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The Gods Must Be Crazy

The Gods Must Be Crazy is a 1980 comedy film written, produced, edited and directed by Jamie Uys. An international co-production of South Africa and Botswana, it is the first film in The Gods Must Be Crazy series. Set in Southern Africa, the film stars Namibian San farmer Nǃxau ǂToma as Xi, a hunter-gatherer of the Kalahari Desert whose tribe discovers a glass Coca-Cola bottle dropped from an aeroplane, and believe it to be a gift from their gods. When Xi sets out to return the bottle to the gods, his journey becomes intertwined with that of a biologist (Marius Weyers), a newly hired village school teacher (Sandra Prinsloo), and a band of guerrilla terrorists.

The Gods Must Be Crazy was released in South Africa on 10 September 1980 by Ster-Kinekor, and broke several box office records in the country, becoming the most financially successful South African film ever produced at the time. The film was a commercial and critical success in most other countries, but took longer to find success in the United States, where it was eventually re-released in 1984 by 20th Century Fox, with its original Afrikaans dialogue being dubbed into English. Despite its success, the film attracted criticism for its depiction of race and perceived ignorance of discrimination and apartheid in South Africa.

In 1989, it was followed by a sequel The Gods Must Be Crazy II.

Plot
Xi and his San tribe live happily in the Kalahari Desert, away from industrial civilization. One day, a glass Coca-Cola bottle is thrown out of an aeroplane by a pilot and falls to the ground unbroken. Initially, Xi's people assume the bottle to be a gift from their gods, just as they believe plants and animals are, and find many uses for it. Unlike other gifts, however, there is only one glass bottle, which causes unforeseen conflict within the tribe. As a result, Xi, wearing only a loincloth, decides to make a pilgrimage to the edge of the world and dispose of the divisive object.

Along the way, Xi encounters biologist Andrew Steyn, who is studying the manure of wildlife; Steyn's assistant and mechanic, M'pudi; Kate Thompson, a woman who quit her job as a journalist in Johannesburg to become a village school teacher; and eventually a band of guerrillas led by Sam Boga, who are being pursued by government troops after a failed assassination attempt. In a fictitious town called Biryani, northwest of Botswana, Boga's men kill three cabinet members and injure two others in an attempt on the president's life, sending the military in hot pursuit.

Steyn is tasked with bringing Thompson to the village where she will teach, but he is awkward and clumsy around her. Their Land Rover stalls while trying to ford a deep river; he hoists it out with a winch, but it continues lifting the vehicle to a very high treetop level while a forgetful Steyn is distracted extricating Thompson from a wait-a-bit tree. She more than once mistakes his attempts to evade wild animals, and putting out an evening campfire, as advances towards her. Eventually, a snobbish safari tour guide named Jack Hind arrives, and takes Thompson the rest of the way to the village.

One day, Xi happens upon a herd of goats, and shoots one with a tranquilizer arrow, planning to eat it. He is arrested and sentenced to jail. M'pudi, who once lived with the San and can speak the San language, is discontent with the verdict. He and Steyn arrange to hire Xi as a tracker for the remainder of his sentence in lieu of prison time, and teach Xi how to drive Steyn's Land Rover. Meanwhile, the guerrillas invade Thompson's school, taking her and the students as hostages as they make their escape to a neighbouring country.

Steyn, M'pudi and Xi, immersed in their fieldwork, find that they are along the terrorists' and children's path, and observe their movements with a telescope. They manage to immobilize six of the eight guerrillas using makeshift tranquilizer darts launched by Xi with a miniature bow, allowing Thompson and the children to confiscate the guerillas' firearms. Steyn and M'pudi apprehend the remaining two guerrillas by frightening one with a snake and by shooting at a tree above the other, causing latex to drip from the tree and irritate his skin. Jack Hind arrives and takes Thompson and the children away, taking credit for the rescue that Steyn, M'pudi and Xi had actually planned and executed.

Later, with Xi's term over, Steyn pays his wages and sends him on his way. Xi has never seen paper money (banknotes) before, and throws them on the ground. Steyn and M'pudi then drive from their camp to visit Thompson, where Steyn attempts to explain his tendency to be uncoordinated in her presence, but accidentally and repeatedly knocks over a number of objects in the process. Thompson finds his efforts endearing, and kisses Steyn.

Xi eventually arrives at God's Window, the top of a cliff with a solid layer of low-lying clouds obscuring the landscape below. Convinced that he has reached the edge of the world, he throws the bottle off the cliff, and returns to his family.

Cast
Director Jamie Uys appears in an uncredited role as the Reverend.

