Medical research

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Cell culture vials.

 

The University of Florida Cancer and Genetics Research Complex is an integrated medical research facility

Biomedical research (or experimental medicine) encompasses a wide array of research, extending from "basic research" (also called bench science or bench research) – involving fundamental scientific principles that may apply to a preclinical understanding – to clinical research, which involves studies of people who may be subjects in clinical trials. Within this spectrum is applied research, or translational research, conducted to expand knowledge in the field of medicine.

Both clinical and preclinical research phases exist in the pharmaceutical industry's drug development pipelines, where the clinical phase is denoted by the term clinical trial. However, only part of the clinical or preclinical research is oriented towards a specific pharmaceutical purpose. The need for fundamental and mechanism-based understanding, diagnostics, medical devices, and non-pharmaceutical therapies means that pharmaceutical research is only a small part of medical research.

The increased longevity of humans over the past century can be significantly attributed to advances resulting from medical research. Among the major benefits of medical research have been vaccines for measles and polio, insulin treatment for diabetes, classes of antibiotics for treating a host of maladies, medication for high blood pressure, improved treatments for AIDS, statins and other treatments for atherosclerosis, new surgical techniques such as microsurgery, and increasingly successful treatments for cancer.^{[citation needed]} New, beneficial tests and treatments are expected as a result of the Human Genome Project. Many challenges remain, however, including the appearance of antibiotic resistance and the obesity epidemic.

Most of the research in the field is pursued by biomedical scientists, but significant contributions are made by other type of biologists. Medical research on humans, has to strictly follow the medical ethics sanctioned in the Declaration of Helsinki and hospital review board where the research is conducted. In all cases, research ethics are expected.

Phases of medical research

Basic medical research

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, home to eight scientists awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, is an internationally renowned basic medical research institution.

Example areas in basic medical research include cellular and molecular biology, medical genetics, immunology, neuroscience, and psychology. Researchers, mainly in universities or government-funded research institutes, aim to establish an understanding of the cellular, molecular and physiological mechanisms of human health and disease.

Preclinical research

Preclinical research covers understanding of mechanisms that may lead to clinical research with people. Typically, the work requires no ethical approval, is supervised by scientists rather than physicians, and is carried out in a university or company, rather than a hospital.

Clinical research

Clinical research is carried out with people as the experimental subjects. It is generally supervised by physicians and conducted by nurses in a medical setting, such as a hospital or research clinic, and requires ethical approval.

Funding

The headquarters of the Wellcome Trust in London, United Kingdom

Research funding in many countries derives from research bodies and private organizations which distribute money for equipment, salaries, and research expenses. In the United Kingdom, funding bodies such as the Medical Research Council derive their assets from UK tax payers, and distribute revenues to institutions by competitive research grants. The Wellcome Trust is the UK's largest non-governmental source of funds for biomedical research and provides over £600 million per year in grants to scientists and funds for research centres.^[3]

In the United States, data from ongoing surveys by the National Science Foundation (NSF) show that federal agencies provided only 44% of the $86 billion spent on basic research in 2015.^[4] The National Institutes of Health and pharmaceutical companies collectively contribute $26.4 billion and $27 billion, which constitute 28% and 29% of the total, respectively. Other significant contributors include biotechnology companies ($17.9 billion, 19% of total), medical device companies ($9.2 billion, 10% of total), other federal sources, and state and local governments. Foundations and charities, led by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, contributed about 3% of the funding. These funders are attempting to maximize their return on investment in public health.^[5] One method proposed to maximize the return on investment in medicine is to fund the development of open source hardware for medical research and treatment.^[6]

The enactment of orphan drug legislation in some countries has increased funding available to develop drugs meant to treat rare conditions, resulting in breakthroughs that previously were uneconomical to pursue.

Government-funded biomedical research

Since the establishment of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the mid-1940s, the main source of U.S. federal support of biomedical research, investment priorities and levels of funding have fluctuated. From 1995 to 2010, NIH support of biomedical research increased from 11 billion to 27 billion ^[7] Despite the jump in federal spending, advancements measured by citations to publications and the number of drugs passed by the FDA remained stagnant over the same time span.^[8] Financial projections indicate federal spending will remain constant in the near future.^[8]

US federal funding trends

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the agency that is responsible for management of the lion's share of federal funding of biomedical research.^[7] It funds over 280 areas directly related to health.^[9] Over the past century there were two notable periods of NIH support. From 1995 to 1996 funding increased from $8.877 billion to $9.366 billion,^[10] years which represented the start of what is considered the "doubling period" of rapid NIH support.^[7] The second notable period started in 1997 and ended in 2010, a period where the NIH moved to organize research spending for engagement with the scientific community.^[10]

Privately (industry) funded biomedical research

Since 1980 the share of biomedical research funding from industry sources has grown from 32% to 62%,^[11] which has resulted in the development of numerous life-saving medical advances. The relationship between industry and government-funded research in the US has seen great movement over the years. The 1980 Bayh Dole Act was passed by Congress to foster a more constructive relationship between the collaboration of government and industry funded biomedical research. The Bayh Doyle Act gave private corporations the option of applying for government funded grants for biomedical research which in turn allowed the private corporations to license the technology.^[12] Both government and industry research funding increased rapidly from between the years of 1994–2003; industry saw a compound average annual growth rate of 8.1% a year and slowed only slightly to a compound average annual growth rate of 5.8% from 2003 to 2008.^[13]

Conflicts of interests

"Conflict of interest" in the field of medical research has been defined as "a set of conditions in which professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as a person's welfare or the validity of research) tends to be unduly influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain)."^[14]

Regulation on industry funded biomedical research has seen great changes since Samuel Hopkins Adams declaration. In 1906 congress passed the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906.^[15] In 1912 Congress passed the Shirley Amendment to prohibit the wide dissemination of false information on pharmaceuticals.^[15] The Food and Drug Administration was formally created in 1930 under the McNarey Mapes Amendment to oversee the regulation of Food and Drugs in the United States.^[15] In 1962 the Kefauver-Harris Amendments to the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act made it so that before a drug was marketed in the United States the FDA must first approve that the drug was safe.^[15] The Kefauver-Harris amendments also mandated that more stringent clinical trials must be performed before a drug is brought to the market.^[16] The Kefauver-Harris amendments were met with opposition from industry due to the requirement of lengthier clinical trial periods that would lessen the period of time in which the investor is able to see return on their money. In the pharmaceutical industry patents are typically granted for a 20-year period of time, and most patent applications are submitted during the early stages of the product development.^[16] According to Ariel Katz on average after a patent application is submitted it takes an additional 8 years before the FDA approves a drug for marketing.^[16] As such this would leave a company with only 12 years to market the drug to see a return on their investments. After a sharp decline of new drugs entering the US market following the 1962 Kefauver-Harris amendments economist Sam Petlzman concluded that cost of loss of innovation was greater than the savings recognized by consumers no longer purchasing ineffective drugs.^[16] In 1984 the Hatch-Waxman Act or the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984 was passed by congress.^[15] The Hatch-Waxman Act was passed with the idea that giving brand manufacturers the ability to extend their patent by an additional 5 years would create greater incentives for innovation and private sector funding for investment.^[17]

