, Kasumigaura, Omura, Tateyama, and Kure. These units were composed of various types of aircraft which were mostly seaplanes. In absolute numbers, land-based aircraft provided the largest growth in Japaneses naval air power in the years before the Pacific War. The Circle One naval expansion program which had been formulated in 1927 and put into effect in 1931 called for the creation of 28 new air groups. Although only 14 groups were actually established by 1934, which was a response to American naval expansion under the first Vinson plan, the Circle Two program called for eight additional air groups to be created by the end of 1937. They were to operate out of six new air stations at Ōminato, Saeki, Yokohama, Maizuru, Kanoya, and Kisarazu in the home islands and Chinhae on the southern coast of Korea. Under the pressure of the second Vinson plan, initiated by the United States, the Japanese increased the momentum in building up their land-based air forces. The deadline for completion date of the aviation of the Circle One expansion moved up to 1937 and an all-out effort was also made to complete the aircraft production of the Circle Two program by the end of the same year.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: By the end of 1937, the navy possessed 563 land-based aircraft, in addition to the 332 aircraft aboard its carrier fleet. The navy air service had a total of 895 aircraft and 2,711 aircrew, including pilots and navigators, in thirty-nine air groups. Although, this total 895 aircraft was considerably less than total American naval air strength for the same period, Japan's land based aviation force was substantially larger. The substantial land-based air power worked to Japan's advantage when the nation went to war in 1937 with China.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: By 1927 Japanese naval aviation had grown sufficiently in size and complexity that it was necessary to consolidate the administrative organization of the air service. The various air operations and activities during peacetime, which were divided between the Navy Ministry and the Navy Technical Department, were now merged into a single Naval Aviation Department. In 1932, an independent Naval Air Arsenal was also established to streamline the testing and development of aircraft and weaponry. During their early years, these organizations were under the command of able air enthusiasts, who played a major role in the rapid expansion of Japanese naval aviation during the following decade. The London Naval Treaty of 1930 had imposed new limitations on warship construction, which caused the Navy General Staff to view naval aviation as a way to make up for the shortcomings in the surface fleet.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: In 1931, the air service pushed for and established the remainder of the 17 air squadrons that had been projected in the 1923 expansion plans. These were eventually combined into six air groups ("kokutai") located at six bases around Japan. Furthermore, the Circle naval expansion programs featured an additional 12 air groups. They also included the development of specific aviation technologies and the acceleration of air crew training. The Circle One plan concentrated on developing new aircraft types, including large flying boats and land-based attack aircraft, as well as the building of seaborne units, both floatplanes and carrier aircraft. The Circle Two plan continued the buildup in naval aircraft and authorized the construction of two aircraft carriers.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: In January 1932, clashes between Chinese and Japanese forces occurred in Shanghai. On 29 January, several aircraft from the seaplane tender "Notoro", anchored in the Yangtze river, carried out low-level attacks on Chinese military positions in Zhabei, on artillery positions outside the city and on an armored train at a railway station in the northern part of the city. There were heavy civilian casualties and property losses, partly as a result of crude bombing techniques and mechanisms at the time. The Third Fleet consisting of the First Carrier Division with the carriers "Kaga" and "Hōshō" was also dispatched to the city. "Kaga" arrived off the entrance of the Yangtze River on 1 February, and was joined by "Hōshō" two days later. On board "Hōshō" were ten fighters and nine torpedo bombers, while "Kaga" had 16 fighters and 32 torpedo bombers. Altogether, the Japanese had eighty aircraft that could be deployed over Shanghai, mostly Nakajima A1N2 fighters and Mitsubishi B1M3 torpedo bombers. On 3 February, a number of the aircraft from the two carriers were deployed to Kunda Airfield, where they flew missions in support of Japanese ground forces.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: Aircraft from "Hōshō" participated in the IJN's first aerial combat on 5 February, when three fighters escorting two bombers were engaged by nine Chinese fighters over Zhenru; one Chinese fighter was damaged. On 22 February, while escorting three B1M3 torpedo bombers, three fighters from "Kaga" operating from Kunda Airfield scored the IJN's first aerial victory when they shot down a Boeing 218 fighter, flown by an American volunteer pilot Robert Short. After gaining intelligence that the Chinese were planning to mount a counteroffensive, the Japanese bombers carried out attacks on Chinese airfields at Hangzhou and Suzhou between 23 and 26 February, destroying a number of aircraft on the ground. On 26 February, six A1N2 fighters from "Hōshō", while escorting nine bombers from "Kaga" on a bombing raid on an airfield at Hangzhou, engaged five Chinese aircraft and shot down three of them. The Japanese carriers returned to home waters after a cease-fire had been declared on 3 March. Aircrews of "Kaga" received a special commendation from the commander of the Third Fleet, Vice Admiral Kichisaburō Nomura, for their actions.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: The actions of the Japanese aviators over Shanghai represented the first significant air operations over East Asia and for the IJN it also marked the first combat operations from its aircraft carriers. The attack on Zhabei was also the most destructive aerial attack on an urban area until the Condor Legion's attack on Guernica, five years later. Although perceived as insignificant skirmishes, the resulting aerial campaign led to several conclusions: though the A1N2 fighter proved to be inferior in performance to the Boeing 218, the campaign had demonstrated the above average flying skills of the IJN's pilots and the relative precision of its bombing techniques during clear weather.