Development and casting
Jamie Uys conceived the premise of The Gods Must Be Crazy while making the 1974 documentary Animals Are Beautiful People. The documentary was filmed partially on the Kalahari Desert, where Uys first encountered the San people and "fell in love with them". Uys chose a Coca-Cola bottle as the object that the San people would discover and covet in The Gods Must Be Crazy because he felt that the bottle was representative of "our plastic society", and because it "is a beautiful thing, if you've never seen glass before".

Uys noted that he modelled the character of Andrew Steyn after himself: "I used to be awkward like that, especially with women. But then, I think most young guys knock things over with their first girl".

After writing the script for The Gods Must Be Crazy, Uys reportedly spent three months traversing the Kalahari Desert with an interpreter, searching for a San person to play the role of Xi in the film. Visiting areas of the desert inhabited by the San, Uys took photographs of individuals he felt he might cast, and then "marked the longitude and latitude, so we could find them again".

Uys decided to cast Namibian San farmer Nǃxau ǂToma as Xi, and later recalled that "At first [Nǃxau] didn't understand, because they have no word for work. Then the interpreter asked, 'Would you like to come with us for some days?'" N!xau agreed and flew with Uys by aeroplane to Windhoek, Namibia, which served as a base for the film's production. Uys stated that "the airplane didn't impress him at all. He thinks we are magicians, so he believes we can do anything. Nothing impressed him". In his hotel room, N!xau agreed to use the toilet, but slept on the floor rather than on the provided bed.

However, according to author Josef Gugler, Uys "[fictionalized] the production of the film. The stories he told reviewers varied". Unlike what was presented in The Gods Must Be Crazy, N!xau did not lead a hunter-gatherer lifestyle; he grew up as a herder on a farm in Botswana, before moving to Namibia to work as a cook. In the 1980 documentary film Nǃai, the Story of a ǃKung Woman, directed by John Marshall, footage of the filming of The Gods Must Be Crazy is used. The documentary shows San restricted to living in a reservation established by South African authorities in Tsumkwe, Namibia. The San there are shown to not be hunter-gatherers; they are instead dependent on the government for food and other aid, with some suffering from tuberculosis.

Filming
The Gods Must Be Crazy was shot in Tsumkwe, Namibia, as well as in Botswana.

According to Uys, N!xau would be flown back to his home in the Kalahari Desert every three or four weeks to prevent him from suffering from culture shock. During his time in urban areas, N!xau learned to smoke and acquired an affinity for liquor and sake. Uys said that he paid N!xau $300 for his first 10 days of work, but that the money was reportedly blown away by wind. N!xau was then compensated with 12 head of cattle. In 1985, Uys said that he had sent N!xau $100 a month since filming, which N!xau used at a trading store 100 km (60 miles) from his hunting ground; Uys also stated that a $20,000 trust account in N!xau's name had been established.

A scene in which a rhinoceros stomps out a fire is based in a Burmese legend about fire-eating rhinos, which is not widely known in Africa and appears not to be based in fact.

Box office
The Gods Must Be Crazy was initially released in South Africa on 10 September 1980 by Ster-Kinekor Pictures. Within its first four days of its release, the film broke box office records in every city in South Africa. It became the highest-grossing film of 1982 in Japan, where it was released under the title Bushman. Executive producer Boet Troskie sold the distribution rights to the film to 45 countries.

For its release in the United States, the original Afrikaans dialogue was dubbed into English, and voiceover work was provided for !Kung and Tswana lines. The film initially received a limited American release through Jensen Farley Pictures in 1982, but performed poorly in at least half a dozen test cities. However, the film would eventually find critical and commercial success when it was re-released by 20th Century Fox on 9 July 1984, becoming the highest-grossing foreign film released in the United States at the time. The film also played at the Music Hall Theater in Beverly Hills, California for at least eight months.

Within its first four years of release, The Gods Must Be Crazy had grossed US$90 million worldwide. , the film has grossed R1.8 billion (approx. US$200 million) worldwide, including over US$60 million in the United States.

Critical reception
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, concluding that "it might be easy to make a farce about screwball happenings in the desert, but it's a lot harder to create a funny interaction between nature and human nature. This movie's a nice little treasure". Variety stated that the film's "main virtues are its striking, widescreen visuals of unusual locations, and the sheer educational value of its narration".

In his review of the film for The New York Times, critic Vincent Canby wrote that "watching Jamie Uys's Gods Must Be Crazy, [...] one might suspect that there were no such things as apartheid or the Immorality Act or even South Africa". Though he called the film "often genuinely, nonpolitically funny", he noted that "there's also something disturbing about the film", in that "we tend to feel that any South African work that doesn't actively condemn apartheid has the secondary effect of condoning it, if only through silence".