The relationship that exists with industry funded biomedical research is that of which industry is the financier for academic institutions which in turn employ scientific investigators to conduct research. A fear that exists wherein a project is funded by industry is that firms might negate informing the public of negative effects to better promote their product.^[16] A list of studies show that public fear of the conflicts of interest that exist when biomedical research is funded by industry can be considered valid after a 2003 publication of "Scope and Impact of Financial Conflicts of Interest in Biomedical Research" in The Journal of American Association of Medicine. This publication included 37 different studies that met specific criteria to determine whether or not an academic institution or scientific investigator funded by industry had engaged in behavior that could be deduced to be a conflict of interest in the field of biomedical research. Survey results from one study concluded that 43% of scientific investigators employed by a participating academic institution had received research related gifts and discretionary funds from industry sponsors.^[11] Another participating institution surveyed showed that 7.6% of investigators were financially tied to research sponsors, including paid speaking engagements (34%), consulting arrangements (33%), advisory board positions (32%) and equity (14%).^[11] A 1994 study concluded that 58% out of 210 life science companies indicated that investigators were required to withhold information pertaining to their research as to extend the life of the interested companies' patents.^[11] Rules and regulations regarding conflict of interest disclosures are being studied by experts in the biomedical research field to eliminate conflicts of interest that could possibly affect the outcomes of biomedical research.

History

The earliest narrative describing a medical trial is found in the Book of Daniel, which says that Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar ordered youths of royal blood to eat only red meat and wine for three years, while another group of youths ate only beans and water.^[18] The experiment was intended to determine if a diet of vegetables and water was healthier than a diet of wine and red meat. At the experiment endpoint, the trial accomplished its prerogative: the youths who ate only beans and water were noticeably healthier.^[18] Scientific curiosity to understand health outcomes from varying treatments has been present for centuries, but it was not until the mid-19th century when an organizational platform was created to support and regulate this curiosity. In 1945, Vannevar Bush said that biomedical scientific research was "the pacemaker of technological progress", an idea which contributed to the initiative to found the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1948, a historical benchmark that marked the beginning of a near century substantial investment in biomedical research.^[19] The NIH provides more financial support for medical research that any other agency in the world to date and claims responsibility for numerous innovations that have improved global health.^[19] The historical funding of biomedical research has undergone many changes over the past century. Innovations such as the polio vaccine, antibiotics and antipsychotic agents, developed in the early years of the NIH lead to social and political support of the agency. Political initiatives in the early 1990s lead to a doubling of NIH funding, spurring an era of great scientific progress.^[20] There have been dramatic changes in the era since the turn of the 21st century to date; roughly around the start of the century, the cost of trials dramatically increased while the rate scientific discoveries did not keep pace.^[20]

Biomedical research spending increased substantially faster than GDP growth over the past decade in the US, between the years of 2003 and 2007 spending increased 14% per year, while GDP growth increased 1% over the same period (both measures adjusted for inflation).^[21] Industry, not-for-profit entities, state and federal funding spending combined accounted for an increase in funding from $75.5 billion in 2003 to $101.1 billion in 2007.^[21] Due to the immediacy of federal financing priorities and stagnant corporate spending during the recession, biomedical research spending decreased 2% in real terms in 2008.^[21] Despite an overall increase of investment in biomedical research, there has been stagnation, and in some areas a marked decline in the number of drug and device approvals over the same time period.^[21]

Today, industry sponsored research accounts for 58% of expenditures, NIH for 27% of expenditures, state governments for 5% of expenditures, non NIH-federal sources for 5% of expenditures and not-for-profit entities accounted for 4% of support.^[21] Federally funded biomedical research expenditures increased nominally, 0.7% (adjusted for inflation), from 2003 to 2007.^[21] Previous reports showed a stark contrast in federal investment, from 1994 to 2003, federal funding increased 100% (adjusted for inflation).^[21]

The NIH manages the lions-share, over 85%, of federal biomedical research expenditures.^[21] NIH support for biomedical research decreased from $31.8 billion in 2003, to $29.0 billion in 2007, a 25% decline (in real terms adjusted for inflation), while non-NIH federal funding allowed for the maintenance of government financial support levels through the era (the 0.7% four-year increase). Spending from industry-initiated research increased 25% (adjusted for inflation) over the same time period of time, from 2003 to 2007, an increase from $40 billion in 2003, to $58.6 billion in 2007.^[21] Industry sourced expenditures from 1994 to 2003 showed industry sponsored research funding increased 8.1%, a stark contrast to 25% increase in recent years.^[21]

Of industry sponsored research, pharmaceutical firm spending was the greatest contributor from all industry sponsored biomedical research spending, but only increased 15% (adjusted for inflation) from 2003 to 2007, while device and biotechnology firms accounted for the majority of the spending.^[21] The stock performance, a measure that can be an indication of future firm growth or technological direction, has substantially increased for both predominantly medical device and biotechnology producers.^[21] Contributing factors to this growth are thought to be less rigorous FDA approval requirements for devices as opposed to drugs, lower cost of trials, lower pricing and profitability of products and predictable influence of new technology due to a limited number of competitors.^[21] Another visible shift during the era was a shift in focus to late stage research trials; formerly dispersed, since 1994 an increasingly large portion of industry-sponsored research was late phase trials rather than early-experimental phases now accounting for the majority of industry sponsored research.^[21] This shift is attributable to a lower risk investment and a shorter development to market schedule.^[21] The low risk preference is also reflected in the trend of large pharmaceutical firms acquiring smaller companies that hold patents to newly developed drug or device discoveries which have not yet passed federal regulation (large companies are mitigating their risk by purchasing technology created by smaller companies in early-phase high-risk studies).^[21] Medical research support from Universities increased from $22 billion in 2003 to $27.7 billion in 2007, a 7.8% increase (adjusted for inflation).^[21] In 2007 the most heavily funded institutions received 20% of HIN medical research funding, and the top 50 institutions received 58% of NIH medical research funding, the percent of funding allocated to the largest institutions is a trend which has increased only slightly over data from 1994.^[21] Relative to federal and private funding, health policy and service research accounted for a nominal amount of sponsored research; health policy and service research was funded $1.8 billion in 2003, which increased to $2.2 billion in 2008.^[21]