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: From the onset of hostilities in 1937 until forces were diverted to combat for the Pacific war in 1941, naval aircraft played a key role in military operations on the Chinese mainland. The IJN had two primary responsibilities: the first was to support of amphibious operations on the Chinese coast and the second was the strategic aerial bombardment of Chinese cities. This was unique in naval history, as it was the first time that any naval air service had ever carried out such an effort. The campaign initially began in 1937, taking place largely in the Yangtze River basin with attacks on military installations along the Chinese coast by Japanese carrier aircraft. Naval involvement reached its peak in 1938–39 with the ferocious bombardment of cities deep in the Chinese interior by land-based medium bombers and concluded during 1941 with an attempt by tactical aircraft, both carrier and land-based, to cut communication and transportation routes in southern China. Although, the 1937–41 air offensives failed in its political and psychological aims, it did reduce the flow of strategic materiel to China and for a time, improved the Japanese military situation in the central and southern parts of the country. The China War was of great importance and value to the Japanese naval aviation in demonstrating how aircraft could contribute to the projection of naval power ashore.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: Despite the fierce rivalry between the military branches, in the fall of 1937 General Matsui Iwane, the Army general in command of the theater, admitted the superiority of the Naval Air Services. His combat troops relied on the Navy for air support. Naval bombers such as the Mitsubishi G3M and Mitsubishi G4M were used to bomb Chinese cities. Japanese fighter planes, notably the Mitsubishi Zero, gained tactical air superiority; control of the skies over China belonged to the Japanese. Unlike other naval airforces, the IJNAS was responsible for strategic bombing and operated long ranged bombers.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: The Japanese strategic bombing was mostly done against Chinese big cities, such as Shanghai, Wuhan and Chonging, with around 5,000 raids from February 1938 to August 1943.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: The bombing of Nanjing and Guangzhou, which began on 22 and 23 September 1937, called forth widespread protests culminating in a resolution by the Far Eastern Advisory Committee of the League of Nations. Lord Cranborne, the British Under-Secretary of State For Foreign Affairs, expressed his indignation in his own declaration.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: At the beginning of the Pacific war the Imperial Japanese Navy possessed the most powerful carrier force in the world, through combination of excellent ships, well-designed aircraft, and unsurpassed aviators.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: The Navy Air Service consisted of five naval air fleets. The Japanese had a total of ten aircraft carriers: six fleet carriers, three smaller carriers, and one training carrier. The 11th Air Fleet: contained most of the Navy's land based strike aircraft. One important advantage exercised by the Japanese at the start of the war was their ability to mass carrier air power. In April 1941 the First Air Fleet was created, concentrating the Navy's carriers into a single powerful striking unit. The "Kido Butai" (Mobile Unit/Force) was the First Air Fleet's operational component. At the start of the war, three carrier divisions made up the "Kido Butai". Unlike in the United States Navy where carrier divisions served only in an administrative capacity, the carrier divisions of the "Kido Butai" were operational entities. The two carriers in a division fought together, often exchanging aircraft squadrons and commanders on strikes. The commander of the "Kido Butai" could wield the aircraft of its three divisions as a single entity bringing masses of aircraft crewed by highly trained aviators onto a single target.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: During the first six months of the war Japanese naval air power achieved spectacular success and spearheaded offensive operations against Allied forces. On 7 December 1941, the IJN's "Kido Butai" attacked Pearl Harbor, crippling the U.S Pacific Fleet by destroying over 188 aircraft at the cost of 29 aircraft. On 10 December, Japanese naval land based bombers operating from bases in Indochina, were also responsible for the sinkings of HMS "Prince of Wales" and HMS "Repulse" which was the first time that capital ships were sunk by aerial attack while underway. In April 1942, the Indian Ocean raid drove the Royal Navy from South East Asia. There were also air raids carried out on the Philippines and Darwin in northern Australia.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: In these battles, the Japanese veterans of the Chinese war did well against inexperienced Allied pilots flying obsolete aircraft. However, their advantage did not last. In the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Battle of Midway, and again in the Guadalcanal Campaign, the Japanese lost many veteran pilots. Because the Japanese pilot training program was unable to increase its production rate, those veterans could not be replaced. Meanwhile, the American pilot training program went from strength to strength. The American aircraft industry rapidly increased production rates of new designs that rendered their Japanese opponents obsolescent. Examination of crashed or captured Japanese aircraft revealed that they achieved their superior range and maneuverability by doing without cockpit armor and self-sealing fuel tanks. Flight tests showed that they lost maneuverability at high speeds. American pilots were trained to take advantage of these weaknesses. The outdated Japanese aircraft and poorly trained pilots suffered great losses in any air combat for the rest of the war, particularly in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. In the Battle of Leyte Gulf a few months later, the First Air Fleet was used only as a decoy force to draw the main American fleet away from Leyte. The remnants of Japanese naval aviation were then limited to land-based operations, increasingly characterized by kamikaze attacks on American invasion fleets.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: From 16 December 1941 to 20 March 1945 IJN aviation casualties killed were 14,242 aircrew and 1,579 officers.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: The elite of the pilots were the carrier-based air groups ("Kōkūtai", later called "koku sentai") whose size (from a handful to 80 or 90 aircraft) was dependent on both the mission and type of aircraft carrier that they were on. Fleet carriers had three types of aircraft: fighters, level/torpedo planes, and dive bombers. Smaller carriers tended to have only two types, fighters and level/torpedo planes. The carrier-based "Kōkūtai" numbered over 1,500 pilots and just as many aircraft at the beginning of the Pacific War. The IJN also maintained a shore-based system of naval air fleets called "Koku Kantai" and area air fleets called "homen kantai" containing mostly twin-engine bombers and seaplanes. The senior command was the Eleventh Naval Air Fleet, commanded by Vice Admiral Nishizō Tsukahara. Land based aircraft provided the bulk of Japan's naval aviation up to the eve of World War II.


