A friend asked me to answer this question: What is the full name of the person who won the 8th Award for the Promotion of Traditional Japanese Culture?, using the article: A number of performers and groups, including several early leaders, have been recognized for their contributions to taiko performance. Daihachi Oguchi was best known for developing kumi-daiko performance. Oguchi founded the first kumi-daiko group called Osuwa Daiko in 1951, and facilitated the popularization of taiko performance groups in Japan.Seido Kobayashi is the leader of the Tokyo-based taiko group Oedo Sukeroku Taiko as of December 2014. Kobayashi founded the group in 1959 and was the first group to tour professionally. Kobayashi is considered a master performer of taiko. He is also known for asserting intellectual control of the group's performance style, which has influenced performance for many groups, particularly in North America.In 1968, Seiichi Tanaka founded the San Francisco Taiko Dojo and is regarded as the Grandfather of Taiko and primary developer of taiko performance in the United States. He was a recipient of a 2001 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts and since 2013 is the only taiko professional presented with the Order of the Rising Sun 5th Order: Gold and Silver Rays by Emperor Akihito of Japan, in recognition of Grandmaster Seiichi Tanaka's contributions to the fostering of US-Japan relations as well as the promotion of Japanese cultural understanding in the United States.In 1969, Den Tagayasu (, Den Tagayasu) founded Ondekoza, a group well known for making taiko performance internationally visible and for its artistic contributions to the tradition. Den was also known for developing a communal living and training facility for Ondekoza on Sado Island in Japan, which had a reputation for its intensity and broad education programs in folklore and music.Performers and groups beyond the early practitioners have also been noted. Eitetsu Hayashi is best known for his solo performance work. Hayashi joined Ondekoza when he was 19, and after parting from the group helped found Kodo, one of the best known and most influential taiko performance groups..., what would be the answer ?
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Answer: Eitetsu Hayashi

A friend asked me to answer this question: What is the last name of the person who also composed piano pieces?, using the article: Jules Emile Frederic Massenet (French: [yl emil fedeik masn]; 12 May 1842 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are Manon (1884) and Werther (1892). He also composed oratorios, ballets, orchestral works, incidental music, piano pieces, songs and other music. While still a schoolboy, Massenet was admitted to France's principal music college, the Paris Conservatoire. There he studied under Ambroise Thomas, whom he greatly admired. After winning the country's top musical prize, the Prix de Rome, in 1863, he composed prolifically in many genres, but quickly became best known for his operas. Between 1867 and his death forty-five years later he wrote more than forty stage works in a wide variety of styles, from opera-comique to grand-scale depictions of classical myths, romantic comedies, lyric dramas, as well as oratorios, cantatas and ballets. Massenet had a good sense of the theatre and of what would succeed with the Parisian public. Despite some miscalculations, he produced a series of successes that made him the leading composer of opera in France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Like many prominent French composers of the period, Massenet became a professor at the Conservatoire. He taught composition there from 1878 until 1896, when he resigned after the death of the director, Ambroise Thomas. Among his students were Gustave Charpentier, Ernest Chausson, Reynaldo Hahn and Gabriel Pierne. By the time of his death, Massenet was regarded by many critics as old-fashioned and unadventurous although his two best-known operas remained popular in France and abroad. After a few decades of neglect, his works began to be favourably reassessed during the mid-20th century, and many of them have since been staged and recorded. Although critics do not rank him among the handful of outstanding operatic geniuses such as Mozart, Verdi and Wagner, his operas are now widely accepted as well-crafted..., what would be the answer ?
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Answer: Massenet

A friend asked me to answer this question: What is the first name of the person who is bitten by a rattlesnake?, using the article: Ross McEwen pulls an unusual bank job in the New Mexico town of Santa Maria, taking the banker Frenger with him, then letting him go a few miles away, minus boots but with an I.O.U. for the $2,000 he stole. Pat Garrett, the new marshal, will try to catch the thief, as will bounty hunters after Frenger's reward offer of $3,000. McEwen is bitten by a rattlesnake before he can board a train, where he is helped by a couple of passengers, Monte Marquez, a gambler, and Fay Hollister, a nurse. The train tracks are washed out near Albuquerque, so the small group goes off alone via a route used to deliver mail. Fay finds out a posse from Santa Maria is after a wanted man and recalls that's where McEwen came on board. But he and she have developed an attraction. When they reach an Alamogordo saloon that Marquez's cousins run, a cattleman named Burnett is willing to take on McEwen as a hired hand. Garrett and deputy Clint Waters come to town, so McEwen must leave but offers her an engagement ring. Fay rides along, but ends up separated and captured by Garrett's men. After crossing the desert with difficulty, McEwen comes across a Mexican rancher named Florencio, whose family is ill. He stays to help and starts a fire to signal the lawmen, needing their assistance. Marquez gets there along with Garrett and Fay, but because Florencio is another relative of his, pretends that McEwen is a total stranger. Garrett isn't fooled, though, and McEwen is convinced to turn himself in, the marshal promising to vouch for his good deed., what would be the answer ?
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Answer:
Ross