title: Paysafecard

text: In the 2018 Austrian "Great Place to Work" contest, paysafecard won 1st place in the category "New Working World and Quality of Living", as well as 10th place among all medium-sized companies.


title: Tincture of iodine

text: Tincture of iodine, iodine tincture, or weak iodine solution is an antiseptic. It is usually 2 to 7% elemental iodine, along with potassium iodide or sodium iodide, dissolved in a mixture of ethanol and water. Tincture solutions are characterized by the presence of alcohol. It was used from 1908 in pre-operative skin preparation by Italian surgeon Antonio Grossich.


title: Tincture of iodine

text: In the United Kingdom, the development of an iodine solution for skin sterilisation was pioneered by Lionel Stretton. The "British Medical Journal" published the detail of his work at Kidderminster Infirmary in 1909. Stretton used a much weaker solution than that used by Grossich. He claimed in 1915 that Grossich had been using a liquid akin to Liquor Iodi Fortis, and that it was he, Stretton, who had introduced the method using Tincture of Iodine BP which came to be used across the world.


title: Tincture of iodine

text: USP Tincture of Iodine is defined in the U.S. National Formulary (NF) as containing in each 100 mL, 1.8 to 2.2 grams of elemental iodine, and 2.1 to 2.6 grams of sodium iodide. Alcohol is 50 mL, and the balance is purified water. This "2% free iodine" solution has 0.08 mol/L of I, which provides about 1 mg of free iodine per 0.05 mL drop. The "2% free iodine" description is based on the quantity of elemental iodine, not sodium/potassium iodide.


title: Tincture of iodine

text: USP Strong Iodine Tincture is defined in the NF as containing in each 100 mL, 6.8 to 7.5 gram of iodine, and 4.7 to 5.5 gram of potassium iodide. Purified water is 50 mL and the balance is alcohol. This 7% tincture solution is about 3.5 times more concentrated than USP 2% tincture.


title: Tincture of iodine

text: As in the case of Lugol's iodine, the role of iodide in the solution is to increase the solubility of the elemental iodine, by turning it to the soluble triiodide anion I. However, since iodine has moderate solubility in ethanol, it is also assisted by this solvent directly. Lugol's iodine, by contrast, has no alcohol, and has twice the mass of potassium iodide as of elemental iodine. Alcohol content in the tincture of iodine can be determined by the methods of Alcock, Roscoe – Schorlemmer and Thurston – Thurston.


title: Tincture of iodine

text: As both USP solutions contain elemental iodine, which is moderately toxic when ingested in amounts larger than those required to disinfect water, tincture of iodine is sold labelled “for external use only,” and used primarily as a disinfectant.


title: Tincture of iodine

text: Tincture of iodine is often found in emergency survival kits, used both to disinfect wounds and to sanitize surface water for drinking. When an alcohol solution is not desirable for this purpose, the alcohol-free Lugol's iodine, an aqueous solution of iodine in potassium iodide solution, or else povidone-iodine (brand names Wokadine, Betadine), a PVPI solution, can be used.


title: Tincture of iodine

text: Small amounts may be added to suspect drinking water as a disinfectant (typically 5 mg free iodine per liter, or 5 drops of 2% tincture). Though this treatment is effective against bacteria and viruses, it does not protect against protozoan parasites such as "Cryptosporidium" and "Giardia".


title: Tincture of iodine

text: Iodine solution is used to sanitize the surface of fruit and vegetables for bacteria and viruses. The common concentration for sanitization is 25 ppm iodophor for 1 minute. However, the effectiveness depends on whether the solution penetrates into rifts, and whether dirt is effectively removed at first. The oocytes of protozoan parasites will not be killed, and it is also doubtful that bacterial spores will be killed. Iodine solutions should not be considered able to sanitize or disinfect salad, fruit or vegetables that are contaminated with feces.


title: Tincture of iodine

text: Iodine tincture is not a recommended source of solely-nutritional iodine. Nutritional iodine is better supplied in the form of the less toxic iodide (see SSKI) or iodate salts, which the body can easily convert to thyroid hormone.


title: Tincture of iodine

text: Nevertheless, the iodide in tincture of iodine used as a water disinfectant does supply more than adequate nutritional iodine, perhaps 30 or more times the recommended daily allowance per liter or quart. Application of tincture or Lugol's to the skin also results in absorption and bioavailability of some moderate fraction of the iodine. This method can be used to saturate the thyroid with iodine to help prevent the excessive uptake of radioactive iodine-131 in a nuclear accident.


title: Muthoot Finance

text: Muthoot Finance Ltd. is an Indian financial corporation and the largest gold loan NBFC in the country. In addition to financing gold transactions, the company offers gold loan services, wealth management services, travel and tourism services, and sells gold coins. The company is headquartered in Kochi, Kerala and operates over 4,400 branches throughout the country. Outside India, Muthoot Finance is established in the UK, the US, and the United Arab Emirates.


title: Muthoot Finance

text: The company falls under the brand umbrella of the Muthoot Group. Its stocks are listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and NSE. , revenue (after expenditure) stood at more than ₹23,000 crore (US$4.2 billion). The target market of Muthoot Finance includes small businesses, vendors, farmers, traders, SME business owners, and salaried individuals.


title: Muthoot Finance

text: The company was incorporated as a private limited company on 14 March 1997 with the name "The Muthoot Finance Private Limited" under the Companies Act.


title: Muthoot Finance

text: On 18 November 2008, the company was converted into a public limited company with the name "Muthoot Finance Limited". During the year 2009–10, the company added 620 new branches.


title: Muthoot Finance

text: In July 2016, Muthoot Finance acquired 46.83% of the capital of Belstar Investment and Finance Private Limited (BIFPL).


title: Muthoot Finance

text: In May 2018, Muthoot Finance acquired Muthoot Money, a Non Deposit taking Non-Banking Financial Company.


title: Muthoot Finance

text: All of the philanthropic activities of Muthoot Finance are conducted through the Muthoot M George Foundation, which also conducts tree plantation drives and offers scholarships to the needy on a regular basis. The company is also involved in various philanthropic initiatives, which focus on education through M George Foundation, environment, health, financial assistance and eco-friendliness. With the assistance of the Credai Clean City Movement, the company is associated with the concept of an E-toilet, which was a public sanitation initiative. Additionally, the company holds regular agricultural seminars by the name of "Ente Adukkalathottum" ("My Kitchen Garden") which educates farmers on the effects of pesticide residues in food and how to counter that for healthier living. It has also been actively involved in helping cancer patients, as well as individuals diagnosed with from kidney diseases, by financially covering medical expenses.


title: Muthoot Finance

text: The company runs the Kochi Chapter of the "Horn Not Ok Please" initiative, which raises awareness on the harmful effects of vehicular noise pollution. The company has also launched a Centre for Promoting/Creating Road Traffic Awareness at the office of the Asst. Commissioner of Police in Kochi to help raise awareness about road safety and the prevention of traffic accidents.


title: Muthoot Finance

text: In 2012, the Muthoot Group launched the first Paul George Memorial Tournament, which was aimed at Government School Children in the Delhi NCR region. The winners of the tournament were given scholarships.


title: Content analysis

text: Content analysis is the study of documents and communication artifacts, which might be texts of various formats, pictures, audio or video. Social scientists use content analysis to examine patterns in communication in a replicable and systematic manner. One of the key advantages of using content analysis to analyse social phenomena is its non-invasive nature, in contrast to simulating social experiences or collecting survey answers.


title: Content analysis

text: Practices and philosophies of content analysis vary between academic disciplines. They all involve systematic reading or observation of texts or artifacts which are assigned labels (sometimes called codes) to indicate the presence of interesting, meaningful pieces of content. By systematically labeling the content of a set of texts, researchers can analyse patterns of content quantitatively using statistical methods, or use qualitative methods to analyse meanings of content within texts.


title: Content analysis

text: Computers are increasingly used in content analysis to automate the labeling (or coding) of documents. Simple computational techniques can provide descriptive data such as word frequencies and document lengths. Machine learning classifiers can greatly increase the number of texts that can be labeled, but the scientific utility of doing so is a matter of debate. Further, numerous computer-aided text analysis (CATA) computer programs are available that analyze text for pre-determined linguistic, semantic, and psychological characteristics.


title: Content analysis

text: Content analysis is best understood as a broad family of techniques. Effective researchers choose techniques that best help them answer their substantive questions. That said, according to Klaus Krippendorff, six questions must be addressed in every content analysis:


title: Content analysis

text: The simplest and most objective form of content analysis considers unambiguous characteristics of the text such as word frequencies, the page area taken by a newspaper column, or the duration of a radio or television program. Analysis of simple word frequencies is limited because the meaning of a word depends on surrounding text. Key Word In Context (KWIC) routines address this by placing words in their textual context. This helps resolve ambiguities such as those introduced by synonyms and homonyms.


title: Content analysis

text: A further step in analysis is the distinction between dictionary-based (quantitative) approaches and qualitative approaches. Dictionary-based approaches set up a list of categories derived from the frequency list of words and control the distribution of words and their respective categories over the texts. While methods in quantitative content analysis in this way transform observations of found categories into quantitative statistical data, the qualitative content analysis focuses more on the intentionality and its implications. There are strong parallels between qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis.


title: Content analysis

text: Quantitative content analysis highlights frequency counts and objective analysis of these coded frequencies. Additionally, quantitative content analysis begins with a framed hypothesis with coding decided on before the analysis begins. These coding categories are strictly relevant to the researcher's hypothesis. Quantitative analysis also takes a deductive approach. Examples of content-analytical variables and constructs can be found, for example, in the open-access database DOCA. This database compiles, systematizes, and evaluates relevant content-analytical variables of communication and political science research areas and topics.