Stagnant rates of investment from the US government over the past decade, may be in part attributable to challenges that plague the field. To date only two-thirds of published drug trial findings have results that can be re-produced,^[22] which raises concerns from a US regulatory standpoint where great investment has been made in research ethics and standards, yet trial results remain inconsistent. Federal agencies have called upon greater regulation to address these problems; a spokesman from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, an agency of the NIH, stated that there is "widespread poor reporting of experimental design in articles and grant applications, that animal research should follow a core set of research parameters, and that a concerted effort by all stakeholders is needed to disseminate best reporting practices and put them into practice".^[22]

Transparency laws

Two laws which are both still in effect, one passed in 2006 and the other in 2010, were instrumental in defining funding reporting standards for biomedical research, and defining for the first time reporting regulations that were previously not required. The 2006 Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act mandates that all entities receiving over $25,000 in federal funds must report annual spending reports, including disclosure of executive salaries.^[23] The 2010 amendment to the act mandates that progress reports be submitted along with financial reporting.^[23] Data from the federal mandate is managed and made publicly available on usaspending.gov.^[23] Aside from the main source, usaspending.gov, other reporting mechanisms exist: Data specifically on biomedical research funding from federal sources is made publicly available by the National Health Expenditure Accounts (NHEA), data on health services research, approximately 0.1% of federal funding on biomedical research, is available through the Coalition of Health Services Research, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the Veterans Health Administration.^[21]

Currently there are not any funding reporting requirements for industry sponsored research, but there has been voluntary movement toward this goal.^[24] In 2014, major pharmaceutical stakeholders such as Roche and Johnson and Johnson have made financial information publicly available and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the most prominent professional association for biomedical research companies, has recently begun to provide limited public funding reports.^[24]

Regulations and guidelines

Medical research is very highly regulated. National regulatory authorities are appointed in almost every country worldwide to oversee and monitor medical research, such as for the development and distribution of new drugs. In the US the Food and Drug Administration oversees new drug development, in Europe the European Medicines Agency (see also EudraLex), and in Japan the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (Japan). The World Medical Association develops the ethical standards for the medical profession, involved in medical research. The most fundamental of them is the Declaration of Helsinki. The International Conference on Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH) works on the creation of rules and guidelines for the development of new medication, such as the guidelines for Good Clinical Practice (GCP). All ideas of regulation are based on a country's ethical standards code. This is why treatment of a particular disease in one country may not be allowed, but is in another.

Flaws and vulnerabilities

A major flaw and vulnerability in biomedical research appears to be the hypercompetition for the resources and positions that are required to conduct science. The competition seems to suppress the creativity, cooperation, risk-taking, and original thinking required to make fundamental discoveries. Other consequences of today's highly pressured environment for research appear to be a substantial number of research publications whose results cannot be replicated, and perverse incentives in research funding that encourage grantee institutions to grow without making sufficient investments in their own faculty and facilities. Other risky trends include a decline in the share of key research grants going to younger scientists, as well as a steady rise in the age at which investigators receive their first funding.

A THEORY OF EVERYTHING

By K.C. COLE

Original link:  https://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/18/magazine/a-theory-of-everything.html

DESPITE HIS thick glasses, rumpled jacket, a tie that barely reaches past his sternum and the obligatory chalk-covered pants of a professor, he cuts a handsome figure. Striding across the room in long, sure steps, he conducts his lecture like a maestro, the rat-a-tat-tat of the chalk on the board providing a counterpoint to his high, breathy, sometimes inaudible voice. He talks of ''vector bundles,'' ''spin groups,'' ''Dirac operators,'' ''connected Lie groups,'' ''trivial modules,'' ''free loop spaces.'' At one point he pauses: ''We've been living in a finite dimensional world. Now I'm inviting you to jump into a world of infinite dimension.''

He is Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. At the age of 36, he is among the foremost physicists of his day, and he is in New York lecturing the Columbia University mathematics department on, of all things, the applications of physics to mathematics. Math - which has to do with abstract, intangible relationships - has always been an important tool in physics - which has to do with concrete forces and objects in the actual world. Witten has turned things upside down, attempting to show how physics can provide new insights into math. Turning things upside down is something he seems to do as a matter of course.

''We shouldn't toss comparisons with Einstein around too freely,'' says Sam B. Treiman, a member of the physics department at Princeton, ''but when it comes to Witten. . . .'' His hands open in a gesture of helplessness. ''He's head and shoulders above the rest. He's started whole groups of people on new paths. He's started whole new fields. He produces elegant, breathtaking proofs which people gasp at, which leave them in awe.''

Harvard physicist Sidney Coleman calls Witten, simply, ''smarter than anyone else. He's brought light where there was darkness. Everything he does is golden. If you go to any theoretical physics department in the world, you can see that people are touched, and touched deeply, by Ed's work.''

Witten is everywhere at once, publishing papers and lecturing on cosmology, mathematics and many different aspects of physics. When Witten talks, physicists listen. In particular, they perked up their ears several years ago when he began to pay serious attention to a seemingly bizarre and long-forgotten theory that turns our current picture of the physical universe on its head. Although it is nearly impossible to put a finger on the single contribution that has made Witten such a force in physics, his passion for this controversial theory makes him a leading proponent of what may be the most revolutionary idea in physics in more than half a century - as revolutionary, claims Witten, as relativity; as revolutionary as quantum theory.

If the theory is right, as Witten believes it may ultimately prove to be, it could provide entirely new answers to fundamental questions asked by philosophers, poets and theologians since the beginning of human time: Why is the universe the way it is and what is the origin of matter? (Box, page 24.) Although the term makes Witten uncomfortable, some people call it a ''theory of everything.''

''String theory,'' as it is commonly known (some scientists call it ''superstring theory''), does away with the familiar image of a universe composed of billiard-ball-like particles pushed and pulled by familiar forces like gravity and electricity. Quantum theory had already revealed in the 1920's that the billiard balls have curious wave-like properties: they are more like vibrations than well-defined points in space. Now string theory is proposing that these points, in fact, are tiny loops, or closed ''strings,'' that the universe is built not of Grape-Nuts but of Cheerios. The strings, too, vibrate invisibly in subtle resonances. These vibrations, so the theory goes, make up everything in the universe - from light to lightning bugs, from gravity to gold.

These strings are not, of course, visible, nor are they like rubber bands or pieces of twine. Impossible to detect by any means known to science today, they are mathematical curves. Talking about strings, like talking about billiard balls or waves, is a crude way of trying to comprehend the unfamiliar in familiar terms. But then, physics has always had to resort to metaphor. As the late Niels Bohr, the father of quantum theory, once put it, ''When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.''

Previous scientific theories describing the universe have not yet been able to create an image that fits all the pieces of the universe together within a single conceptual framework. Physicists have opened the atom, like a series of Russian dolls, to reveal, first, electrons, protons and neutrons - then, more exotic entities like neutrinos and quarks. They have learned how nuclear, gravitational and electromagnetic forces mold these particles into molecules and galaxies. But nobody knows why, among other things, there should be electrons at all, or why particles are affected by gravity. String theory, according to its adherents, has the potential of offering a single consistent explanation for everything from the inner workings of the atom to the structure of the cosmos.