title: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service

text: Each naval air fleet contained one or more naval air flotillas (commanded by Rear Admirals) each with two or more naval air groups. Each naval air group consisted of a base unit and 12 to 36 aircraft, plus four to 12 aircraft in reserve. Each naval air group consisted of several of nine, 12 or 16 aircraft; this was the main IJN Air Service combat unit and was equivalent to a in the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service. Each "hikotai" was commanded by a Lieutenant (j.g.), Warrant Officer, or experienced Chief Petty Officer, while most pilots were non-commissioned officers. There were usually four sections in each "hikotai", each with three or four aircraft; by mid-1944 it was common for a "shotai" to have four aircraft. There were over 90 naval air groups at the start of the Pacific War, each assigned either a name or a number. The named naval air groups were usually linked to a particular navy air command or a navy base. They were usually numbered when they left Japan.


title: Assassin's Creed Mirage

text: Assassin's Creed Mirage is an upcoming action-adventure game developed by Ubisoft Bordeaux and published by Ubisoft. It will be the thirteenth major installment in the "Assassin's Creed" series and the successor to 2020's "Assassin's Creed Valhalla". Principally set in 9th-century Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age, the game will follow Basim Ibn Ishaq (a character first introduced in "Valhalla") and his transition from street thief to fully-fledged member of the Assassin Brotherhood, who fight for peace and liberty, against the Templar Order, who desire peace through control. The game has been described as a return to the series' roots, with a bigger focus on linear storytelling and stealth gameplay than recent installments, which primarily focused on role-playing elements.


title: Assassin's Creed Mirage

text: "Mirage" is set to be released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, and Amazon Luna in 2023.


title: Assassin's Creed Mirage

text: "Mirage" is an action-adventure stealth game intended to be reminiscent of older "Assassin's Creed" titles, being more linear and story-focused and reducing the number of role-playing elements present in recent installments of the series. The game is set principally in Baghdad, which is divided into four districts, but also features Alamut, the fortress headquarters of the Hidden Ones. Parkour, close-quarter combat, and stealth are core elements of the gameplay. "Mirage" also marks the return of the "Black Box" assassination missions from "Assassin's Creed Unity" and "Assassin's Creed Syndicate", in which players have to explore the environment to find different ways to reach and eliminate their targets. As a Hidden One, Basim will have a large arsenal of weapons and tools at his disposal, including the signature Assassin Hidden Blade and smoke bombs.


title: Assassin's Creed Mirage

text: Set decades before the events of "Assassin's Creed Valhalla", "Mirage" is a "coming-of-age story" following Basim Ibn Ishaq (Lee Majdoub), a street thief who will learn to fight for a cause larger than himself by becoming a Hidden One under the tutelage of his mentor Roshan (Shohreh Aghdashloo).


title: Assassin's Creed Mirage

text: "Mirage" has been described as a smaller "Assassin's Creed" title, and that the game's length would last around 15–20 hours, similar to older games in the franchise. It was designed to celebrate the series' 15th anniversary, in which the team used the technology built for "Valhalla" to create a game that pays tribute to the first "Assassin's Creed".


title: Assassin's Creed Mirage

text: Prior to its announcement at Ubisoft Forward on September 10, 2022, details about "Mirage" leaked–under the codename "Rift"–when it was revealed that the game started out as an expansion pack for "Valhalla" before being turned into a standalone release.


title: Assassin's Creed Mirage

text: "Mirage" is set to be released in 2023 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Amazon Luna. Shortly after the game's announcement, the title was reported as receiving an Adults Only rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board, which would have limited the number of outlets it could be distributed at in the United States, following a listing on the Xbox Store a week prior to the game's reveal, with one of the reasons being for containing "real gambling". Ubisoft swiftly corrected both claims, stating the game had not been rated yet and "no real gambling or lootboxes [will be] present in the game".


