When discussing k.d. lang, it is first of all her voice that is mentioned. Even lang herself talks about her voice and its demands as if it doesn't quite live inside her. The voice itself, rich and powerful with an effortless broad ...

Kabaddi is an Asian team sport of indeterminate origin, played extensively in the Indian subcontinent and Japan with some variation. Although it is believed to be more than four thousand years old, it has yet to establish itself as an inte...

KABERRY, PHYLLIS M. Phyllis Mary Kaberry (1910–1977), the first anthropologist to study religion and culture from the vantage point of Aboriginal women in Australia, showed that the benefits and responsibilities of the Ngarrangkarni...

traditional Japanese popular drama with singing and dancing performed in a highly stylized manner. A rich blend of music, dance, mime, and spectacular staging and costuming, it has been the chief theatrical form in Japan for almost four ce...

"Kachin" is the collective name for a related family of highland peoples who live in northeastern Myanmar (Burma) as well as adjoining parts of China's Yunnan Province and northeast India. The Kachin language is classi...

(1993 pop. 335,000). Kaesong is located in southern North Korea (People's Democratic Republic of Korea), 160 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of the capital city of P'yongyang and 8 kilometers (5 miles) from Panmunjom near th...

The Kafirnigan is a river in Tajikistan and a large tributary of the Amu Dar'ya, which it joins about 36 kilometers downstream of the confluence of the Pyandzh and Vakhsh Rivers. The Kafirnigan is 387 kilometers long with a basin ar...

(2002 est. pop. 1.8 million). Kagoshima Prefecture is situated in the southern part of Japan's island of Kyushu, where it occupies an area of 9,167 square kilometers. Situated in a subtropical region, it is often swept by typhoons. ...

Roger Kahn's 1972 bestseller The Boys of Summer instantly set the standard for nonfiction baseball writing. The memoir eloquently captured the essence of the 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers, analyzing the courage of Jackie Robinson, Roy Camp...

CONFUCIANISM IN JAPAN. The earliest Japanese chronicles tell us that Confucianism was introduced to Japan near the end of the third century CE, when Wani of Paekche (Korea) sent the Confucian Analects (Chin., Lun-yü; Jpn., Rongo) to...

The art of kain songket ("brocaded cloth"), the manufacture of silk and cotton fabric brocaded with gold or silver thread, has been known throughout western Indonesia since at least the seventh century, the time of the early ...

The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), known as Hanguk Kwahakweon in Korean, was one of the first modern research institutes in the developing world dedicated to industrial technology; it became a model for similar institute...

KALĀM. In common usage kalām signifies speech, language, sentence, proposition, words, but in the field of Muslim religious thought it has two particular meanings: the word of God (kalām Allāh) and the science o...

optical device consisting of mirrors that reflect images of bits of coloured glass in a symmetrical geometric design through a viewer. The design may be changed endlessly by rotating the section containing the loose fragments. The name is ...

Collection of Indian beast fables written in Sanskrit that has had extensive circulation throughout the world. The original work, now lost, may have been written down between 100 &BC; and &AD; 500. A textbook for instructing three sons of ...

fl. fifth century B.C. Greek Architect Although virtually nothing is known about his personal life, Greek architect Callicrates is credited as one of the codesigners (with Ictinus) of the Parthenon in Athens, part of the larger Acropolis. ...

Born July 1, 1961 Karnal, India Died February 1, 2003 In Columbia explosion upon return to Earth Astronaut and aeronautical engineer Kalpana Chawla. . "You...

Japan's Kamakura period (1185–1333) was the first time a truly nonaristocratic regime held sway over the nation. Toward the end of the Heian period (794–1185), two warrior clans, the Taira (or Heike) and the Minamoto (...

KAMI. From a historical and religious viewpoint, what is meant by the Japanese word kami cannot be exhausted by the term itself, for it is also often expressed in other terms, such as tama (spirits), as well as by names for natural things ...

ken (prefecture), Honshu, Japan, located south of Tokyo and bordered by Tokyo Bay to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the south. It occupies an area of 928 square miles (2,403 square km). The eastern coast is an important part of the Keih...

Important independent monarchy in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) at the end of the 15th century and the last Sinhalese kingdom to be subjugated by a colonial power. Kandy survived the predations of the Portuguese by allying with the Dutch and survived...

Peak in the Himalayas. The world's third highest mountain, it reaches 28,169 ft (8,586 m). It is located on the border between Nepal and Sikkim state, India, northwest of Darjiling. Rinzin Namgyal, a 19th-century explorer, made the first m...

in Japanese writing, characters adapted from Chinese characters and usually employed for writing nouns, verb roots, adjectives, and other important words. The Japanese affixes for verb tenses, prepositions, and other grammatical markers, w...

City (pop., 2001: 2,551,337), Uttar Pradesh, northern India. The British acquired it in 1801 and made it one of their frontier stations. In 1857, during the Indian Mutiny, it was the site of the massacre of British troops and civilians by ...

(May 30, 1854), in the antebellum period of U.S. history, critical national policy change concerning the expansion of slavery into the territories, affirming the concept of popular sovereignty over congressional edict. In 1820 the Missouri...