Unfortunately, string theory contains what some scientists consider to be a major flaw. The mathematical consistency that makes it so compelling is revealed only if we are willing to suspend our belief in a world fashioned from the familiar four dimensions of height, breadth, width and time, and instead suppose the existence of six additional hidden dimensions - a total of 10 in all.

Imagine a closed string - a loop -of some kind of fundamental stuff. Now imagine that the loop rotates, twists and vibrates not only in the three familiar spatial dimensions (plus one dimension of time) but also in six other dimensions we can't perceive. As the loop wriggles, it resonates in many different modes, like a 10-dimensional violin string sending out cosmic versions of A or E flat. These vibrations, if string theory is correct, determine all the possible particles and forces of the universe.

Pressed for further explanation, Witten smiles and shrugs. ''Nobody understands this much better than I just explained it to you,'' he says.

Ten dimensions don't bother Witten in the least: ''These extra dimensions aren't stranger than a lot of other things physicists think about.'' Still, the notion of a 10-dimensional universe and the absence of any experimental data that could offer proof of it have caused many physicists to be highly skeptical. ''It's not obvious how string theory explains certain striking facts about the universe,'' says Frank A. Wilczek, of the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

To be sure, string theory has a great deal to explain. For example, it will have to show just how it is that six extra dimensions remain invisible to us. String theorists imagine these dimensions to be ''rolled up'' tightly around themselves on scales billions of times smaller than the nucleus of an atom. But they do not yet know how, why or when the six hidden dimensions rolled up. Perhaps, some theorists say, they simply failed to expand billions of years ago when the rest of the universe began doing so.

Such doubts do not in any way diminish Witten's conviction. ''It is very possible that a proper understanding of string theory will make the space-time continuum melt away,'' Witten says. ''String theory is a miracle through and through.''

WITTEN STARTED GETTING OFFERS of professorships within a few years of completing graduate school at Princeton, where he became a full professor at 28. He's received a plethora of prizes from all over the world, including a MacArthur Fellowship and, most recently, the National Science Foundation's Alan T. Waterman Award for best young researcher.

That medal, along with other prestigious awards, is piled ingloriously in the corner of a bookcase in a spare bedroom Witten uses as a study, sharing it with his wife, Chiara Nappi, also a Princeton physicist. Their house could be anybody's suburban ranch. The few pictures on the walls are mostly children's crayon drawings (they have two daughters). There is an Exercycle in the kitchen and a pool in the backyard where, on a recent sunny Wednesday, the Wittens gave a party for 40 first graders. While children in wet bathing suits ran in and out of the living room, Witten discussed the status of string theory.

In physics, the yearning for an ultimate explanation has always been evident. Time and time again, physics has advanced when seemingly diverse phenomena have turned out to be different aspects of the same thing. Newton's great discovery, for instance, was that the same force that pulled the apple to the ground also held the moon in its orbit around the earth and the earth in its orbit around the sun. Magnetism, electricity and light were long thought to be completely unconnected - until Maxwell and Faraday found that all were manifestations of electromagnetism. Einstein's theory of relativity grew out of his efforts to reconcile electromagnetism with classical mechanics.

Most recently, physicists have been obsessed with trying to unify, or find connections among, the known fundamental forces of nature: gravity, electromagnetism, the ''strong'' force that holds particles together within the nucleus of an atom and the ''weak'' force that accounts for, among other things, radioactivity, the spontaneous disintegration of the nucleus that results in the emission of energy. (Recent research has raised the question of whether there is another force in the universe that somehow counteracts gravity.) Electromagnetism, the strong and the weak forces, and all the known particles in the universe can be described in terms of quantum theory, a fact Witten considers ''magic.'' The theory has given rise to an entire field of scientific inquiry to which Witten himself has made several important contributions. According to quantum theory, everything results from the interactions of fields of energy. The fields vibrate, but only in certain patterns or resonances that correspond to specific quantities (hence the term ''quantum'') of energy. These resonances are the familiar particles and forces of the everyday world. In fact, physicists who use giant accelerators to smash atoms and search for exotic particles have been known to call their work ''resonance hunting.''

Quantum theory managed to clear up a host of questions and led to an understanding of subatomic processes that has since produced everything from lasers to semiconductors. Nevertheless, quantum theory cannot account for gravity. Mathematical calculations that try to fit gravity within that framework yield unworkable results.

''If it weren't for gravity,'' says Witten, ''we'd probably think we already knew everything fundamental about nature. But gravity doesn't fit. It's a clue that something is wrong with our understanding. Why gravity doesn't fit is the big mystery of mysteries.'' Yet gravity interacts with every kind of energy in the universe - even a light beam falls under its influence. So gravity has to obey the same laws of nature. The question is, what are they?

FOR MUCH OF HIS CAREER, EINSTEIN struggled to unite gravity with electromagnetism to explain all of nature in terms of one ''unified field.'' He never succeeded. But in 1919, he got a letter from an obscure German-born physicist named Theodor F.E. Kaluza suggesting that electromagnetism could be understood as a fifth-dimensional manifestation of gravity. Kaluza didn't explain why the fifth dimension remained unperceived. But in 1926, a Swedish mathematician, Oskar Klein, suggested this was so because the fifth dimension was rolled up so tightly - existed on such a tiny scale - that it did not affect anything as large as even a subatomic particle.

String theory is a resurrected form of the Kaluza-Klein theory, although vastly more sophisticated. Just as Klein's fifth dimension shriveled up into invisibility, so the extra six dimensions in string theory somehow ''compacted.'' If we accept the idea of those six hidden dimensions, string theory proposes, mathematical inconsistencies that have plagued previous attempts to reconcile quantum theory and gravity wondrously disappear.

But it's not clear that string theory accurately represents reality. No evidence apart from mathematical consistency supports the existence of six extra dimensions. Still, mathematical consistency, Witten says, has been ''one of the most reliable guides to physicists in the last century.''

Even if it has mathematical consistency, what string theory is still missing are underlying concepts. ''Vibrating strings in 10 dimensions is just a weird fact,'' says Witten. ''An explanation of that weird fact would tell you why there are 10 dimensions in the first place.''

''I wish I had a bigger role in all this,'' says Witten, somewhat puzzled by all the attention he's been getting lately. ''To be honest, it's not clear that I'm newsworthy.''

Formal, quiet, withdrawn, Witten is hesitant to talk about his accomplishments. At times, he seems so other-worldly that one can easily understand why his graduate students call him (with great respect and admiration) ''the Martian.''

Sidney Coleman, the Harvard physicist, remembers visiting Witten in Princeton just after Witten had moved there from Cambridge. (Witten was a member of the Harvard Society of Fellows for several years before taking his first job as professor.) Coleman asked him how he compared living in quiet, suburban Princeton with his previous existence in the bustling Boston area. Witten responded: ''In Princeton, I sit at my kitchen table at night doing physics instead of going down to Nassau Street. At Harvard, I sat at my kitchen table at night doing physics instead of going to Harvard Square.''