title: Content analysis

text: Siegfried Kracauer provides a critique of quantitative analysis, asserting that it oversimplifies complex communications in order to be more reliable. On the other hand, qualitative analysis deals with the intricacies of latent interpretations, whereas quantitative has a focus on manifest meanings. He also acknowledges an "overlap" of qualitative and quantitative content analysis. Patterns are looked at more closely in qualitative analysis, and based on the latent meanings that the researcher may find, the course of the research could be changed. It is inductive and begins with open research questions, as opposed to a hypothesis.


title: Content analysis

text: The data collection instrument used in content analysis is the codebook or coding scheme. In qualitative content analysis the codebook is constructed and improved "during" coding, while in quantitative content analysis the codebook needs to be developed and pretested for reliability and validity "before" coding. The codebook includes detailed instructions for human coders plus clear definitions of the respective concepts or variables to be coded plus the assigned values.


title: Content analysis

text: According to current standards of good scientific practice, each content analysis study should provide their codebook in the appendix or as supplementary material so that reproducibility of the study is ensured. On the Open Science Framework (OSF) server of the Center for Open Science a lot of codebooks of content analysis studies are freely available via search for “codebook”.


title: Content analysis

text: Furthermore, the "Database of Variables for Content Analysis" (DOCA) provides an open access archive of pretested variables and established codebooks for content analyses. Measures from the archive can be adopted in future studies to ensure the use of high-quality and comparable instruments. DOCA covers, among others, measures for the content analysis of fictional media and entertainment (e.g., measures for sexualization in video games), of user-generated media content (e.g., measures for online hate speech), and of news media and journalism (e.g., measures for stock photo use in press reporting on child sexual abuse, and measures of personalization in election campaign coverage).


title: Content analysis

text: With the rise of common computing facilities like PCs, computer-based methods of analysis are growing in popularity. Answers to open ended questions, newspaper articles, political party manifestos, medical records or systematic observations in experiments can all be subject to systematic analysis of textual data.


title: Content analysis

text: By having contents of communication available in form of machine readable texts, the input is analyzed for frequencies and coded into categories for building up inferences.


title: Content analysis

text: Computer-assisted analysis can help with large, electronic data sets by cutting out time and eliminating the need for multiple human coders to establish inter-coder reliability. However, human coders can still be employed for content analysis, as they are often more able to pick out nuanced and latent meanings in text. A study found that human coders were able to evaluate a broader range and make inferences based on latent meanings.


title: Content analysis

text: Robert Weber notes: "To make valid inferences from the text, it is important that the classification procedure be reliable in the sense of being consistent: Different people should code the same text in the same way". The validity, inter-coder reliability and intra-coder reliability are subject to intense methodological research efforts over long years.


title: Content analysis

text: Neuendorf suggests that when human coders are used in content analysis at least two independent coders should be used. Reliability of human coding is often measured using a statistical measure of "inter-coder reliability" or "the amount of agreement or correspondence among two or more coders". Lacy and Riffe identify the measurement of inter-coder reliability as a strength of quantitative content analysis, arguing that, if content analysts do not measure inter-coder reliability, their data are no more reliable than the subjective impressions of a single reader.


title: Content analysis

text: According to today’s reporting standards, quantitative content analyses should be published with complete codebooks and for all variables or measures in the codebook the appropriate inter-coder or inter-rater reliability coefficients should be reported based on empirical pre-tests. Furthermore, the validity of all variables or measures in the codebook must be ensured. This can be achieved through the use of established measures that have proven their validity in earlier studies. Also, the content validity of the measures can be checked by experts from the field who scrutinize and then approve or correct coding instructions, definitions and examples in the codebook.


title: Content analysis

text: Content analysis is research using the categorization and classification of speech, written text, interviews, images, or other forms of communication. In its beginnings, using the first newspapers at the end of the 19th century, analysis was done manually by measuring the number of columns given a subject. The approach can also be traced back to a university student studying patterns in Shakespeare's literature in 1893.


title: Content analysis

text: Over the years, content analysis has been applied to a variety of scopes. Hermeneutics and philology have long used content analysis to interpret sacred and profane texts and, in many cases, to attribute texts' authorship and authenticity.


title: Content analysis

text: In recent times, particularly with the advent of mass communication, content analysis has known an increasing use to deeply analyze and understand media content and media logic.


title: Content analysis

text: The political scientist Harold Lasswell formulated the core questions of content analysis in its early-mid 20th-century mainstream version: "Who says what, to whom, why, to what extent and with what effect?". The strong emphasis for a quantitative approach started up by Lasswell was finally carried out by another "father" of content analysis, Bernard Berelson, who proposed a definition of content analysis which, from this point of view, is emblematic: "a research technique for the objective, systematic and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication".


title: Content analysis

text: Quantitative content analysis has enjoyed a renewed popularity in recent years thanks to technological advances and fruitful application in of mass communication and personal communication research. Content analysis of textual big data produced by new media, particularly social media and mobile devices has become popular. These approaches take a simplified view of language that ignores the complexity of semiosis, the process by which meaning is formed out of language. Quantitative content analysts have been criticized for limiting the scope of content analysis to simple counting, and for applying the measurement methodologies of the natural sciences without reflecting critically on their appropriateness to social science. Conversely, qualitative content analysts have been criticized for being insufficiently systematic and too impressionistic. Krippendorff argues that quantitative and qualitative approaches to content analysis tend to overlap, and that there can be no generalisable conclusion as to which approach is superior.


title: Content analysis

text: Content analysis can also be described as studying traces, which are documents from past times, and artifacts, which are non-linguistic documents. Texts are understood to be produced by communication processes in a broad sense of that phrase—often gaining mean through abduction.


title: Content analysis

text: Manifest content is readily understandable at its face value. Its meaning is direct. Latent content is not as overt, and requires interpretation to uncover the meaning or implication.


title: Content analysis

text: The following table shows fifteen uses of content analysis in terms of their general purpose, element of the communication paradigm to which they apply, and the general question they are intended to answer.


title: Content analysis

text: As a counterpoint, there are limits to the scope of use for the procedures that characterize content analysis. In particular, if access to the goal of analysis can be obtained by direct means without material interference, then direct measurement techniques yield better data. Thus, while content analysis attempts to quantifiably describe communications whose features are primarily categorical——limited usually to a nominal or ordinal scale——via selected conceptual units (the unitization) which are assigned values (the categorization) for enumeration while monitoring intercoder reliability, if instead the target quantity manifestly is already directly measurable——typically on an interval or ratio scale——especially a continuous physical quantity, then such targets usually are not listed among those needing the "subjective" selections and formulations of content analysis. For example (from mixed research and clinical application), as medical images communicate diagnostic features to physicians, neuroimaging's stroke (infarct) volume scale called ASPECTS is unitized as 10 qualitatively delineated (unequal) brain regions in the middle cerebral artery territory, which it categorizes as being at least partly versus not at all infarcted in order to enumerate the latter, with published series often assessing intercoder reliability by Cohen's kappa. The foregoing italicized operations impose the uncredited form of content analysis onto an estimation of infarct extent, which instead is easily enough and more accurately measured as a volume directly on the images. ("Accuracy ... is the highest form of reliability.") The concomitant clinical assessment, however, by the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) or the modified Rankin Scale (mRS), retains the necessary form of content analysis. Recognizing potential limits of content analysis across the contents of language and images alike, Klaus Krippendorff affirms that "comprehen[sion] ... may ... not conform at all to the process of classification and/or counting by which most content analyses proceed," suggesting that content analysis might materially distort a message.


title: Content analysis

text: The process of the initial coding scheme or approach to coding is contingent on the particular content analysis approach selected. Through a directed content analysis, the scholars draft a preliminary coding scheme from pre-existing theory or assumptions. While with the conventional content analysis approach, the initial coding scheme developed from the data.


title: Content analysis

text: With either approach above, immersing oneself into the data to obtain an overall picture is recommendable for researchers to conduct. Furthermore, identifying a consistent and clear unit of coding is vital, and researchers' choices range from a single word to several paragraphs, from texts to iconic symbols. Last, constructing the relationships between codes by sorting out them within specific categories or themes.


title: Sea of Love (film)

text: Sea of Love is a 1989 American neo-noir thriller film directed by Harold Becker, written by Richard Price and starring Al Pacino, Ellen Barkin and John Goodman. The story concerns a New York City detective trying to catch a serial killer who finds victims through the singles column in a newspaper.


title: Sea of Love (film)

text: It was Pacino's first film after a four-year hiatus following the critical and commercial failure of "Revolution". "Sea of Love" was a box-office success, grossing over $110 million.


title: Sea of Love (film)

text: New York City homicide detective Frank Keller is a burned-out alcoholic. His wife left him and married one of his colleagues, and he is depressed about reaching his 20th year on the police force. He is assigned to investigate the murder of a man in Manhattan, shot dead while face down in his bed, naked, listening to an old 45rpm recording of "Sea of Love." Keller has three clues — a lipstick-smeared cigarette, a want-ad that the dead man placed in a newspaper, and fingerprints of the perpetrator.


title: Sea of Love (film)

text: A second man dies in the same manner in Queens. Detective Sherman Touhey from the local precinct suggests that he and Frank collaborate. Both victims had placed rhyming ads in the lonely hearts column of the newspaper, seeking dates. The detectives track down Raymond Brown, the only other man with a rhyming ad. He's a married man who admits placing the ad but swears that he threw away all the letters and never saw anyone. Frank gets an idea to place a rhyming ad in the paper, meet women who respond in a restaurant and take the prints from their drinking glasses. Frank's precinct chief is skeptical, but changes his mind when Brown turns up dead in the same manner as the other two murder victims.


title: Sea of Love (film)

text: Frank has dinner with several women, while Sherman — posing as a waiter — puts their glasses into evidence bags. One woman, divorcee Helen Cruger, shows no interest in Frank and leaves without taking a drink, so Frank is unable to get her fingerprints. Frank bumps into her again at a market, but this time she is more friendly. Helen manages a chic upscale shoe store. Frank does not reveal his true occupation.