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: During the preparation for the 1960 Tokyo World Design Conference a group of young architects and designers, including Kiyonori Kikutake, Kisho Kurokawa and Fumihiko Maki prepared the publication of the Metabolism manifesto. They were influenced by a wide variety of sources including Marxist theories and biological processes. Their manifesto was a series of four essays entitled: Ocean City, Space City, Towards Group Form, and Material and Man, and it also included designs for vast cities that floated on the oceans and plug-in capsule towers that could incorporate organic growth. Although the World Design Conference gave the Metabolists exposure on the international stage, their ideas remained largely theoretical.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Some smaller, individual buildings that employed the principles of Metabolism were built and these included Tange's Yamanashi Press and Broadcaster Centre and Kurokawa's Nakagin Capsule Tower. The greatest concentration of their work was to be found at the 1970 World Exposition in Osaka where Tange was responsible for master planning the whole site whilst Kikutake and Kurokawa designed pavilions. After the 1973 oil crisis, the Metabolists turned their attention away from Japan and toward Africa and the Middle East.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: The Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) was founded in Switzerland in 1928 as an association of architects who wanted to advance modernism into an international setting. During the early 1930s they promoted the idea (based upon new urban patterns in the United States) that urban development should be guided by CIAM's four functional categories: dwelling, work, transportation, and recreation. By the mid-1930s Le Corbusier and other architects had moulded CIAM into a pseudo-political party with the goal of promoting modern architecture to all. This view gained some traction in the immediate post-war period when Le Corbusier and his colleagues began to design buildings in Chandigarh. By the early 1950s it was felt that CIAM was losing its avant-garde edge so in 1954 a group of younger members called "Team 10" was formed. This included the inner circle Dutch architects Jacob Bakema and Aldo van Eyck, Italian Giancarlo De Carlo, Greek Georges Candilis, the British architects Peter and Alison Smithson and the American Shadrach Woods. The Team 10 architects introduced concepts like "human association", "cluster" and "mobility", with Bakema encouraging the combination of architecture and planning in urban design. This was a rejection of CIAM's older four function mechanical approach, and it would ultimately lead to the break-up and end of CIAM.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Kenzo Tange was invited to the CIAM '59 meeting of the association in Otterlo, Netherlands. In what was to be the last meeting of CIAM, he presented two theoretical projects by the architect Kiyonori Kikutake: the Tower-shaped City and Kikutake's own home, the Sky House. This presentation exposed the fledgling Metabolist movement to its first international audience. Like Team 10's "human association" concepts, Metabolism too was exploring new concepts in urban design.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Tower-shaped City was a 300 metre tall tower that housed the infrastructure for an entire city. It included transportation, services and a manufacturing plant for prefabricated houses. The tower was vertical "artificial land" onto which steel, pre-fabricated dwelling capsules could be attached. Kikutake proposed that these capsules would undergo self-renewal every fifty years, and the city would grow organically like branches of a tree.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Constructed on a hillside, the Sky House is a platform supported on four concrete panels with a hyperbolic paraboloid shell roof. It is a single space divided by storage units with the kitchen and bathroom on the outer edge. These latter two were designed so that they could be moved to suit the use of the house - and indeed they have been moved and/or adjusted about seven times over the course of fifty years. At one point a small children's room was attached to the bottom of the main floor with a small child-sized access door between the two rooms.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: After the meeting, Tange left for Massachusetts Institute of Technology to begin a four-month period as a visiting professor. It is possible that based upon the reception of Kikutake's projects in Otterlo he decided to set the fifth year project as a design for a residential community of 25,000 inhabitants to be constructed on the water of Boston Bay. Tange felt a natural desire to produce urban designs based upon a new prototype of design, one that could give a more human connection to super-scale cities. He considered the idea of "major" and "minor" city structure and how this could grow in cycles like the trunk and leaves of a tree.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: One of the seven projects produced by the students was a perfect example of his vision. The project consisted of two primary residential structures each of which was triangular in section. Lateral movement was provided by motorways and monorail, whilst vertical movement from the parking areas was via elevators. There were open spaces within for community centres, and at every third level there were walkways along which were rows of family houses. The project appeared to be based upon Tange's unrealised competition entry for the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva and both projects paved the way for his later project, "Plan for Tokyo – 1960". Tange went on to present both the Boston Bay Project and the Tokyo Plan at the Tokyo World Design Conference.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: The conference had its roots with Isamu Konmochi and Sori Yanagi who were representatives of the Japanese Committee on the 1956 International Design Conference in Aspen, Colorado. They suggested that rather than a four yearly conference in Aspen there should be a roving conference with Tokyo as its first setting in 1960. Three Japanese institutional members were responsible for organising the conference, although after the Japan Industrial Design Association pulled out only the Japan Institute of Architects and the Japan Association of Advertising Arts were left. In 1958 they formed a preparation committee led by Junzo Sakakura, Kunio Maekawa and Kenzo Tange. As Tange had just accepted an invitation to be a visiting professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology he recommended his junior colleague Takashi Asada to replace him in the organisation of the conference programmes.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: The young Asada invited two friends to help him: the architectural critic and former editor of the magazine Shinkenchiku, Noboru Kawazoe, and Kisho Kurokawa who was one of Tange's students. In turn these two men scouted for more talented designers to help, including: the architects Masato Otaka and Kiyonori Kikutake and the designers Kenji Ekuan and Kiyoshi Awazu. Kurokawa was selected because he had recently returned from an international student conference in the Soviet Union and was a student of the Marxist architectural theorist Uzō Nishiyama. Ekuan was asked because of his recent participation in a seminar given by Konrad Wachsmann (he arrived at the lecture on a YA-1 motorbike that he had newly designed for Yamaha) and Otaka was a junior associate of Kunio Maekawa and had just completed the Harumi Apartment Building in Tokyo Bay. Fumihiko Maki, a former undergraduate student of Tange also joined the group whilst in Tokyo on a travelling fellowship from the Graham Foundation.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: By day Asada canvassed politicians, business leaders and journalists for ideas, by night he met with his young friends to cultivate ideas. Asada was staying at the Ryugetsu Ryokan in Asakusa, Tokyo and he used it as a meeting place for progressive scholars, architects and artists. He often invited people from other professions to give talks and one of these was the atomic physicist, Mitsuo Taketani. Taketani was a scholar who was also interested in Marxist theory and he brought this along with his scientific theories to the group. Taketani's three stage methodology for scientific research influenced Kikutake's own three stage theory: "ka" (the general system), "kata" (the abstract image) and "katachi" (the solution as built), which he used to summarise his own design process from a broad vision to a concrete architectural form.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: The group also searched for architectural solutions to Japan's phenomenal urban expansion brought about by its economic growth and how this could be reconciled with its shortage of usable land. They were inspired by examples of circular growth and renewal found in traditional Japanese architecture like the Ise Shrine and Katsura Detached Palace. They worked in coffee shops and Tokyo's International House to produce a compilation of their works that they could publish as a manifesto for the conference.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: The conference ran from 11–16 May 1960 and had 227 guests, 84 of whom were international, including the architects Louis Kahn, Ralph Erskine, B. V. Doshi, Jean Prouvé, Paul Rudolph and Peter and Alison Smithson. Japanese participants included Kunio Maekawa, Yoshinobu Ashihara and Kazuo Shinohara.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: After his 13 May lecture, Louis Kahn was invited to Kikutake's Sky House and had a long conversation with a number of Japanese architects including the Metabolists. He answered questions until after midnight with Maki acting as translator. Kahn spoke of his universal approach to design and used his own Richards Medical Research Laboratories as an example of how new design solutions can be reached with new thinking about space and movement. A number of the Metabolists were inspired by this.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Whilst discussing the organic nature of Kikutake's theoretical Marine City project, Kawazoe used the Japanese word "shinchintaisha" as being symbolic of the essential exchange of materials and energy between organisms and the exterior world (literally "metabolism" in a biological sense.) The Japanese meaning of the word has a feeling of "replacement of the old with the new" and the group further interpreted this to be equivalent to the continuous renewal and organic growth of the city. As the conference was to be a world conference, Kawazoe felt that they should use a more universal word and Kikutake looked up the definition of "shinchintaisha" in his Japanese-English dictionary. The translation he found was the word "Metabolism".