To some extent, the world of the theorist is by definition a private one. The work requires no lab, no test tubes, no cyclotrons, no supercomputers, no equipment of any sort apart from a pencil and paper, and sometimes not even that. Although Witten has graduate students, he is reluctant to involve them in his more speculative projects. ''It would be gambling their futures,'' he says.

He rarely even sits down at a desk to write, according to his wife. ''He thinks. He lies down on the bed. He sits like this,'' she says, resting her chin on her wrist. ''He never does calculations except in his mind. I will fill pages with calculations before I understand what I'm doing. But Edward will sit down only to calculate a minus sign, or a factor of two.''

If you listen to Witten, becoming a physicist was almost a casual thing. Although his father, Louis Witten, is a gravitational physicist (now at the University of Cincinnati), he says he wasn't all that influenced by his family. ''I came within a whisker of doing other things.''

Witten grew up in Baltimore and got his undergraduate degree in history at Brandeis, where his real interest, however, was linguistics. Before he entered graduate school at Princeton, he wrote articles for The Nation, The New Republic and other publications. For a six-month period during 1972, he worked on George McGovern's Presidential campaign as aide to one of the candidate's legislative assistants. McGovern wrote him a recommendation for graduate school. Still, Witten feels, he lacked the qualities necessary for a career in writing or politics, foremost among them, ''common sense.'' When he entered graduate school at Princeton, he came very close to choosing mathematics before settling on physics.

WITTEN'S COLLEAGUES TEND to give him far more credit than he gives himself, especially when it comes to his role in bringing string theory out of the closet.

Physicists didn't set out to look for string theory, nor did they seriously follow up Kaluza-Klein. Rather, they tripped over string theory in the dark and have been trying to figure out exactly what it is ever since. ''I don't think that any physicist would have been clever enough to have invented string theory on purpose,'' says Witten. ''Luckily, it was invented by accident.''

In 1968, an Italian physicist named Gabriele Veneziano was investigating the strong force (the glue that holds particles together within the nucleus) when he stumbled upon what Witten describes as ''a formula that had a few curious properties.'' It was a few years later, through the work of Yoichiro Nambu of the University of Chicago and others, that people ''realized that silly formula described vibrating strings.''

For a few years, string theory generated a great deal of interest. By the mid-1970's, however, it had been largely abandoned, partly because other lines of thought seemed more promising, and partly because it required the unacceptable idea of extra dimensions.

''When people found out that it only made sense in 10 dimensions,'' says Witten, ''most people left the field.'' His own interest in it was sparked primarily by the work of the physicists John H. Schwarz of the California Institute of Technology, and Michael B. Green of Queen Mary College in London. Witten remembers going through a ''few rough months to learn about it. It was unlike anything anyone had seen before. There was no encouragment from anybody.''

By all accounts, it was a series of papers written by Schwarz and Green in the early 1980's that resuscitated the theory. In 1984, they published an important paper that, according to Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas, answered a question that had also been posed by Witten.

The question had to do with anomalies that appeared in theories that tried to put gravity together with quantum field theory. Anomalies are defects in a theory that yield absurd results and make the theory meaningless. Witten, along with Luis Alvarez-Gaume of Harvard, discovered a new class of anomalies. Even more important, he showed that the origin of the anomalies was topological - that is, related to geometric properties that do not arise in four dimensions but do arise in 10.

Topology, the study of the properites of geometric figures as they are distorted or deformed in various dimensions, is, for Witten, ''basic.'' The thought that lay people might not be familiar with topology strikes him as funny. ''That's like saying they don't know how to speak in prose,'' he says. A cup with one handle, for instance, is topologically equivalent to a doughnut. If the cup were made of malleable clay, it could be reshaped into the doughnut without tearing the material. ''It's so obvious,'' Witten says. ''There are properties of things that change when you break them, but not when you bend them.'' He sighs: ''Physicists didn't use to take topology seriously either.''

Topology is critical to Witten because the question of whether the real world can be explained by string theory depends not only on whether the extra dimensions exist, but also on the forms they take in space - whether they are, say, rolled up like tubes or have holes like doughnuts or are spheres.

Appealing to extra dimensions actually makes some problems simpler. Consider a riddle: A pair of explorers walks due south for one mile, then due east for one mile, then due north for one mile, only to find themselves back at the starting point. Question: What color are the bears?

This riddle makes no sense as long as the explorers are walking on a flat, two-dimensional surface, as on a conventional map. But the earth is a three-dimensional sphere. Its surface curves. Taking this into account, the answer to the riddle becomes obvious: The explorers' starting point was the North Pole. The bears are white. In his Victorian science fiction classic ''Flatland,'' Edwin Abbott demonstrated eloquently that what seems puzzling and obscure in one dimension can become crystal clear in another. In his hypothetical world of two-dimensional triangles and squares, a three-dimensional sphere was an incomprehensible object. As it passed through this flattened space, it would first appear as a point, then as a widening circle that finally shrank back to a point and faded away. A two-dimensional creature can see only one two-dimensional slice of a sphere at a time. It takes a three-dimensional onlooker to see a sphere in its entirety.

And if we could see the universe in its 10-dimensional entirety, string theory presumes, a new symmetry would appear and the puzzling array of forces and particles would be revealed as different facets of one cohesive whole.

Unfortunately, this tantalizing symmetry inherent in 10-dimensional space is not easy to translate into four-dimensional particles and forces. To be comprehended, it requires incredibly subtle mathematical tools, ones that probably haven't even been invented.

SEVERAL YEARS ago, Witten had a conversation with a colleague that struck him deeply. ''He was talking about a very talented physicist who wasn't as productive as he might have been. And he said it was because he never worked on the kinds of problems for which he was really suited.''

Witten has been serious about taking his colleague's implied advice. What he's suited for, he says, is ''taking a physics problem and finding a solution based on bizarre mathematics. String theory is going to require a lot of new mathematics -and applying bizarre mathematics to physics is what I'm good at.''

During the past several years, Witten has been one of the leaders in a new liaison that string theory has forged between physicists and mathematicians. ''In my book, he's the leader,'' says I.M. Singer, a mathematics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ''He's one of two people I call if I get stuck. His intuition is fantastic.'' Of his most important contributions, Witten describes several as contributions not to physics, but to mathematics. ''He's got more mathematical muscles in his head than I like to think about,'' says Weinberg of the University of Texas.

Close liaisons between physics and mathematics have marked most of the major advances in our understanding of the universe. Newton needed to invent a new kind of mathematics -calculus - to complete his theory of gravity. Einstein's general relativity relied on a geometry of curved space invented by Georg F.B. Riemann in the mid-1800's. Quantum theory required a tool called ''functional analysis.''