title: Sea of Love (film)

text: Frank takes her to his place, against his better judgment and a warning from Sherman not to do so. They start getting passionate, but Frank panics after finding a gun in her purse and treats her roughly. Helen explains she keeps the starting pistol because she's been scared. Frank apologizes, and they have sex.


title: Sea of Love (film)

text: Frank and Helen begin a romance. He has a chance to obtain Helen's fingerprints on a glass but decides to wipe the glass clean. Their relationship becomes strained when she discovers that he is a cop. One night when he is drunk, he nearly gives away the fact that Helen was involved in a sting. He starts to confess his feelings for her, but then discovers that she responded to each of the victims' ads. When he confronts her, Helen refuses to admit to anything, so he throws her out.


title: Sea of Love (film)

text: Moments later, the real killer bursts into the apartment: Helen's ex-husband Terry, who has been stalking Helen and murdering the men she dates. At gunpoint, he makes Frank lie on his bed and show how he made love to Helen, just as he had done to his other victims before murdering them. Frank manages to overpower Terry and tries to call the police, but Terry lunges at him and, in the ensuing struggle, Frank throws Terry through the bedroom window to his death.


title: Sea of Love (film)

text: Several weeks later, a newly sober Frank meets Sherman in a bar and later reunites with Helen. She forgives him, and they resume their relationship.


title: Sea of Love (film)

text: Lorraine Bracco filmed scenes as Keller's ex-wife Denice, which were cut from the theatrical release print, but were restored for television versions. Samuel L. Jackson played a minor role as "Black Guy".


title: Sea of Love (film)

text: The film did well domestically, debuting at No. 1. In its second week it had a 22% drop. "Sea of Love" grossed $58.5 million domestically and $52.3 million overseas to a total of $110.9 million worldwide.


title: Sea of Love (film)

text: The movie received positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 74% of 31 critics have given the film a positive review, with an average rating of 6.80/10.


title: Sea of Love (film)

text: In his review in the "Los Angeles Times", Kevin Thomas called it "a slick, knowing genre film, through and through, a New York cop suspense thriller that we've seen countless times before," but stated "it can't quite keep us away from wondering how a smart woman like Helen, whose looks would stop traffic and whose work would bring her into constant contact with an array of sophisticated men, would ever resort to the personals - unless, of course, she really is a psychopath." The "Variety" staff review praised the film, calling it "a suspenseful film noir boasting a superlative performance by Al Pacino as a burned-out Gotham cop."


title: Sea of Love (film)

text: Hal Hinson, in a mixed review for "The Washington Post", stated that if the film "were able to get it all, it would be a great movie. As it is, it's stirring and messy and hints at more than it is capable of delivering." Roger Ebert, giving the film three out of four stars, praised the acting of Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin, but thought "the ending ... cheats by bringing in a character from left field at the last moment. Part of the fun in a movie like this is guessing the identity of the killer, and part of the problem ... is that the audience is not fairly treated. Technically, I suppose, the plot can be justified. But I felt cheated. I had good feelings for the characters and their relationships, but I walked out feeling the plot played fast and loose with the rules of whodunits."


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: Radio Television of Serbia (, ; abbr. RTS/PTC) is Serbia's public broadcaster. It broadcasts and produces news, drama, and sports programming through radio, television and the Internet. RTS is a member of the European Broadcasting Union. Radio Television of Serbia has four organizational units - radio, television, music production, and record label (PGP-RTS). It is financed primarily through monthly subscription fees and advertising revenue.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: Radio Belgrade began its broadcasts in 1929. The first news announcer in 1929 was Jelena Bilbija. The first radio program in Serbia was broadcast in February 1929, when released radio signal was transmitted from the transmitter in Belgrade suburb of Rakovica. After five years, on 24 March 1929 Radio Belgrade began with regular broadcasting of its program from the building of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: Radio Television Belgrade (RTB), consisting of Radio Belgrade and Television Belgrade (TVB) was established as a result of the decision by the Executive Council of the Socialist Republic of Serbia on 13 February 1958. This came after the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's government decision of 1956 to invest in a television network.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: The first televised broadcast was on 23 August 1958, an edition of the "Dnevnik" (Journal) news programme with Miloje Orlović, Branislav Surutka, Olga Nađ, Olivera Živković and Vera Milovanović. The first RTB program was broadcast from the Belgrade Fair and from a new TV Studio build there. From 1961, RTS began to use quadruplex video tape recording equipment. The Sixties saw dramatic development in all genres of TV programs. TVB became famous by its sitcoms, directed and written by Radivoje-Lola Djukić, Novak Novak and others (unfortunately, only a small proportion is preserved, owing to implicit censorship and shortage of tapes). Also, TVB had excellent documentary programs (series "Karavan", "Reflektor" and others) and quizzes. By 1970, the entire territory of Serbia was covered by the RTS signal. On 31 December 1971, TVB started broadcasting in PAL color system on its second network. A new AM (radio) broadcast equipment in Zvečka, Obrenovac, with 2000 kW transmitter was erected in 1976.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: After the political turmoil in the 1970s (against the "liberals") the program of RTB became more sterile, however, in the 1980s it reached the zenith.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: In 1989, preparation for the formation of the RTS system officially began. That same year, 3K TVB started broadcasting as the youth, alternative TV channel. Along with it, Radio 101 started broadcasting in Belgrade and Vojvodina. Radio 101 was the more commercial youth radio, carrying pop and turbo-folk hits. It was intended to complement the more alternative Belgrade 202.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: In 1990, a few regional studios (Niš, Kragujevac, Jagodina, Šabac) officially started broadcasting regional programming via a window in place of "Beogradska hronika".


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: In 1991, all public broadcasters within Serbia began the formation of the RTS network system by merging their stations and programming direction to RTB, which served as flagship of the RTS network.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: During the March 1991 anti-war demonstrations in Belgrade, the protesters issued a series of demands, one of which was the sacking of RTB's general director, Dušan Mitević. The Yugoslav government eventually relented and removed Mitević from his position at RTB. On 8 October 1991, four RTB journalists were killed on the Glina–Petrinja road, in central Croatia, while covering Yugoslavia's civil war.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: RTS was established in 1992 with the merger of RTB and regional networks Radio-Television Novi Sad and Radio-Television Priština into a true national network. All transmitters, relay stations, antennas and other television equipment once owned by these broadcasters were inherited by RTS. As Yugoslavia disintegrated, RTS's journalistic standards plummeted. During the Siege of Dubrovnik, RTS claimed that smoke rising from the city's Old Town was the result of automobile tires set on fire by locals. During the Siege of Sarajevo, RTS newscasts showed an image of Sarajevo from the 1980s, untouched, thereby downplaying the severity of the siege. As the wars dragged on, the Yugoslav government began terminating the employment of many dissenting journalists. By January 1993, nearly 1,300 RTS employees – amounting to one-third of the broadcaster's pre-war workforce – had been fired.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: RTS was active during the Kosovo War and the concurrent NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. On 20 April, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Wesley Clark, ordered that RTS was to be bombed off the air. NATO missiles struck RTS at 2:06 a.m on 23 April. Serbia's Minister of Information, Aleksandar Vučić, scheduled to appear on CNN's "Larry King Live" from RTS's headquarters at 2:30 a.m., narrowly escaped the bombing. Sixteen RTS employees were killed and an additional 16 were injured. The human rights organization Amnesty International condemned the attack and described it as a war crime. NATO officials stated that the alliance considered RTS a legitimate target because of its "biased and distorted coverage" of the war. The bombing temporarily forced RTS off the air, but it resumed broadcasting several hours later, and continued to do so for the rest of the conflict.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: Most of RTS's headquarters was reconstructed after the war, but part of it was left in ruins as a memorial to those killed. The victims of the bombing were later memorialized by the "Zašto?" (Why?) monument in Belgrade's Tašmajdan Park. In 2002, Dragoljub Milanović, the general manager of RTS, was sentenced to nine-and-a-half years' imprisonment for failing to evacuate the broadcaster's headquarters despite repeated threats by NATO officials that it would be bombed.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: After Milošević's removal from power, RTS underwent reconstruction in order to regain respect amongst much of its audience which the network had lost during the '90s. Particular emphasis was put on news programming which suffered greatly during the '90s. In 2006 RTS became the most viewed television network in Serbia and has retained this position since then. Early that year, RTS decided to shut down one of its television channels. "3K" (Treći kanal RTS-a) was a channel dedicated to the youth, which, however, became the main film, series and sports channel in the late 1990s and the early 2000s.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: In 2007, the BBC World Service Trust launched an extensive training programme at Serbia's national broadcaster. This 30-month project, which was funded by the European Union, provided extensive journalism, craft and management training to all levels of staff at the broadcaster.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: In 2008, RTS underwent major changes as it celebrated 50 years of existence. The network launched its digital network which uses DTT Digital terrestrial television via several DVB-T transmitters. It has also invested millions in new technology. The new high-definition television system was first put in place in May for the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest while on 26 November 2008, RTS began airing its new channel ‘'RTS Culture and Arts'’ which is a DTT-only channel, transmitted in 16:9 standard definition format, with stereo and 5.1 digital audio. During 2008 the networks web presentations was greatly improved. On 23 August 2008, the 50th anniversary of "Dnevnik" (the RTS news bulletin) was celebrated. A special edition of the 19:30 "Dnevnik" was aired with Mića Orlović, the first newsreader to host the news in Serbia, hosted the special addition helped by Dušanka Kalanj, the first female newsreader in Serbia. The theme of the evening's news included a reflection on the past 50 years a projection of the future as well as the news of the day. The weather was read out by Kamenko Katić, the first weather forecaster. All babies born on 23 August 2008, received a flat screen television set from RTS. On 9 September 2009, at 21:00 CET, RTS launched its first high definition channel – RTS HD.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: RTS was the host broadcaster of the semi-final and finals of the Eurovision Song Contest 2008. Serbia gained the rights to host the contest after Marija Šerifović's 2007 victory in Helsinki, Finland. The Eurovision Song Contest 2008 was held in Belgrade. RTS broadcast the event as usual (since 2004) on RTS1. The host couple were Jovana Janković and Željko Joksimović. The rating of the final of Eurovision was overwhelming with 4,560,000 people tuning in to watch making it the most watched event on Serbian television as well as on RTS.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: In 2011, RTS issued a written apology to the citizens of Serbia and former Yugoslavia for its actions during the regime of Slobodan Milošević and the break up of Yugoslavia. The letter apologises for the network's senseless reporting and the hurt it caused to the public. It vows "never to let history repeat itself."