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: The group's manifesto "Metabolism: The Proposals for New Urbanism" was published at the World Design Conference. Two thousand copies of the 90 page book were printed and were sold for ¥500 by Kurokawa and Awazu at the entrance to the venue. The manifesto opened with the following statement:


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: The publication included projects by each member but a third of the document was dedicated to work by Kikutake who contributed essays and illustrations on the "Ocean City". Kurokawa contributed "Space City", Kawazoe contributed "Material and Man" and Otaka and Maki wrote "Towards the Group Form". Awazu designed the booklet and Kawazoe's wife, Yasuko, edited the layout.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Some of the projects included in the manifesto were subsequently displayed at the Museum of Modern Art's 1960 exhibition entitled "Visionary Architecture" and exposed the Japanese architects' work to a much wider international audience.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Unlike the more rigid membership structure of Team 10, the Metabolists saw their movement as having organic form with the members being free to come and go. Although the group had cohesion they saw themselves as individuals and their architecture reflected this. This was especially true for Tange who remained a mentor for the group rather than an "official" member.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Kikutake's Ocean City is the first essay in the pamphlet. It covered his two previously published projects "Tower-shaped City" and "Marine City" and included a new project "Ocean City" that was a combination of the first two. The first two of these projects introduced the Metabolist's idea of "artificial land" as well as "major" and "minor" structure. Kawazoe referred to "artificial land" in an article in the magazine "Kindai Kenchiku" in April 1960. In responding to the scarcity of land in large and expanding cities he proposed creating "artificial land" that would be composed of concrete slabs, oceans or walls (onto which capsules could be plugged). He said that the creation of this "artificial land" would allow people to use other land in a more natural way.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: For Marine City, Kikutake proposed a city that would float free in the ocean and would be free of ties to a particular nation and therefore free from the threat of war. The artificial ground of the city would house agriculture, industry and entertainment and the residential towers would descend into the ocean to a depth of 200 metres. The city itself was not tied to the land and was free to float across the ocean and grow organically like an organism. Once it became too aged for habitation it would sink itself.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Ocean City was a combination of both Tower-shaped City and Marine City. It consisted of two rings that were tangent to one another, with housing on the inner ring and production on the outer one. Administrative buildings were found at the tangent point. The population would have been rigidly controlled at an upper limit of 500,000. Kikutake envisaged that the city would expand by multiplying itself as though it was undergoing cell division. This enforced the Metabolist idea that the expansion of cities could be a biological process.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: In his essay "Space City", Kurokawa introduced four projects: Neo-Tokyo Plan, Wall City, Agricultural City and Mushroom-shaped house. In contrast to Tange's linear Tokyo City Bay Project, Kurokawa's Neo-Tokyo Plan proposed that Tokyo be decentralised and organised into cruciform patterns. He arranged Bamboo-shaped Cities along these cruciforms but unlike Kikutake he kept the city towers lower than 31 metres to conform with Tokyo's building code (these height limits were not revised until 1968).