String theory, Witten says, ''brings us to the frontiers of mathematics.'' But that doesn't deter him: ''I realized I could actually turn it around, and get some surprising insights about mathematics from physics.''

The new marriage between physics and mathematics has made physics truly difficult for the first time for Witten. That's one reason he has accepted an invitation to join the prestigious Institute for Advanced Study next door to Princeton, where he'll be free from teaching obligations. ''I want to work in a more ambitious way on half as many things.'' All of them are aspects of string theory.

Witten's work cannot now, nor for the foreseeable future, be tested in a lab. In fact, it is so far removed from observable reality that a lifetime or more may be required before its value - or any possible application - is known. Theoretical physics is a risky business. ''It's extremely important to believe in what you're doing,'' Witten says. ''But it's difficult to have faith when things are so speculative. I remember when my smallest daughter was learning to crawl. It was clear that she could do it, but she didn't seem to realize that it was a worthwhile thing to pursue. It reminds me of my own efforts.''

''One lesson you can learn,'' he continues, ''is don't make mistakes. But that's not very useful. Another lesson is, don't give up on right ideas. But how do you know they're right?''

Because string theory is so speculative, a good many physicists regard it with suspicion and even disdain. Harvard Nobel laureate Sheldon L. Glashow co-authored an article in Physics Today with his colleague Paul Ginsparg - entitled ''Desperately Seeking Superstrings?'' - in which they wrote: ''A naive comparison suggests that to calculate the electron mass from superstrings would be a trillion times more difficult than to explain human behavior in terms of atomic physics.''

Witten describes such criticism as ''manifest silliness. It's not always so easy,'' he says, ''to tell which are the easy questions and which are the hard ones. In the 19th century, the question of why water boils at 100 degrees centigrade was hopelessly inaccessible. If you told a 19th-century physicist that by the 20th century you would be able to calculate this, it would have seemed like a fairy tale. . . . Quantum field theory is so difficult that nobody fully believed it for 25 years.''

Witten points out that neutron stars and gravitational lenses - large concentrations of matter in outer space that produce, for earthly observers, double images of stars - were considered science fiction, pure speculation, until they were suddenly found in the skies. ''The history of science is littered with predictions that such and such an idea wasn't practical and would never be tested. The history of physics shows that good ideas get tested.''

String theory, for Witten, is too good not to be true. If it seems difficult and complicated, that only means it's not well understood. For now, string theory remains ''a piece of 21st-century physics that fell by chance into the 20th century,'' he says. What physicists are working with today is but ''a few crumbs from the table compared to the feast which awaits us.''

Still, he worries at times that it might be too difficult. ''There are long odds against its leading anywhere in the next few years, but I feel I would be missing the point if I didn't try.''

John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at the European Center for Nuclear Research, the international laboratory in Geneva, recently wrote, ''Superstring phenomenology is still a very young subject. There are many open questions and technical problems, and it is easy to ridicule superstring advocates for their totalitarian fervor. However, in the words of a candy wrapper I opened a few years ago: 'It is only the optimists who achieve anything in this world.' ''

Or, as Witten says, ''To test string theory, we will probably have to be lucky. But in physics, there are many ways of being lucky.''

Culture of Japan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The culture of Japan has evolved greatly over the millennia, from the country's prehistoric time Jōmon period, to its contemporary modern culture, which absorbs influences from Asia, Europe, and North America. Strong Chinese influences are still evident in traditional Japanese culture as China had historically been a regional powerhouse, which has resulted in Japan absorbing many elements of Chinese culture first through Korea, then later through direct cultural exchanges with China. The inhabitants of Japan experienced a long period of relative isolation from the outside world during the Tokugawa shogunate after Japanese missions to Imperial China, until the arrival of the "Black Ships" and the Meiji period. Today, the culture of Japan stands as one of the leading and most prominent cultures around the world, mainly due to the global reach of its popular culture.

Right panel of the Pine Trees screen (Shōrin-zu byōbu 松林図 屏風) by Hasegawa Tōhaku, c.1595

Fūjin-raijin-zu by Tawaraya Sōtatsu, with Raijin shown on the left and Fūjin right, 17th century

Language

A page from the Man'yōshū, the oldest anthology of classical Japanese poetry

Japanese is the official and primary language of Japan. Japanese has a lexically distinct pitch-accent system. Early Japanese is known largely on the basis of its state in the 8th century, when the three major works of Old Japanese were compiled. The earliest attestation of the Japanese language is in a Chinese document from 252 AD.

Japanese is written with a combination of three scripts: hiragana, derived from the Chinese cursive script, katakana, derived as a shorthand from Chinese characters, and kanji, imported from China. The Latin alphabet, rōmaji, is also often used in modern Japanese, especially for company names and logos, advertising, and when inputting Japanese into a computer. The Hindu-Arabic numerals are generally used for numbers, but traditional Sino-Japanese numerals are also very common.

Literature

Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the spread of Buddhism throughout Japan. Eventually, Japanese literature developed into a separate style in its own right as Japanese writers began writing their own works about Japan. Since Japan reopened its ports to Western trading and diplomacy in the 19th century, Western and Eastern literature have strongly affected each other and continue to do so.

Music

Fumie Hihara playing shamisen (Kabuki dance, Guimet Museum, Paris)

The music of Japan includes a wide array of performers in distinct styles both traditional and modern. The word for music in Japanese is 音楽 (ongaku), combining the kanji 音 "on" (sound) with the kanji 楽 "gaku" (enjoyment).^[3] Japan is the second largest music market in the world, behind the United States, and the largest in Asia,^[4] and most of the market is dominated by Japanese artists.

Local music often appears at karaoke venues, which is on lease from the record labels. Traditional Japanese music is quite different from Western Music and is based on the intervals of human breathing rather than mathematical timing.^{[citation needed]} In 1873, a British traveler claimed that Japanese music, "exasperate(s) beyond all endurance the European breast."^[5]

Visual arts

Painting

The Great Wave at Kanagawa
Carved by Hokusai

Painting has been an art in Japan for a very long time: the brush is a traditional writing and painting tool, and the extension of that to its use as an artist's tool was probably natural. Japanese painters are often categorized by what they painted, as most of them constrained themselves solely to subjects such as animals, landscapes, or figures. Chinese papermaking was introduced to Japan around the 7th century. Later, washi was developed from it. Native Japanese painting techniques are still in use today, as well as techniques adopted from continental Asia and from the West. Schools of painting such as the Kano school of the 16th century became known for their bold brush strokes and contrast between light and dark, especially after Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu began to use this style. Famous Japanese painters include Kanō Sanraku, Maruyama Ōkyo, and Tani Bunchō.^[6]

Calligraphy

The flowing, brush-drawn Japanese rendering of text itself is seen as a traditional art form as well as a means of conveying written information. The written work can consist of phrases, poems, stories, or even single characters. The style and format of the writing can mimic the subject matter, even to the point of texture and stroke speed. In some cases, it can take over one hundred attempts to produce the desired effect of a single character but the process of creating the work is considered as much an art as the end product itself.