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: On 23 August 2014, at the 56th anniversary of the broadcaster, RTS got a new visual identity: focusing on new on-screen logos introduced on 18 February for their terrestrial channels. At the same day, the watermarks changed themselves to fit into the 16:9 format.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: RTS has two TV centers: in addition to the main TV production center within RTS headquarters complex in the downtown Belgrade, there is also TV production center in Košutnjak (housing two largest studios: Studio 8 and Studio 9). RTS offers live programming on its website.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: News programmes are produced in Belgrade, however the network has a total of 25 news offices in the country. RTS also has its own correspondents and offices outside of Serbia in: Moscow, London, Brussels, Paris, Rome, Vienna, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Tokyo.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: RTS has the most watched news and current affairs programmes in the country, according to the AGB Nilsen Serbian ratings.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: The centerpiece of RTS news programming is the "Dnevnik" (English: Journal), which is the network's main news programme and is aired on RTS1. The "Dnevnik" bulletins are aired at 8:00 (runs for approximately 25 minutes), 12:00 during workweek and 13:00 Saturdays and Sundays (around 15 minutes, excluding Sports Review and Weather forecast), 19:30 (between 35 and 40 minutes) and at 23:00 (approximately 20 minutes). The flagship (evening) "Dnevnik" has been the most watched news programme in Serbia since 2003, averaging between 1.5–2 million viewers nightly.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: The RTS entertainment is largely based on local production of Serbian drama programmes, soaps and musical programmes. Recently RTS has started investing more in local drama and as a result has been rewarded with high ratings. An episode of the RTS drama "Ranjeni orao" aired on 15 January 2009, is the most watched scripted drama episode in Serbian broadcasting history with over 3 million viewers.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: RTS also broadcasts various world entertainment events as part of its entertainment programming including the Vienna New Year's Concert and Academy Awards ceremony. The network has transferred a lot of its cultural programming and documentaries, originally broadcast on RTS2, to the RTS3. The network holds rights to air major entertainment events such as the Eurovision Song Contest ad Junior Eurovision Song Contest. In 2008, RTS produced the 53rd Eurovision Song Contest.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: The following is a list of internationally created shows currently broadcast by RTS (as of October 2011):


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: RTS is a major player in Serbian sports broadcasting. Major sporting events are aired on RTS1, especially if a Serbian team or athlete is participating while all other sports broadcasting is aired on RTS2.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: The network has several shows which are specially dedicated to sports, aired on both RTS1 and RTS2. RTS broadcast its first Summer Olympic Games in 1996 (previously the Olympics were broadcast in Serbia through Yugoslav Radio Television, JRT) and has held broadcasting rights for both the Summer Olympic Games and Winter Olympic Games ever since. RTS also holds rights to broadcast the FIFA World Cup, UEFA European Championship, FIBA World Cup, EuroBasket, FIVB Men's World Championship, FIVB Women's World Championship, FIVB Volleyball World League, European Men's Handball Championship, European Water Polo Championship, IAAF World Championships in Athletics, European Athletics Championships, Davis Cup, Fed Cup, Wimbledon, Roland Garros, US Open, Australian Open, etc. It has exclusive rights to the Serbian Cup football matches.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: RTS has an archive of its TV programmes. In addition to 5000+ video tapes in the long obsolete quadruplex format, the archive contains tapes in C-type helical scan, U-matic, beta-SP and digital formats. Also, the archive contains an extensive collection of newsreels, short filmed stories, and feature films on 16 mm and 35 mm tapes.


title: Radio Television of Serbia

text: PGP-RTS is a music production company owned by the television network, starting with production in 1958 under the name PGP-RTB and used to be one of two largest record labels in the former Yugoslavia. Today, it is the third largest record label in Serbia (after Grand Production and City Records).


title: Japanese garden

text: Japanese literature on gardening goes back almost a thousand years, and several different styles of garden have developed, some with religious or philosophical implications. A characteristic of Japanese gardens is that they are designed to be seen from specific points. Some of the most significant different traditional styles of Japanese garden are the ("lake-spring-boat excursion garden"), which was imported from China during the Heian period (794–1185). These were designed to be seen from small boats on the central lake. No original examples of these survive, but they were replaced by the "paradise garden" associated with Pure Land Buddhism, with a Buddha shrine on an island in the lake. Later large gardens are often in the , or promenade garden style, designed to be seen from a path circulating around the garden, with fixed stopping points for viewing. Specialized styles, often small sections in a larger garden, include the moss garden, the dry garden with gravel and rocks, associated with Zen Buddhism, the or teahouse garden, designed to be seen only from a short pathway, and the , a very small urban garden.


title: Japanese garden

text: Most modern Japanese homes have little space for a garden, though the style of tiny gardens in passages and other spaces, as well as bonsai (in Japan always grown outside) and houseplants mitigates this, and domestic garden tourism is very important. The Japanese tradition has long been to keep a well-designed garden as near as possible to its original condition, and many famous gardens appear to have changed little over several centuries, apart from the inevitable turnover of plants, in a way that is extremely rare in the West.


title: Japanese garden

text: Awareness of the Japanese style of gardening reached the West near the end of the 19th century, and was enthusiastically received as part of the fashion for Japonisme, and as Western gardening taste had by then turned away from rigid geometry to a more naturalistic style, of which the Japanese style was an attractive variant. There were immediately popular in the UK, where the climate was similar and Japanese plants grew well. Japanese gardens, typically a section of a larger garden, continue to be popular in the West, and many typical Japanese garden plants, such as cherry trees and the many varieties of "Acer palmatum" or Japanese maple, are also used in all types of garden, giving a faint hint of the style to very many gardens.


title: Japanese garden

text: The ideas central to Japanese gardens were first introduced to Japan during the Asuka period (). Japanese merchants witnessed the gardens that were being built in China and brought many of the Chinese gardening techniques and styles back home.


title: Japanese garden

text: Japanese gardens first appeared on the island of Honshu, the large central island of Japan. Their aesthetic was influenced by the distinct characteristics of the Honshu landscape: rugged volcanic peaks, narrow valleys, mountain streams with waterfalls and cascades, lakes, and beaches of small stones. They were also influenced by the rich variety of flowers and different species of trees, particularly evergreen trees, on the islands, and by the four distinct seasons in Japan, including hot, wet summers and snowy winters.


title: Japanese garden

text: Japanese gardens have their roots in the national religion of Shinto, with its story of the creation of eight perfect islands, and of the , the lakes of the gods. Prehistoric Shinto shrines to the , the gods and spirits, are found on beaches and in forests all over the island. They often took the form of unusual rocks or trees marked with cords of rice fiber () and surrounded with white stones or pebbles, a symbol of purity. The white gravel courtyard became a distinctive feature of Shinto shrines, Imperial Palaces, Buddhist temples, and Zen gardens. Although its original meaning is somewhat obscure, one of the Japanese words for garden——came to mean a place that had been cleansed and purified in anticipation of the arrival of , and the Shinto reverence for great rocks, lakes, ancient trees, and other "dignitaries of nature" would exert an enduring influence on Japanese garden design.


title: Japanese garden

text: Japanese gardens were also strongly influenced by the Chinese philosophy of Daoism and Amida Buddhism, imported from China in or around 552 CE. Daoist legends spoke of five mountainous islands inhabited by the Eight Immortals, who lived in perfect harmony with nature. Each Immortal flew from his mountain home on the back of a crane. The islands themselves were located on the back of an enormous sea turtle. In Japan, the five islands of the Chinese legend became one island, called Horai-zen, or Mount Horai. Replicas of this legendary mountain, the symbol of a perfect world, are a common feature of Japanese gardens, as are rocks representing turtles and cranes.


title: Japanese garden

text: The earliest recorded Japanese gardens were the pleasure gardens of the Emperors and nobles. They are mentioned in several brief passages of the , the first chronicle of Japanese history, published in 720 CE. In spring 74 CE, the chronicle recorded: "The Emperor Keikō put a few carp into a pond, and rejoiced to see them morning and evening". The following year, "The Emperor launched a double-hulled boat in the pond of Ijishi at Ihare, and went aboard with his imperial concubine, and they feasted sumptuously together". In 486, the chronicle recorded that "The Emperor Kenzō went into the garden and feasted at the edge of a winding stream".


title: Japanese garden

text: Chinese gardens had a very strong influence on early Japanese gardens. In or around 552 CE, Buddhism was officially installed from China, via Korea, into Japan. Between 600 and 612 CE, the Japanese Emperor sent four legations to the Court of the Chinese Sui Dynasty. Between 630 and 838 CE, the Japanese court sent fifteen more legations to the court of the Tang Dynasty. These legations, with more than five hundred members each, included diplomats, scholars, students, Buddhist monks, and translators. They brought back Chinese writing, art objects, and detailed descriptions of Chinese gardens.


title: Japanese garden

text: In 612 CE, the Empress Suiko had a garden built with an artificial mountain, representing Shumi-Sen, or Mount Sumeru, reputed in Hindu and Buddhist legends to be located at the centre of the world. During the reign of the same Empress, one of her ministers, Soga no Umako, had a garden built at his palace featuring a lake with several small islands, representing the islands of the Eight Immortals famous in Chinese legends and Daoist philosophy. This Palace became the property of the Japanese Emperors, was named "The Palace of the Isles", and was mentioned several times in the , the "Collection of Countless Leaves", the oldest known collection of Japanese poetry.