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: The Wall City considered the problem of the ever-expanding distance between the home and the workplace. He proposed a wall-shaped city that could extend indefinitely. Dwellings would be on one side of the wall and workplaces on the other. The wall itself would contain transportation and services.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Surviving the Ise Bay Typhoon in 1959 inspired Kurokawa to design the Agricultural City. It consisted of a grid-like city supported on 4 metre stilts above the ground. The 500 metres square city sat on concrete slab that placed industry and infrastructure above agriculture and was an attempt to combine rural land and the city into one entity. He envisaged that his Mushroom Houses would sprout through the slab of Agriculture City. These houses were shrouded in a mushroom-like cap that was neither wall nor roof that enclosed a tea room and a living space.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Maki and Otaka's essay on Group Form placed less emphasis on the megastructures of some of the other Metabolists and focused instead on a more flexible form of urban planning that could better accommodate rapid and unpredictable requirements of the city.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Otaka had first thought about the relationship between infrastructure and architecture in his 1949 graduation thesis and he continued to explore ideas about "artificial ground" during his work at Maekawa's office. Likewise, during his travels abroad, Maki was impressed with the grouping and forms of vernacular buildings. The project they included to illustrate their ideas was a scheme for the redevelopment of Shinjuku station which included retail, offices and entertainment on an artificial ground over the station. Although Otaka's forms were heavy and sculptural and Maki's were lightweight with large spans, both contained the homogeneous clusters that were associated with group form.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Kawazoe contributed a brief essay entitled "I want to be a sea-shell, I want to be a mold, I want to be a spirit". The essay reflected Japan's cultural anguish after the Second World War and proposed the unity of man and nature.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: On 1 January 1961 Kenzo Tange presented his new plan for Tokyo Bay (1960) in a 45-minute television programme on NHK General TV. The design was a radical plan for the reorganization and expansion of the capital in order to cater for a population beyond 10 million. The design was for a linear city that used a series of nine-kilometre modules that stretched 80 km across Tokyo Bay from Ikebukuro in the north west to Kisarazu in the south east. The perimeter of each of the modules was organised into three levels of looping highways, as Tange was adamant that an efficient communication system would be the key to modern living. The modules themselves were organised into building zones and transport hubs and included office, government administration and retail districts as well as a new Tokyo train station and highway links to other parts of Tokyo. Residential areas were to be accommodated on parallel streets that ran perpendicular to the main linear axis and people would build their own houses within giant A-frame structures.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: The project was designed by Tange and other members of his studio at Tokyo University, including Kurokawa and Arata Isozaki. Originally it was intended to publish the plan at the World Design Conference (hence its "1960" title) but it was delayed because the same members were working on the Conference organisation. Tange received interest and support from a number of government agencies but the project was never built. Tange went on to expand the idea of the linear city in 1964 with the Tōkaidō Megalopolis Plan. This was an ambitious proposal to extend Tokyo's linear city across the whole of the Tōkaidō region of Japan in order to re-distribute the population.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Both Kikutake and Kurokawa capitalised on the interest in Tange's 1960 plan by producing their own schemes for Tokyo. Kikutake's plan incorporated three elements both on the land and the sea and included a looped highway that connected all the prefectures around the bay. Unlike Tange however its simple presentation graphics put many people off. Kurokawa's plan consisted of helix-shaped megastructures floating inside cells that extended out across the bay. Although the scheme's more convincing graphics were presented as part of a film the project was not built.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: With Japan's property boom in the 1980s, both Tange and Kurokawa revisited their earlier ideas: Tange with his Tokyo Plan 1986 and Kurokawa with his New Tokyo Plan 2025. Both projects used land that had been reclaimed from the sea since the 1960s in combination with floating structures.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: The reconstruction plan of the capital city of Skopje then part of the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia) following a major earthquake was won by Tange's team. The project was significant because of its international influence as well as an international model case for urban reconstruction. It is a major breakthrough for the Metabolist movement to realise their approach on an international scale.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: In 1961 Kenzo Tange received a commission from the Yamanashi News Group to design a new office in Kōfu. As well as two news firms and a printing company the building needed to incorporate a cafeteria and shops at ground floor level to interface with the adjoining city. It also needed to be flexible in its design to allow future expansion.