This calligraphy form is known as 'shodō' (書道) which literally means 'the way of writing or calligraphy' or more commonly known as 'shūji' (習字) 'learning how to write characters'. Commonly confused with Calligraphy is the art form known as 'sumi-e' (墨絵) literally means 'ink painting' which is the art of painting a scene or object.

Sculpture

Guardian in Tōdai-ji, Nara

Main article: Japanese sculpture

Traditional Japanese sculptures mainly focused on Buddhist images, such as Tathagata, Bodhisattva, and Myō-ō. The oldest sculpture in Japan is a wooden statue of Amitābha at the Zenkō-ji temple. In the Nara period, Buddhist statues were made by the national government to boost its prestige. These examples are seen in present-day Nara and Kyoto, most notably a colossal bronze statue of the Buddha Vairocana in the Tōdai-ji temple.

Wood has traditionally been used as the chief material in Japan, along with traditional Japanese architecture. Statues are often lacquered, gilded, or brightly painted, although there are little traces on the surfaces. Bronze and other metals are not used. Other materials, such as stone and pottery, have had extremely important roles in the plebeian beliefs.

Ukiyo-e

Ukiyo-e, literally "pictures of the floating world", is a genre of woodblock prints that exemplifies the characteristics of pre-Meiji Japanese art. Because these prints could be mass-produced, they were available to a wide cross-section of the Japanese populace — those not wealthy enough to afford original paintings — during their heyday, from the 17th to 20th century.

Ikebana

Ikebana (生け花, 活花, or 挿花) is the Japanese art of flower arrangement. It has gained widespread international fame for its focus on harmony, color use, rhythm, and elegantly simple design. It is an art centered greatly on expressing the seasons, and is meant to act as a symbol to something greater than the flower itself.

Religion

Torii entrance gate at Kamigamo shrine, Kyoto

Buddhism and Shintoism are the primary religions of Japan.

Shintoism

Shintoism is an ethnic religion that focuses on ceremonies and rituals. In Shintoism, followers believe that kami, a Shinto deity or spirit, are present throughout nature, including rocks, trees, and mountains. Humans can also be considered to possess a kami. One of the goals of Shintoism is to maintain a connection between humans, nature, and kami. The religion developed in Japan prior to the sixth century CE, after which point followers built shrines to worship kami.^[7]

Buddhism

Buddha sculpture

Buddhism developed in India around the 6th and 4th centuries BCE and eventually spread through China and Korea. It arrived in Japan during the 6th century CE, where it was initially unpopular. Most Japanese people were unable to understand the difficult philosophical messages present in Buddhism, however they did have an appreciation for the religion's art, which is believed to have led to the religion growing more popular. Buddhism is concerned with the soul and life after dying. In the religion a person's status was unimportant, as every person would get sick, age, die, and eventually be reincarnated into a new life, a cycle called saṃsāra. The suffering people experienced during life was one way for people to gain a better future. The ultimate goal was to escape the cycle of death and rebirth by attaining true insight.^[7]

Performing arts

Noh play at traditional Noh theatre

The four traditional theatres from Japan are noh (or nō), kyōgen, kabuki, and bunraku. Noh had its origins in the union of the sarugaku, with music and dance made by Kanami and Zeami Motokiyo.^[8] Among the characteristic aspects of it are the masks, costumes, and the stylized gestures, sometimes accompanied by a fan that can represent other objects. The noh programs are presented in alternation with the ones of kyōgen, traditionally in number of five, but currently in groups of three.

The kyōgen, of humorous character, had older origin, in 8th century entertainment brought from China, developing itself in sarugaku. In kyōgen, masks are rarely used and even if the plays can be associated with the ones of noh, currently many are not.^[8]

Kabuki appears in the beginning of the Edo period from the representations and dances of Izumo no Okuni in Kyoto.^[9] Due to prostitution of actresses of kabuki, the participation of women in the plays was forbidden by the government in 1629, and the feminine characters had passed to be represented only by men (onnagata). Recent attempts to reintroduce actresses in kabuki had not been well accepted.^[9] Another characteristic of kabuki is the use of makeup for the actors in historical plays (kumadori).

Japanese puppet theater bunraku developed in the same period, that kabuki in a competition and contribution relation involving actors and authors. The origin of bunraku, however is older, lies back in the Heian period.^[10] In 1914, appeared the Takarazuka Revue a company solely composed by women who introduced the revue in Japan.^[11]

Architecture

Hōryū-ji is widely known to be the oldest wooden architecture existing in the world.

Japanese architecture has as long of a history as any other aspect of Japanese culture. Originally heavily influenced by Chinese architecture, it has developed many differences and aspects which are indigenous to Japan. Examples of traditional architecture are seen at temples, Shinto shrines, and castles in Kyoto and Nara. Some of these buildings are constructed with traditional gardens, which are influenced from Zen ideas.

Some modern architects, such as Yoshio Taniguchi and Tadao Ando are known for their amalgamation of Japanese traditional and Western architectural influences.

Gardens

Ritsurin Garden

Garden architecture is as important as building architecture and very much influenced by the same historical and religious background. A primary design principle of a garden is the creation of the landscape based on, or at least greatly influenced by, the three-dimensional monochrome ink (sumi) landscape painting, sumi-e or suibokuga.

In Japan, the garden has the status of artwork.^[12]

Traditional clothing

Woman in kimono at Fukuoka City Hall.

Traditional Japanese clothing distinguishes Japan from all other countries around the world. The Japanese word kimono means "something one wears" and they are the traditional garments of Japan. Originally, the word kimono was used for all types of clothing, but eventually, it came to refer specifically to the full-length garment also known as the naga-gi, meaning "long-wear", that is still worn today on special occasions by women, men, and children. The earliest kimonos were heavily influenced by traditional Han Chinese clothing, known today as hanfu (漢服, kanfuku in Japanese), through Japanese embassies to China which resulted in extensive Chinese culture adoptions by Japan, as early as the 5th century AD.^[13] It was during the 8th century, however, that Chinese fashions came into style among the Japanese, and the overlapping collar became particularly women's fashion.^[13] Kimono in this meaning plus all other items of traditional Japanese clothing is known collectively as wafuku which means "Japanese clothes" as opposed to yofuku (Western-style clothing). Kimonos come in a variety of colors, styles, and sizes. Men mainly wear darker or more muted colors, while women tend to wear brighter colors and pastels, and, especially for younger women, often with complicated abstract or floral patterns.