title: Japanese garden

text: The Nara Period is named after its capital city Nara. The first authentically Japanese gardens were built in this city at the end of the 8th century. Shorelines and stone settings were naturalistic, different from the heavier, earlier continental mode of constructing pond edges. Two such gardens have been found at excavations, both of which were used for poetry-writing festivities. One of these gardens, the East Palace garden at Heijō Palace, Nara, has been faithfully reconstructed using the same location and even the original garden features that had been excavated. It appears from the small amount of literary and archaeological evidence available that the Japanese gardens of this time were modest versions of the Imperial gardens of the Tang Dynasty, with large lakes scattered with artificial islands and artificial mountains. Pond edges were constructed with heavy rocks as embankment. While these gardens had some Buddhist and Daoist symbolism, they were meant to be pleasure gardens, and places for festivals and celebrations.


title: Japanese garden

text: Recent archaeological excavations in the ancient capital of Nara have brought to light the remains of two 8th-century gardens associated with the Imperial Court, a pond and stream garden – the To-in – located within the precinct of the Imperial Palace and a stream garden – Kyuseki – found within the modern city. They may be modeled after Chinese gardens, but the rock formations found in the To-in would appear to have more in common with prehistoric Japanese stone monuments than with Chinese antecedents, and the natural, serpentine course of the Kyuseki stream garden may be far less formal than what existed in Tang China. Whatever their origins, both the To-in and Kyuseki clearly anticipate certain developments in later Japanese gardens.


title: Japanese garden

text: In 794 CE, at the beginning of the Heian period (794-1185 CE), the Japanese court moved its capital to Heian-kyō (present-day Kyoto). During this period, there were three different kinds of gardens: palace gardens and the gardens of nobles in the capital, the gardens of villas at the edge of the city, and the gardens of temples.


title: Japanese garden

text: The architecture of the palaces, residences and gardens in the Heian period followed Chinese practice. Houses and gardens were aligned on a north-south axis, with the residence to the north and the ceremonial buildings and main garden to the south, there were two long wings to the south, like the arms of an armchair, with the garden between them. The gardens featured one or more lakes connected by bridges and winding streams. The south garden of the imperial residences had a uniquely Japanese feature: a large empty area of white sand or gravel. The Emperor was the chief priest of Japan, and the white sand represented purity, and was a place where the gods could be invited to visit. The area was used for religious ceremonies and dances for the welcoming of the gods.


title: Japanese garden

text: The layout of the garden itself was strictly determined according to the principles of traditional Chinese geomancy, or Feng Shui. The first known book on the art of the Japanese garden, the ("Records of Garden Keeping"), written in the 11th century, said:


title: Japanese garden

text: The Imperial gardens of the Heian period were water gardens, where visitors promenaded in elegant lacquered boats, listening to music, viewing the distant mountains, singing, reading poetry, painting, and admiring the scenery. The social life in the gardens was memorably described in the classic Japanese novel "The Tale of Genji", written in about 1005 by Murasaki Shikibu, a lady-in-waiting to the Empress. The traces of one such artificial lake, Osawa no ike, near the Daikaku-ji temple in Kyoto, still can be seen. It was built by the Emperor Saga, who ruled from 809 to 823, and was said to be inspired by Dongting Lake in China.


title: Japanese garden

text: A scaled-down replica of the Kyoto Imperial Palace of 794, the Heian-jingū, was built in Kyoto in 1895 to celebrate the 1100th birthday of the city. The south garden is famous for its cherry blossom in spring, and for azaleas in the early summer. The west garden is known for its irises in June, and the large east garden lake recalls the leisurely boating parties of the 8th century. Near the end of the Heian period, a new garden architecture style appeared, created by the followers of Pure Land Buddhism. These were called "Paradise Gardens", built to represent the legendary Paradise of the West, where the Amida Buddha ruled. These were built by noblemen who wanted to assert their power and independence from the Imperial household, which was growing weaker.


title: Japanese garden

text: The best surviving example of a Paradise Garden is Byōdō-in in Uji, near Kyoto. It was originally the villa of Fujiwara Michinaga (966–1028), who married his daughters to the sons of the Emperor. After his death, his son transformed the villa into a temple, and in 1053 built the Hall of Phoenix, which still stands.


title: Japanese garden

text: The Hall is built in the traditional style of a Chinese Song Dynasty temple, on an island in the lake. It houses a gilded statue of the Amitābha Buddha, looking to the west. In the lake in front of the temple is a small island of white stones, representing Mount Horai, the home of the Eight Immortals of the Daoists, connected to the temple by a bridge, which symbolized the way to paradise. It was designed for mediation and contemplation, not as a pleasure garden. It was a lesson in Daoist and Buddhist philosophy created with landscape and architecture, and a prototype for future Japanese gardens.


title: Japanese garden

text: The weakness of the Emperors and the rivalry of feudal warlords resulted in two civil wars (1156 and 1159), which destroyed most of Kyoto and its gardens. The capital moved to Kamakura, and then in 1336 back to the Muromachi quarter of Kyoto. The Emperors ruled in name only; real power was held by a military governor, the . During this period, the Government reopened relations with China, which had been broken off almost three hundred years earlier. Japanese monks went again to study in China, and Chinese monks came to Japan, fleeing the Mongol invasions. The monks brought with them a new form of Buddhism, called simply Zen, or "meditation". Japan enjoyed a renaissance in religion, in the arts, and particularly in gardens. The term "Zen garden" appears in English writing in the 1930s for the first time, in Japan , or comes up even later, from the 1950s. It applies to a Song China-inspired composition technique derived from ink-painting. The composition or construction of such small, scenic gardens have no relation to religious Zen.


title: Japanese garden

text: Many famous temple gardens were built early in this period, including Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion, built in 1398, and Ginkaku-ji, the Silver Pavilion, built in 1482. In some ways they followed Zen principles of spontaneity, extreme simplicity and moderation, but in other ways they were traditional Chinese Song-Dynasty Temples; the upper floors of the Golden Pavilion were covered with gold leaf, and they were surrounded by traditional water gardens.


title: Japanese garden

text: The most notable garden style invented in this period was the Zen garden, dry garden, or Japanese rock garden. One of the finest examples, and one of the best-known of all Japanese gardens is Ryōan-ji in Kyoto. This garden is just wide and long, composed of white sand carefully raked to suggest water, and fifteen rocks carefully arranged, like small islands. It is meant to be seen from a seated position on the porch of the residence the abbot of the monastery. There have been many debates about what the rocks are supposed to represent, but, as garden historian Gunter Nitschke wrote, "The garden at Ryōan-ji does not symbolize. It does not have the value of representing any natural beauty that can be found in the world, real or mythical. I consider it as an abstract composition of "natural" objects in space, a composition whose function is to incite mediation."


title: Japanese garden

text: Several of the famous Zen gardens of Kyoto were the work of one man, Musō Soseki (1275–1351). He was a monk, a ninth-generation descendant of the Emperor Uda and a formidable court politician, writer and organizer, who armed and financed ships to open trade with China, and founded an organization called the Five Mountains, made up of the most powerful Zen monasteries in Kyoto. He was responsible for the building of the zen gardens of Nanzen-ji, Saihō-ji (the Moss Garden), and Tenryū-ji.


title: Japanese garden

text: The Momoyama period was short, just 32 years, and was largely occupied with the wars between the , the leaders of the feudal Japanese clans. The new centers of power and culture in Japan were the fortified castles of the , around which new cities and gardens appeared. The characteristic garden of the period featured one or more ponds or lakes next to the main residence, or , not far from the castle. These gardens were meant to be seen from above, from the castle or residence. The had developed the skills of cutting and lifting large rocks to build their castles, and they had armies of soldiers to move them. The artificial lakes were surrounded by beaches of small stones and decorated with arrangements of boulders, with natural stone bridges and stepping stones. The gardens of this period combined elements of a promenade garden, meant to be seen from the winding garden paths, with elements of the Zen garden, such as artificial mountains, meant to be contemplated from a distance.


title: Japanese garden

text: The most famous garden of this kind, built in 1592, is situated near the Tokushima castle on the island of Shikoku. Its notable features include a bridge long made of two natural stones.


title: Japanese garden

text: Another notable garden of the period still existing is Sanbō-in, rebuilt by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1598 to celebrate the festival of the cherry blossom and to recreate the splendor of an ancient garden. Three hundred garden-builders worked on the project, digging the lakes and installing seven hundred boulders in a space of . The garden was designed to be seen from the veranda of the main pavilion, or from the "Hall of the Pure View", located on a higher elevation in the garden.


title: Japanese garden

text: In the east of the garden, on a peninsula, is an arrangement of stones designed to represent the mythical Mount Horai. A wooden bridge leads to an island representing a crane, and a stone bridge connects this island to another representing a tortoise, which is connected by an earth-covered bridge back to the peninsula. The garden also includes a waterfall at the foot of a wooded hill. One characteristic of the Momoyama period garden visible at Sanbō-in is the close proximity of the buildings to the water.


title: Japanese garden

text: The Momoyama period also saw the development of (tea ceremony), the (teahouse), and the (tea garden). Tea had been introduced to Japan from China by Buddhist monks, who used it as a stimulant to keep awake during long periods of meditation. The first great tea master, Sen no Rikyū (1522–1591), defined in the most minute detail the appearance and rules of the tea house and tea garden, following the principle of "sober refinement and calm".


title: Japanese garden

text: Following Sen no Rikyū's rules, the teahouse was supposed to suggest the cottage of a hermit-monk. It was a small and very plain wooden structure, often with a thatched roof, with just enough room inside for two tatami mats. The only decoration allowed inside a scroll with an inscription and a branch of a tree. It did not have a view of the garden.