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Tange organised the spaces of the three firms by function to allow them to share common facilities. He stacked these functions vertically according to need, for example, the printing plant is on the ground floor to facilitate access to the street for loading and transportation. He then took all the service functions including elevators, toilets and pipes and grouped them into 16 reinforced concrete cylindrical towers, each with an equal 5 metre diameter. These he placed on a grid into which he inserted the functional group facilities and offices. These inserted elements were conceived of as containers that were independent of the structure and could be arranged flexibly as required. This conceived flexibility distinguished Tange's design from other architects' designs with open floor offices and service cores – such as Kahn's Richards Medical Research Laboratories. Tange deliberately finished the cylindrical towers at different heights to imply that there was room for vertical expansion.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Although the building was expanded in 1974 as Tange had originally envisioned, it did not act as a catalyst for the expansion of the building into a megastructure across the rest of the city. The building was criticised for forsaking the human use of the building in preference to the structure and adaptability.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: In 1966 Tange designed the Shizuoka Press and Broadcasting Tower in the Ginza district of Tokyo. This time using only a single core Tange arranged the offices as cantilevered steel and glass boxes. The cantilever is emphasised by punctuating the three-storey blocks with a single-storey glazed balcony. The concrete forms of the building were cast using aluminium formwork and the aluminium has been left on as a cladding. Although conceived as a "core-type" system that was included in Tange's other city proposals, the tower stands alone and is robbed of other connections.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: The icon of Metabolism, Kurokawa's Nakagin Capsule Tower was erected in the Ginza district of Tokyo in 1972 and completed in just 30 days. Prefabricated in Shiga Prefecture in a factory that normally built shipping containers, it is constructed of 140 capsules plugged into two cores that are 11 and 13 stories in height. The capsules contained the latest gadgets of the day and were built to house small offices and pieds-à-terre for Tokyo salarymen.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: The capsules were constructed of light steel welded trusses covered with steel sheeting mounted onto the reinforced concrete cores. The capsules were 2.5 metres wide and four metres long with a 1.3 metre diameter window at one end. The units originally contained a bed, storage cabinets, a bathroom, a colour television set, clock, refrigerator and air conditioner, although optional extras such as a stereo were available. Although the capsules were designed with mass production in mind, there was never a demand for them. Nobuo Abe was a senior manager, managing one of the design divisions on the construction of the Nakagin Capsule Tower.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Since 1996, the tower was listed as an architectural heritage by DoCoMoMo. However, in 2007 the residents voted to tear the tower down and build a new 14-story tower. In 2010, some of the remaining habitable pods were converted for use as budget hotel rooms. As of 2017, many capsules had been renovated and were being used as residential and office spaces, while short-stay renting such as Airbnb or other lodging provisions had been banned by the administration of the building. The tower was demolished in April of 2022.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: After the World Design Conference Maki began to distance himself from Metabolist movement, although his studies in "Group Form" continued to be of interest to the Metabolists. In 1964 he published a booklet entitled "Investigations in Collective Form" in which he investigated three urban forms: Compositional-form, Megastructure and Group Form. The Hillside Terrace is a series of projects commissioned by the Asakura family and undertaken in seven phases from 1967 to 1992. It includes residential, office and cultural buildings as well as the Royal Danish Embassy and is situated on both sides of Kyū-Yamate avenue in the Daikanyama district of Tokyo.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: The execution of the designs evolves through the phases with exterior forms becoming more independent of the interior functions and new materials being employed. For example, the first phase has a raised pedestrian deck that gives access to shops and a restaurant and this was designed to be extended in subsequent phases but the idea, along with the original master plan, was discarded in later phases. By the third phase Maki moved away from the Modernist maxim of "form follows function" and started to design the building exteriors to better match the immediate environment. The project acted as a catalyst to the redevelopment of the whole area around Daikanyama Station.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Metabolism developed during the post war period in a Japan that questioned its cultural identity. Initially the group had chosen the name "Burnt Ash School" to reflect the ruined state of firebombed Japanese cities and the opportunity they presented for radical re-building. Ideas of nuclear physics and biological growth were linked with Buddhist concepts of regeneration. Although Metabolism rejected visual references from the past, they embraced concepts of prefabrication and renewal from traditional Japanese architecture, especially the twenty-year cycle of the rebuilding of the Ise Shrine (to which Tange and Kawazoe were invited in 1953). The sacred rocks onto which the shrine is built were seen by the Metabolists as symbolising a Japanese spirit that predated Imperial aspirations and modernising influences from the West.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: In his "Investigations in Collective Form" Maki coined the term "Megastructure" to refer structures that house the whole or part of a city in a single structure. He originated the idea from vernacular forms of village architecture that were projected into vast structures with the aid of modern technology. Reyner Banham borrowed "Megastructure" for the title of his 1976 book which contained numerous built and unbuilt projects. He defined megastructures as modular units (with a short life span) that attached to structural framework (with a longer life span). Maki would later criticise the "Megastructure" approach to design advocating instead his idea of "Group Form" which he thought would better accommodate the disorder of the city.