The kimono of a woman who is married (tomesode) differs from the kimono of a woman who is not married (furisode). The tomesode sets itself apart because the patterns do not go above the waistline. The furisode can be recognized by its extremely long sleeves spanning anywhere from 39 to 42 inches, it is also the most formal kimono an unwed woman wears. The furisode advertises that a woman is not only of age but also single.

The style of kimono also changes with the season, in spring kimonos are vibrantly colored with springtime flowers embroidered on them. In Autumn, kimono colors are not as bright, with Autumn patterns. Flannel kimonos are most commonly worn in winter; they are made of a heavier material and are worn mainly to stay warm.

One of the more elegant kimonos is the uchikake, a long silk overgarment worn by the bride in a wedding ceremony. The uchikake is commonly embellished with birds or flowers using silver and gold thread.

Kimonos do not come in specific sizes as most western dresses do. The sizes are only approximate, and a special technique is used to fit the dress appropriately.

The obi is a very important part of the kimono. Obi is a decorative sash that is worn by Japanese men and women, although it can be worn with many different traditional outfits, it is most commonly worn with the kimono. Most women wear a very large elaborate obi, while men typically don a more thin and conservative obi.

Most Japanese men only wear the kimono at home or in a very laid back environment, however it is acceptable for a man to wear the kimono when he is entertaining guests in his home. For a more formal event a Japanese man might wear the haori and hakama, a half coat and divided skirt. The hakama is tied at the waist, over the kimono and ends near the ankle. Hakama were initially intended for men only, but today it is acceptable for women to wear them as well. Hakama can be worn with types of kimono, excluding the summer version, yukata. The lighter and simpler casual-wear version of kimono often worn in Japanese summer festival is called yukata.

Formal kimonos are typically worn in several layers, with number of layers, visibility of layers, sleeve length, and choice of pattern dictated by social status, season, and the occasion for which the kimono is worn. Because of the mass availability, most Japanese people wear western style clothing in their everyday life, and kimonos are mostly worn for festivals, and special events. As a result, most young women in Japan are not able to put the kimono on themselves. Many older women offer classes to teach these young women how to don the traditional clothing.

Happi is another type of traditional clothing, but it is not famous worldwide like the kimono. A happi (or happy coat) is a straight sleeved coat that is typically imprinted with the family crest, and was a common coat for firefighters to wear.

Japan also has very distinct footwear.

Tabi, an ankle high sock, is often worn with the kimono. Tabi are designed to be worn with geta, a type of thonged footwear. Geta are sandals mounted on wooden blocks held to the foot by a piece of fabric that slides between the toes. Geta are worn both by men and women with the kimono or yukata.

Cuisine

Traditional breakfast at ryokan

Through a long culinary past, the Japanese have developed sophisticated and refined cuisine. In more recent years, Japanese food has become fashionable and popular in the United States, Europe, and many other areas. Dishes such as sushi, tempura, noodles, and teriyaki are some of the foods that are commonly known. The Japanese diet consists principally of rice; fresh, lean seafood; and pickled or boiled vegetables. The healthy Japanese diet is often believed to be related to the longevity of Japanese people.

Sports and leisure

Two students practicing kendo at Hiroshima University

In the long feudal period governed by the samurai class, some methods that were used to train warriors were developed into well-ordered martial arts, in modern times referred to collectively as koryū. Examples include kenjutsu, kendo, kyūdō, sōjutsu, jujutsu, and sumo, all of which were established in the Edo period. After the rapid social change in the Meiji Restoration, some martial arts changed into modern sports, called gendai budō. Judo was developed by Kanō Jigorō, who studied some sects of jujutsu. These sports are still widely practiced in present-day Japan and other countries.

Baseball, Association football, and other popular western sports were imported to Japan in the Meiji period. These sports are commonly practiced in schools, along with traditional martial arts.

Baseball, soccer, football, and ping pong are the most popular sports in Japan. Association football gained prominence in Japan after the J League (Japan Professional Football League) was established in 1991. Japan also co-hosted the 2002 FIFA World Cup. In addition, there are many semi-professional organizations, which are sponsored by private companies: for example, volleyball, basketball, rugby union, table tennis, and so on.

Popular culture

Musashi Miyamoto in Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue, adapted from an Eiji Yoshikawa's novel, Musashi

Japanese popular culture not only reflects the attitudes and concerns of the present day, but also provides a link to the past. Popular films, television programs, manga, music, anime and video games all developed from older artistic and literary traditions, and many of their themes and styles of presentation can be traced to traditional art forms. Contemporary forms of popular culture, much like the traditional forms, provide not only entertainment but also an escape for the contemporary Japanese from the problems of an industrial world.

When asked how they spent their leisure time, 80 percent of a sample of men and women surveyed by the government in 1986 said they averaged about two and a half hours per weekday watching television, listening to the radio, and reading newspapers or magazines. Some 16 percent spent an average of two and a quarter hours a day engaged in hobbies or amusements. Others spent leisure time participating in sports, socializing, and personal study. Teenagers and retired people reported more time spent on all of these activities than did other groups.^{[citation needed]}

Many anime and manga are very popular around the world and continue to become popular, as well as Japanese video games, fashion, and game shows.^[14]

In the late 1980s, the family was the focus of leisure activities, such as excursions to parks or shopping districts. Although Japan is often thought of as a hard-working society with little time for leisure, the Japanese seek entertainment wherever they can. It is common to see Japanese commuters riding the train to work, enjoying their favorite manga, or listening through earphones to the latest in popular music on portable music players.

A wide variety of types of popular entertainment are available. There is a large selection of music, films, and the products of a huge comic book industry, among other forms of entertainment, from which to choose. Game centers, bowling alleys, and karaoke are popular hangout places for teens while older people may play shogi or go in specialized parlors.

Together, the publishing, film/video, music/audio, and game industries in Japan make up the growing Japanese content industry.^[15]

National character

Cultural map of the world according to the World Values Survey, describing Japan as highest in the world in "Secular-Rational Values"

The Japanese "national character" has been written about under the term Nihonjinron, literally meaning "theories/discussions about the Japanese people" and referring to texts on matters that are normally the concerns of sociology, psychology, history, linguistics, and philosophy, but emphasizing the authors' assumptions or perceptions of Japanese exceptionalism; these are predominantly written in Japan by Japanese people,^[16] though noted examples have also been written by foreign residents, journalists and even scholars.

Japanese influences

Japanese culture and arts have influenced many regions of the world. During the centuries before the Western invasions, Japan's culture already made significant influences in Korea, China, Mongolia, North-east Asia, Taiwan, and Luzon. By the 10th century AD, Japanese culture reached the Malayan archipelago, Thailand and the Strait of Malacca. Evidences have also seen Japanese influences as far as India and Oceania. By the 19th century, Japan's influence have solidified as far as Europe and the Americas. Today, Japanese culture outside Japan can be seen in almost all countries in the world, with major pronouncements in United States, Europe, China, Korea, Canada, Palau, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Australia.