title: Japanese garden

text: The garden was also small, and constantly watered to be damp and green. It usually had a cherry tree or elm to bring color in the spring, but otherwise did not have bright flowers or exotic plants that would distract the attention of the visitor. A path led to the entrance of the teahouse. Along the path was waiting bench for guests and a privy, and a stone water-basin near the teahouse, where the guests rinsed their hands and mouths before entering the tea room through a small, square door called , or "crawling-in entrance", which requires bending low to pass through. Sen no Rikyū decreed that the garden should be left unswept for several hours before the ceremony, so that leaves would be scattered in a natural way on the path.


title: Japanese garden

text: During the Edo period, power was won and consolidated by the Tokugawa clan, who became the , and moved the capital to Edo, which became Tokyo. The Emperor remained in Kyoto as a figurehead leader, with authority only over cultural and religious affairs. While the political center of Japan was now Tokyo, Kyoto remained the cultural capital, the center for religion and art. The provided the Emperors with little power, but with generous subsidies for building gardens.


title: Japanese garden

text: The Edo period saw the widespread use of a new kind of Japanese architecture, called , which means literally "building according to chosen taste". The term first appeared at the end of the 16th century referring to isolated tea houses. It originally applied to the simple country houses of samurai warriors and Buddhist monks, but in the Edo period it was used in every kind of building, from houses to palaces.


title: Japanese garden

text: The style was used in the most famous garden of the period, the Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto. The buildings were built in a very simple, undecorated style, a prototype for future Japanese architecture. They opened up onto the garden, so that the garden seemed entirely part of the building; whether the visitor was inside or outside of the building, they would ideally always feel they were in the center of nature. The garden buildings were arranged so that were always seen from a diagonal, rather than straight on. This arrangement had the poetic name , which meant literally "a formation of wild geese in flight".


title: Japanese garden

text: Most of the gardens of the Edo period were either promenade gardens or dry rock Zen gardens, and they were usually much larger than earlier gardens. The promenade gardens of the period made extensive use of borrowed scenery (). Vistas of distant mountains are integrated in the design of the garden; or, even better, building the garden on the side of a mountain and using the different elevations to attain views over landscapes outside the garden. Edo promenade gardens were often composed of a series of , or "famous views", similar to postcards. These could be imitations of famous natural landscapes, like Mount Fuji, or scenes from Taoist or Buddhist legends, or landscapes illustrating verses of poetry. Unlike Zen gardens, they were designed to portray nature as it appeared, not the internal rules of nature.


title: Japanese garden

text: The Meiji period saw the modernization of Japan, and the re-opening of Japan to the West. Many of the old private gardens had been abandoned and left to ruin. In 1871, a new law transformed many gardens from the earlier Edo period into public parks, preserving them. Garden designers, confronted with ideas from the West experimented with western styles, leading to such gardens as Kyu-Furukawa Gardens, or Shinjuku Gyoen. Others, more in the north of Japan kept to Edo period blueprint design. A third wave was the naturalistic style of gardens, invented by captains of industry and powerful politicians like Aritomo Yamagata. Many gardeners soon were designing and constructing gardens catering to this taste. One of the gardens well-known for his technical perfection in this style was Ogawa Jihei VII, also known as Ueji.


title: Japanese garden

text: During the Shōwa period (1926–1989), many traditional gardens were built by businessmen and politicians. After World War II, the principal builders of gardens were no longer private individuals, but banks, hotels, universities and government agencies. The Japanese garden became an extension of the landscape architecture with the building. New gardens were designed by landscape architects, and often used modern building materials such as concrete.


title: Japanese garden

text: Some modern Japanese gardens, such as Tōfuku-ji, designed by Mirei Shigemori, were inspired by classical models. Other modern gardens have taken a much more radical approach to the traditions. One example is Awaji Yumebutai, a garden on the island of Awaji, in the Seto Inland Sea of Japan, designed by Tadao Ando. It was built as part of a resort and conference center on a steep slope, where land had been stripped away to make an island for an airport.


title: Japanese garden

text: Japanese gardens are distinctive in their symbolism of nature, with traditional Japanese gardens being very different in style from occidental gardens: "Western gardens are typically optimised for visual appeal while Japanese gardens are modelled with spiritual and philosophical ideas in mind." Japanese gardens are conceived as a representation of a natural setting, tying in to Japanese connections between the land and Shinto spiritualism, where spirits are commonly found in nature; as such, Japanese gardens tend to incorporate natural materials, with the aim of creating a space that captures the beauties of nature in a realistic manner.


title: Japanese garden

text: Traditional Japanese gardens can be categorized into three types: (hill gardens), (dry gardens) and gardens (tea gardens).


title: Japanese garden

text: The small space given to create these gardens usually poses a challenge for the gardeners. Due to the absolute importance of the arrangement of natural rocks and trees, finding the right material becomes highly selective. The serenity of a Japanese landscape and the simple but deliberate structures of the Japanese gardens are a unique quality, with the two most important principles of garden design being "scaled reduction and symbolization".


title: Japanese garden

text: Japanese gardens always feature water, either physically with a pond or stream, or symbolically, represented by white sand in a dry rock garden. In Buddhist symbolism, water and stone are thought of as yin and yang, two opposites that complement and complete each other. A traditional garden will usually have an irregular-shaped pond or, in larger gardens, two or more ponds connected by a channel or stream, and a cascade, a miniature version of Japan's famous mountain waterfalls.


title: Japanese garden

text: In traditional gardens, the ponds and streams are carefully placed according to Buddhist geomancy, the art of putting things in the place most likely to attract good fortune. The rules for the placement of water were laid out in the first manual of Japanese gardens, the , in the 11th century. According to the , water should enter the garden from the east or southeast and flow toward the west, because the east is the home of the Green Dragon (), an ancient Chinese divinity adopted in Japan, and the west is the home of the White Tiger, the divinity of the east. Water flowing from east to west will carry away evil, and the owner of the garden will be healthy and have a long life. According to the , another favorable arrangement is for the water to flow from north, which represents water in Buddhist cosmology, to the south, which represents fire, which are opposites (yin and yang) and therefore will bring good luck.


title: Japanese garden

text: The recommends several possible miniature landscapes using lakes and streams: the "ocean style", which features rocks that appear to have been eroded by waves, a sandy beach, and pine trees; the "broad river style", recreating the course of a large river, winding like a serpent; the "marsh pond" style, a large still pond with aquatic plants; the "mountain torrent style", with many rocks and cascades; and the "rose letters" style, an austere landscape with small, low plants, gentle relief and many scattered flat rocks.


title: Japanese garden

text: Traditional Japanese gardens have small islands in the lakes. In sacred temple gardens, there is usually an island which represents Mount Penglai or Mount Hōrai, the traditional home of the Eight Immortals.


title: Japanese garden

text: The describes different kinds of artificial island which can be created in lakes, including the "mountainous island", made up of jagged vertical rocks mixed with pine trees, surrounded by a sandy beach; the "rocky island", composed of "tormented" rocks appearing to have been battered by sea waves, along with small, ancient pine trees with unusual shapes; the "cloud island", made of white sand in the rounded white forms of a cumulus cloud; and the "misty island", a low island of sand, without rocks or trees.


title: Japanese garden

text: A cascade or waterfall is an important element in Japanese gardens, a miniature version of the waterfalls of Japanese mountain streams. The describes seven kinds of cascades. It notes that if possible, a cascade should face toward the moon and should be designed to capture the moon's reflection in the water. It is also mentioned in that cascades benefit from being located in such a manner that they are half-hidden in shadows.


title: Japanese garden

text: Rock, sand and gravel are an essential feature of the Japanese garden. A vertical rock may represent Mount Horai, the legendary home of the Eight Immortals, or Mount Sumeru of Buddhist teaching, or a carp jumping from the water. A flat rock might represent the earth. Sand or gravel can represent a beach, or a flowing river. Rocks and water also symbolize yin and yang ( and in Japanese) in Buddhist philosophy; the hard rock and soft water complement each other, and water, though soft, can wear away rock.


title: Japanese garden

text: Rough volcanic rocks () are usually used to represent mountains or as stepping stones. Smooth and round sedimentary rocks () are used around lakes or as stepping stones. Hard metamorphic rocks are usually placed by waterfalls or streams. Rocks are traditionally classified as tall vertical, low vertical, arching, reclining, or flat. Rocks should vary in size and color but from each other, but not have bright colors, which would lack subtlety. Rocks with strata or veins should have the veins all going in the same direction, and the rocks should all be firmly planted in the earth, giving an appearance of firmness and permanence. Rocks are arranged in careful compositions of two, three, five or seven rocks, with three being the most common. In a three-arrangement, a tallest rock usually represents heaven, the shortest rock is the earth, and the medium-sized rock is humanity, the bridge between heaven and earth. Sometimes one or more rocks, called ("nameless" or "discarded"), are placed in seemingly random locations in the garden, to suggest spontaneity, though their placement is carefully chosen.


title: Japanese garden

text: In ancient Japan, sand () and gravel () were used around Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Later it was used in the Japanese rock garden or Zen Buddhist gardens to represent water or clouds. White sand represented purity, but sand could also be gray, brown or bluish-black.


title: Japanese garden

text: Selection and subsequent placement of rocks was and still is a central concept in creating an aesthetically pleasing garden by the Japanese. During the Heian period, the concept of placing stones as symbolic representations of islands – whether physically existent or nonexistent – began to take hold, and can be seen in the Japanese word , which is of "particular importance[...] because the word contained the meaning 'island. Furthermore, the principle of , or "obeying (or following) the request of an object", was, and still is, a guiding principle of Japanese rock design that suggests "the arrangement of rocks be dictated by their innate characteristics". The specific placement of stones in Japanese gardens to symbolically represent islands (and later to include mountains), is found to be an aesthetically pleasing property of traditional Japanese gardens.


title: Japanese garden

text: Rock placement is a general "aim to portray nature in its essential characteristics" – the essential goal of all Japanese gardens. Furthermore, Heyd states:


title: Japanese garden

text: Such attention to detail can be seen at places such as Midori Falls in Kenroku-en Garden in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, as the rocks at the waterfall's base were changed at various times by six different .