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: The architect Robin Boyd readily interchanges the word Metabolism with Archigram in his 1968 book "New Directions in Japanese Architecture". Indeed, the two groups both emerged in the 1960s and disbanded in the 1970s and used imagery with megastructures and cells, but their urban and architectural proposals were quite different. Although utopian in their ideals, the Metabolists were concerned with improving the social structure of society with their biologically inspired architecture, whereas Archigram were influenced by mechanics, information and electronic media and their architecture was more utopian and less social.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Japan was selected as the site for the 1970 World Exposition and 330 hectares in the Senri Hills in Osaka Prefecture were set aside as the location. Japan had originally wanted to host a World Exposition in 1940 but it was cancelled with the escalation of the war. The one million people who had bought tickets for 1940 were allowed to use them in 1970.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Kenzo Tange joined the Theme Committee for the Expo and along with Uso Nishiyama he had responsibility for master planning the site. The theme for the Expo became "Progress and Harmony for Mankind". Tange invited twelve architects, including Arata Isozaki, Otaka and Kikutake to design individual elements. He also asked Ekuan to oversee the design of the furniture and transportation and Kawazoe to curate the Mid-Air Exhibition which was sited in the huge space-frame roof.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Tange envisioned that the Expo should be primarily conceived as a big festival where human beings could meet. Central to the site he placed the Festival Plaza onto which were connected a number of themed displays, all of which were united under one huge roof. In his Tokyo Bay Project Tange spoke about the living body having two types of information transmission systems: fluid and electronic. That project used the idea of a tree trunk and branches that would carry out those types of transmission in relation to the city. Kawazoe likened the space frame roof of the Festival Plaza to the electronic transmission system and the aerial-themed displays that plugged into it to the hormonal system.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Kawazoe, Maki and Kurokawa had invited a selection of world architects to design displays for the Mid-Air Exhibition that was to be incorporated within the roof. The architects included Moshe Safdie, Yona Friedman, Hans Hollein and Giancarlo De Carlo. Although Tange was obsessed with the theory of flexibility that the space framed provide he did concede that in reality it was not so practical for the actual fixing of the displays. The roof itself was designed by Koji Kamaya and Mamoru Kawaguchi who conceived it as a huge space frame. Kawaguchi invented a welding-free ball joint to safely distribute the load and worked out a method of assembling the frame on the ground before raising it using jacks.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Kikutake's Expo Tower was situated on the highest hill in the grounds and acted as a landmark for visitors. It was built of a vertical ball and joint space onto which was attached a series of cabins. The design was to have been a blueprint for flexible vertical living based upon a 360m3 standard construction cabin clad with a membrane of cast aluminium and glass that could be flexibly arranged anywhere on the tower. This was demonstrated with a variety of cabins that were observation platforms and VIP rooms and one cabin at ground level that became an information booth.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Kurokawa had won commissions for two corporate pavilions: the Takara Beautillion and the Toshiba IHI pavilion. The former of these was composed of capsules plugged onto six point frames and was assembled in just six days; the latter was a space frame composed of tetrahedron modules, based upon his Helix City that could grow in 14 different directions and resemble organic growth.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Expo '70 has been described has the apotheosis of the Metabolist movement. But even before Japan's period of rapid economic growth ended with the world energy crisis, critics were calling the Expo a dystopia that was removed from reality. The energy crisis demonstrated Japan's reliance both on imported oil and led to a re-evaluation of design and planning with architects moving away from utopian projects towards smaller urban interventions.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: After the 1970 Expo, Tange and the Metabolists turned their attention away from Japan towards the Middle East and Africa. These countries were expanding on the back of income from oil and were fascinated by both Japanese culture and the expertise that the Metabolists brought to urban planning. Tange and Kurokawa capitalised on the majority of the commissions, but Kikutake and Maki were involved too.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Tange's projects included a 57,000 seat stadium and sports center in Riyadh for King Faisal, and a sports city for Kuwait for the planned 1974 Pan Arab Games. However, both were put on hold by the outbreak of the Fourth Arab-Israeli War in 1973. Likewise, the plan for a new city center in Tehran was cancelled after the 1979 revolution. He did however complete the Kuwaiti Embassy in Tokyo in 1970 and Kuwait's International Airport, as well as the Presidential Palace in Damascus, Syria.


title: Metabolism (architecture)

text: Kurokawa's work included a competition win for Abu Dhabi's National Theatre (1977), capsule-tower designs for a hotel in Baghdad (1975) and a city in the desert in Libya (1979–1984).