Q 01/05

Which Japanese video game giant began in 1889 as a maker of handmade hanafuda playing cards?

A) Nintendo

B) Capcom

C) Konami

D) Square Enix

Answer · why

A) Nintendo

Nintendo was founded by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi to make flower cards by hand. It only turned to video games in the 1970s.

Q 02/05

Which invaders' two 13th-century fleets were wrecked off Japan by typhoons later named kamikaze?

A) The Khmer

B) The Vietnamese

C) The Mongols

D) The Siamese

Answer · why

C) The Mongols

The Mongols under Kublai Khan, founder of China's Yuan dynasty, tried in 1274 and again in 1281. That August a great typhoon smashed their fleet at an...

Q 03/05

Which modern city grew from a fishing village called Edo into the seat of Japan's shoguns?

A) Osaka

B) Tokyo

C) Nagoya

D) Fukuoka

Answer · why

B) Tokyo

Tokyo took its present name in 1868, after the last shogun was overthrown and the emperor moved in. As Edo it had about a million people by 1721, perh...

Q 04/05

Which Japanese theatre form, founded by a woman in 1603, saw women banned from its stage in 1629?

A) Noh

B) Bunraku

C) Kyōgen

D) Kabuki

Answer · why

D) Kabuki

Kabuki began when former shrine maiden Izumo no Okuni led a troupe of female dancers on a dry riverbed. After the ban, male actors called onnagata too...

Q 05/05

In which country did soldier Hiroo Onoda keep fighting World War II from the jungle until 1974?

A) Indonesia

B) The Philippines

C) Malaysia

D) Papua New Guinea

Answer · why

B) The Philippines

The Philippines finally saw him surrender when his old commander, by then a bookseller, flew to Lubang Island to relieve him of duty. Onoda handed his...