title: Japanese garden

text: In Heian-period Japanese gardens, built in the Chinese model, buildings occupied as much or more space than the garden. The garden was designed to be seen from the main building and its verandas, or from small pavilions built for that purpose. In later gardens, the buildings were less visible. Rustic teahouses were hidden in their own little gardens, and small benches and open pavilions along the garden paths provided places for rest and contemplation. In later garden architecture, walls of houses and teahouses could be opened to provide carefully framed views of the garden. The garden and the house became one.


title: Japanese garden

text: Bridges first appeared in the Japanese garden during the Heian period. At the Byōdō-in garden in Kyoto, a wooden bridge connects the Phoenix pavilion with a small island of stones, representing the Mount Penglai or Mount Horai, the island home of the Eight Immortals of Daoist teaching, The bridge symbolized the path to paradise and immortality.


title: Japanese garden

text: Bridges could be made of stone (), or of wood, or made of logs with earth on top, covered with moss (); they could be either arched () or flat (). Sometimes if they were part of a temple garden, they were painted red, following the Chinese tradition, but for the most part they were unpainted.


title: Japanese garden

text: During the Edo period, when large promenade gardens became popular, streams and winding paths were constructed, with a series of bridges, usually in a rustic stone or wood style, to take visitors on a tour of the scenic views of the garden.


title: Japanese garden

text: Japanese date back to the Nara period and the Heian period. Originally they were located only at Buddhist temples, where they lined the paths and approaches to the temple, but in the Heian period they began to be used at Shinto shrines as well. According to tradition, during the Momoyama period they were introduced to the tea garden by the first great tea masters, and in later gardens they were used purely for decoration.


title: Japanese garden

text: In its complete and original form, a , like the pagoda, represents the five elements of Buddhist cosmology. The piece touching the ground represents , the earth; the next section represents , or water; or fire, is represented by the section encasing the lantern's light or flame, while (air) and (void or spirit) are represented by the last two sections, top-most and pointing towards the sky. The segments express the idea that after death our physical bodies will go back to their original, elemental form.


title: Japanese garden

text: Stone water basins () were originally placed in gardens for visitors to wash their hands and mouth before the tea ceremony. The water is provided to the basin by a bamboo pipe, or , and they usually have a wooden ladle for drinking the water. In tea gardens, the basin was placed low to the ground, so the drinker had to bend over to get water.


title: Japanese garden

text: Nothing in a Japanese garden is natural or left to chance; each plant is chosen according to aesthetic principles, either to hide undesirable sights, to serve as a backdrop to certain garden features, or to create a picturesque scene. Trees are carefully chosen and arranged for their autumn colors. Moss is often used to suggest that the garden is ancient. Flowers are also carefully chosen by their season of flowering. Formal flowerbeds are rare in older gardens, but more common in modern gardens. Some plants are chosen for their religious symbolism, such as the lotus, sacred in Buddhist teachings, or the pine, which represents longevity.


title: Japanese garden

text: The trees are carefully trimmed to provide attractive scenes, and to prevent them from blocking other views of the garden. Their growth is also controlled, in a technique called , to give them more picturesque shapes, and to make them look more ancient. It has been suggested that the characteristic shape of pruned Japanese garden trees resemble trees found naturally in savannah landscapes. This resemblance has been used to motivate the so-called Savannah hypothesis. Trees are sometimes constrained to bend, in order to provide shadows or better reflections in the water. Very old pine trees are often supported by wooden crutches, or their branches are held by cords, to keep them from breaking under the weight of snow.


title: Japanese garden

text: In the late 16th century, a new art was developed in the Japanese garden; that of , the technique of trimming bushes into balls or rounded shapes which imitate waves. According to tradition this art was developed by Kobori Enshū (1579–1647), and it was most frequently practiced on azalea bushes. It was similar to the topiary gardens made in Europe at the same time, except that European topiary gardens tried to make trees look like geometric solid objects, while sought to make bushes look as if they were almost liquid, or in flowing natural shapes. It created an artistic play of light on the surface of the bush, and, according to garden historian Michel Baridon, "it also brought into play the sense of 'touching things' which even today succeeds so well in Japanese design."


title: Japanese garden

text: The most common trees and plants found in Japanese gardens are the azalea (), the camellia (), the oak (), the elm (), the Japanese apricot (), cherry (), maple (), the willow (), the ginkgo (), the Japanese cypress (), the Japanese cedar (), pine (), and bamboo ().


title: Japanese garden

text: The use of fish, particularly (colored carp), or goldfish as a decorative element in gardens was borrowed from the Chinese garden. Goldfish were developed in China more than a thousand years ago by selectively breeding Prussian carp for color mutations. By the Song dynasty (960–1279), yellow, orange, white and red-and-white colorations had been developed. Goldfish were introduced to Japan in the 16th century. Koi were developed from common carp ("Cyprinus carpio") in Japan in the 1820s. Koi are domesticated common carp that are selected or culled for color; they are not a different species, and will revert to the original coloration within a few generations if allowed to breed freely. In addition to fish, turtles are kept in some gardens. Natural environments in the gardens offer habitats that attract wild animals; frogs and birds are notable as they contribute with a pleasant soundscape.


title: Japanese garden

text: The early Japanese gardens largely followed the Chinese model, but gradually Japanese gardens developed their own principles and aesthetics. These were spelled out by a series of landscape gardening manuals, beginning with in the Heian Period (794–1185). The principles of sacred gardens, such as the gardens of Zen Buddhist temples, were different from those of pleasure or promenade gardens; for example, Zen Buddhist gardens were designed to be seen, while seated, from a platform with a view of the whole garden, without entering it, while promenade gardens were meant to be seen by walking through the garden and stopping at a series of view points. However, they often contain common elements and used the same techniques.


title: Japanese garden

text: According to garden historians David and Michigo Young, at the heart of the Japanese garden is the principle that a garden is a work of art. "Though inspired by nature, it is an interpretation rather than a copy; it should appear to be natural, but it is not wild."


title: Japanese garden

text: Landscape gardener Seyemon Kusumoto wrote that the Japanese generate "the best of nature's handiwork in a limited space".


title: Japanese garden

text: There has been mathematical analysis of some traditional Japanese garden designs. These designs avoid contrasts, symmetries and groupings that would create points which dominate visual attention. Instead, they create scenes in which visual salience is evenly distributed across the field of view. Stand-out colours, textures, objects, and groups are avoided. The size of objects, groupings, and the spacings between them are arranged to be self-similar at multiple spatial scales; that is, they produce similar patterns when scaled up or down (zoomed in or out). This property is also seen in fractals and many natural scenes. This fractal-like self-similarity may be extended all the way down to the scale of surface textures (such as those of rocks and moss lawns). These textures are considered to express a aesthetic.


title: Japanese garden

text: Japanese gardens during the Heian period were modeled upon Chinese gardens, but by the Edo period there were distinct differences.


title: Japanese garden

text: The "chisen-shoyū-teien" ("lake-spring-boat excursion garden") was imported from China during the Heian period (794–1185). It is also called the "shinden-zukuri" style, after the architectural style of the main building. It featured a large, ornate residence with two long wings reaching south to a large lake and garden. Each wing ended in a pavilion from which guests could enjoy the views of the lake. Visitors made tours of the lake in small boats. These gardens had large lakes with small islands, where musicians played during festivals and ceremonies worshippers could look across the water at the Buddha. No original gardens of this period remain, but reconstructions can be seen at Heian-jingū and Daikaku-ji temple in Kyoto.


title: Japanese garden

text: The Paradise Garden appeared in the late Heian period, created by nobles belonging to the Amida Buddhism sect. They were meant to symbolize Paradise or the Pure Land ("Jōdo"), where the Buddha sat on a platform contemplating a lotus pond. These gardens featured a lake island called Nakajima, where the Buddha hall was located, connected to the shore by an arching bridge. The most famous surviving example is the garden of the Phoenix Hall of Byōdō-in Temple, built in 1053, in Uji, near Kyoto. Other examples are Jōruri-ji temple in Kyoto, Enro-ji temple in Nara Prefecture, the Hokongoin in Kyoto, Mōtsū-ji Temple in Hiraizumi, and Shiramizu Amidado Garden in Iwaki City.


title: Japanese garden

text: Karesansui gardens (枯山水) or Japanese rock gardens, became popular in Japan in the 14th century thanks to the work of a Buddhist monk, Musō Soseki (1275–1351) who built zen gardens at the five major monasteries in Kyoto. These gardens have white sand or raked gravel in place of water, carefully arranged rocks, and sometimes rocks and sand covered with moss. Their purpose is to facilitate meditation, and they are meant to be viewed while seated on the porch of the residence of the "hōjō", the abbot of the monastery. The most famous example is Ryōan-ji temple in Kyoto.


title: Japanese garden

text: The tea garden was created during the Muromachi period (1333–1573) and Momoyama period (1573–1600) as a setting for the Japanese tea ceremony, or "chanoyu". The style of garden takes its name from the "roji", or path to the teahouse, which is supposed to inspire the visitor to meditation to prepare him for the ceremony. There is an outer garden, with a gate and covered arbor where guests wait for the invitation to enter. They then pass through a gate to the inner garden, where they wash their hands and rinse their mouth, as they would before entering a Shinto shrine, before going into the teahouse itself. The path is always kept moist and green, so it will look like a remote mountain path, and there are no bright flowers that might distract the visitor from his meditation. Early teahouses had no windows, but later teahouses have a wall which can be opened for a view of the garden.


title: Japanese garden

text: Promenade or stroll gardens (landscape gardens in the go-round style) appeared in Japan during the Edo period (1600–1854), at the villas of nobles or warlords. These gardens were designed to complement the houses in the new style of architecture, which were modeled after the teahouse. These gardens were meant to be seen by following a path clockwise around the lake from one carefully composed scene to another. These gardens used two techniques to provide interest: , which took advantage of views of scenery outside the garden such as mountains or temples, incorporating them into the view so the garden looked larger than it really was, and , or "hide-and-reveal", which used winding paths, fences, bamboo and buildings to hide the scenery so the visitor would not see it until he was at the best view point.


title: Japanese garden

text: Edo period gardens also often feature recreations of famous scenery or scenes inspired by literature; Suizen-ji Jōju-en Garden in Kumamoto has a miniature version of Mount Fuji, and Katsura Villa in Kyoto has a miniature version of the Ama-no-hashidate sandbar in Miyazu Bay, near Kyoto. The Rikugi-en Garden in Tokyo creates small landscapes inspired by eighty-eight famous Japanese poems.


title: Japanese garden

text: Small gardens were originally found in the interior courtyards ("naka-niwa", "inner garden") of Heian period palaces, and were designed to give a glimpse of nature and some privacy to the residents of the rear side of the building. They were as small as one "tsubo", or about 3.3 square meters, whence the name "tsubo-niwa". During the Edo period, merchants began building small gardens in the space behind their shops, which faced the street, and their residences, located at the rear. These tiny gardens were meant to be seen, not entered, and usually had a stone lantern, a water basin, stepping stones and a few plants. Today, "tsubo-niwa" are found in many Japanese residences, hotels, restaurants, and public buildings. A good example from the Meiji period is found in the villa of Murin-an in Kyoto. Totekiko is a famous courtyard rock garden.


title: Japanese garden

text: A hermitage garden is a small garden usually built by a samurai or government official who wanted to retire from public life and devote himself to study or meditation. It is attached to a rustic house, and approached by a winding path, which suggests it is deep in a forest. It may have a small pond, a Japanese rock garden, and the other features of traditional gardens, in miniature, designed to create tranquility and inspiration. An example is the Shisen-dō garden in Kyoto, built by a bureaucrat and scholar exiled by the shogun in the 17th century. It is now a Buddhist temple.


title: Japanese garden

text: The first manual of Japanese gardening was the "Sakuteiki" ("Records of Garden Making"), probably written in the late eleventh century by Tachibana no Tohshitsuna (1028–1094). Citing even older Chinese sources, it explains how to organize the garden, from the placement of rocks and streams to the correct depth of ponds and height of cascades. While it was based on earlier Chinese garden principles, it also expressed ideas which were unique to Japanese gardens, such as islands, beaches and rock formations imitating Japanese maritime landscapes.


title: Japanese garden

text: Besides giving advice, "Sakuteiki" also gives dire warnings of what happens if the rules are not followed; the author warns that if a rock that in nature was in a horizontal position is stood upright in a garden, it will bring misfortune to the owner of the garden. And, if a large rock pointed toward the north or west is placed near a gallery, the owner of the garden will be forced to leave before a year passes.


title: Japanese garden

text: Another influential work about the Japanese garden, bonseki, bonsai and related arts was "Rhymeprose on a Miniature Landscape Garden" (around 1300) by the Zen monk Kokan Shiren, which explained how meditation on a miniature garden purified the senses and the mind and led to understanding of the correct relationship between man and nature.


title: Japanese garden

text: Other influential garden manuals which helped to define the aesthetics of the Japanese garden are "Senzui Narabi ni Yagyo no Zu" (Illustrations for Designing Mountain, Water and Hillside Field Landscapes), written in the fifteenth century, and "Tsukiyama Teizoden" (Building Mountains and Making Gardens), from the 18th century. The tradition of Japanese gardening was historically passed down from "sensei" to apprentice. The opening words of "Illustrations for designing mountain, water and hillside field landscapes" (1466) are "If you have not received the oral transmissions, you must not make gardens" and its closing admonition is "You must never show this writing to outsiders. You must keep it secret".


title: Japanese garden

text: Gardens were often the subject of poems during the Heian period. A poem in one anthology from the period, the "Kokin-Shu", described the "Kiku-shima", or island of chrystanthemums, found in the Osawa pond in the great garden of the period called "Saga-in".


title: Japanese garden

text: Another poem of the Heian period, in the "Hyakunin isshu," described a cascade of rocks, which simulated a waterfall, in the same garden:


title: Japanese garden

text: In Japanese culture, garden-making is a high art, equal to the arts of calligraphy and ink painting. Gardens are considered three-dimensional textbooks of Daoism and Zen Buddhism. Sometimes the lesson is very literal; the garden of Saihō-ji featured a pond shaped like the Japanese character "shin" (心) or "xīn" in Chinese, the heart-spirit of Chinese philosophy, the newspaper character is 心 but it's the full cursive, the "sousho" style (草書) for "shin" that would be used; "sousho", this well-named "grass writing", would be appropriate for gardening purpose indeed, for in cursive writing the character shapes change depending on the context and of course, since it is cursive, depending on the person -that is to say that the character would be done in a single pencil stroke, it would match the state of mind and the context rather than the newspaper print.


title: Japanese garden

text: However, usually the lessons are contained in the arrangements of the rocks, the water and the plants. For example, the lotus flower has a particular message; Its roots are in the mud at the bottom of the pond, symbolizing the misery of the human condition, but its flower is pure white, symbolizing the purity of spirit that can be achieved by following the teachings of the Buddha.


title: Japanese garden

text: The Japanese rock gardens were intended to be intellectual puzzles for the monks who lived next to them to study and solve. They followed the same principles as the "suiboku-ga", the black-and-white Japanese inks paintings of the same period, which, according to Zen Buddhist principles, tried to achieve the maximum effect using the minimum essential elements.


title: Japanese garden

text: One painter who influenced the Japanese garden was Josetsu (1405–1423), a Chinese Zen monk who moved to Japan and introduced a new style of ink-brush painting, moving away from the romantic misty landscapes of the earlier period, and using asymmetry and areas of white space, similar to the white space created by sand in zen gardens, to set apart and highlight a mountain or tree branch or other element of his painting. He became chief painter of the Shogun and influenced a generation of painters and garden designers.


title: Japanese garden

text: Japanese gardens also follow the principles of perspective of Japanese landscape painting, which feature a close-up plane, an intermediate plane, and a distant plane. The empty space between the different planes has a great importance, and is filled with water, moss, or sand. The garden designers used various optical tricks to give the garden the illusion of being larger than it really is, by borrowing of scenery ("shakkei"), employing distant views outside the garden, or using miniature trees and bushes to create the illusion that they are far away.


title: Japanese garden

text: The Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of the government of Japan designates the most notable of the nation's scenic beauty as Special Places of Scenic Beauty, under the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties. As of March 2007, 29 sites are listed, more than a half of which are Japanese gardens (boldface entries specify World Heritage Sites):


title: Japanese garden

text: However, the Education Minister is not eligible to have jurisdiction over any imperial property. These two gardens, administered by Imperial Household Agency, are also considered to be great masterpieces.


title: Japanese garden

text: The aesthetic of Japanese gardens was introduced to the English-speaking world by Josiah Conder's "Landscape Gardening in Japan" (Kelly & Walsh, 1893). Conder was a British architect who had worked for the Japanese government and other clients in Japan from 1877 until his death. The book was published when the general trend of Japonisme, or Japanese influence in the arts of the West, was already well-established, and sparked the first Japanese gardens in the West. A second edition was required in 1912. Initially these were mostly sections of large private gardens, but as the style grew in popularity, many Japanese gardens were, and continue to be, added to public parks and gardens. Conder's principles have sometimes proved hard to follow:


title: Japanese garden

text: Samuel Newsom's "Japanese Garden Construction" (1939) offered Japanese aesthetic as a corrective in the construction of rock gardens, which owed their quite separate origins in the West to the mid-19th century desire to grow alpines in an approximation of Alpine scree.


title: Japanese garden

text: According to the Garden History Society, Japanese landscape gardener Seyemon Kusumoto was involved in the development of around 200 gardens in the UK. In 1937 he exhibited a rock garden at the Chelsea Flower Show, and worked on the Burngreave Estate at Bognor Regis, and also on a Japanese garden at Cottered in Hertfordshire. The lush courtyards at Du Cane Court – an art deco block of flats in Balham, London, built between 1935 and 1938 – were designed by Kusumoto. All four courtyards there may have originally contained ponds. Only one survives, and this is stocked with koi. There are also several stone lanterns, which are meant to symbolise the illumination of one's path through life; similarly, the paths through the gardens are not straight. Japanese maple, Japanese anemone, cherry trees, evergreens, and bamboo are other typical features of Du Cane Court's gardens.


title: Japanese garden

text: According to David A. Slawson, many of the Japanese gardens that are recreated in the US are of "museum-piece quality". He also writes, however, that as the gardens have been introduced into the Western world, they have become more Americanized, decreasing their natural beauty.


title: Plan B (2021 film)

text: Plan B is a 2021 American coming-of-age comedy film directed by Natalie Morales from a screenplay by Prathi Srinivasan and Joshua Levy. The film stars Victoria Moroles and Kuhoo Verma. It is titled after the eponymous brand of emergency contraceptive, which plays a significant role in the films plot.


title: Plan B (2021 film)

text: In South Dakota, Sunny, a sheltered Indian teenager, is pressured into throwing a party by her rebellious, outgoing friend Lupe. Though she fears disobeying her mother — who is out of town on a business trip — she agrees in the hopes of impressing and seducing Hunter, her crush. After seeing Hunter leave the party with the more popular Emma, however, she winds up having sex with her friend Kyle, a somewhat eccentric devout Christian — both almost immediately realize the encounter was a mistake.


title: Plan B (2021 film)

text: The next morning, Sunny informs Lupe that she has lost her virginity, but does not say whom to, leading Lupe to believe that she had sex with Hunter. In the bathroom, she is horrified to discover that she never removed the condom Kyle used during intercourse, fearing that she could become pregnant. Informing Lupe, the two set out to the local pharmacy to get a Plan B pill, but are denied. Following Lupe's suggestion, they decide their best option is to drive to the nearest Planned Parenthood — located in Rapid City — using Sunny's mom's car.