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, The Gods Must Be Crazy has an approval rating of 85% based on 26 reviews, with an average rating of 7.4/10. On Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, the film has a score of 73 out of 100 based on six reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews".

Home media
In mid-November 1986, The Gods Must Be Crazy was released on VHS in the U.S. by CBS/Fox on its Playhouse Video label.

In 2004, The Gods Must Be Crazy was released on DVD by Sony Pictures Entertainment. It was also released on DVD as a double feature with The Gods Must Be Crazy II.

Controversies
The Gods Must Be Crazy attracted criticism for its perpetuation of racial stereotypes and ignorance of discrimination and apartheid in South Africa. In the U.S., the film was reportedly picketed by the National Conference of Black Lawyers and other anti-apartheid groups when it screened at the 68th Street Playhouse in New York City.

Accusations of patronization
Both New York Times critic Vincent Canby and author Josef Gugler called the film "patronizing" towards the San people. Canby wrote that the San in the film "are seen to be frightfully quaint if not downright cute", and compared the film's narrator's statement that the San "must be the most contented people in the world" to "exactly the sort of thing that Mussolini might have said when he got those trains running on time". Gugler considered both the film's narrator and the character of Mpudi condescending, writing that "even if Mpudi feels for the San people, he is just as patronizing as the narrator: 'They are the sweetest little buggers'". In response to accusations of patronization, Uys said that "I don't think the film is patronizing. When the Bushman is with us in the city, I do patronize him, because he's stupid. But in the desert, he patronizes me, because I'm stupid and he's brilliant".

Criticisms related to apartheid
In 1985, cultural anthropologist Toby Alice Volkman wrote that money was "a pressing concern" for the San when The Gods Must Be Crazy was filmed, with many of them dependent on government aid and purchased food; she noted that many San enlisted in the South African Army due to the high wages it paid. She wrote: "Because the myth of Bushman innocence and bliss underlies the popularity of The Gods Must Be Crazy, it is no surprise that Mr. Uys would like us to believe in it. There is, however, little to laugh about in Bushmanland: 1,000 demoralized, formerly independent foragers crowd into a squalid, tubercular homeland, getting by on handouts of cornmeal and sugar, drinking Johnny Walker or home brew, fighting with one another and joining the South African Army".

The following year, Canadian anthropologist Richard Borshay Lee called the film "an amusing but thinly disguised piece of South African propaganda in which a peculiar element of South African white mythology receives prominent attention". Lee wrote that "the notion that some San in the 1980s remain untouched by 'civilization' is a cruel joke. The San have been the subject of a century of rapid social change and especially in the last twenty years have been forced to endure all the 'benefits' of South Africa's apartheid policies in Namibia".

Gugler wrote that the guerrillas in the film are depicted as "bad Africans [...] dangerous and destructive all right, but they are also indolent and inept. In the end, even Kate Thompson gets to disarm one of them. Their leader, Sam Boga, articulates what the film is showing us about African guerrillas: 'Why do I have to work with amateurs?' He, in turn, serves to confirm the apartheid credo that Africans would be happy with the White dispensation were it not for foreigners fomenting discontent and making trouble". Gugler goes on to state that Uys "[perpetuates] the myths of apartheid: an ordered world with Whites on top, a world where Africans are content but for the interference of outsiders".

When asked about his thoughts on apartheid, Uys commented that "I think it's a mess. We've done some silly, naughty things that we're ashamed of. We're trying to dismantle it, but it's a very complicated thing. If you go too slow, it's bad, and if you go too fast, it will ruin the economy and everyone will starve. I hope I'm not a racist, but everybody likes to think of himself as not racist, and I don't think that any of us can swear we're not racist. If it means you hate the coloured man, I'm not racist. If it means you choose to marry a girl of your own colour, is that racist, too? If the two are in love, it doesn't matter. But I chose a white girl as my wife".

Sequel and related films
The Gods Must Be Crazy was followed by an official sequel, The Gods Must Be Crazy II, released by Columbia Pictures in 1989. It was written and directed by Uys, and again stars N!xau.

An unofficial sequel, Crazy Safari (also titled The Gods Must Be Crazy III), followed, a Hong Kong film starring N!xau. Other unofficial sequels include Crazy Hong Kong (The Gods Must Be Crazy IV) and The Gods Must Be Funny in China (The Gods Must Be Crazy V). Two other unrelated films, Jewel of the Gods and There's a Zulu On My Stoep, were marketed in some territories as sequels to The Gods Must Be Crazy.

Legacy
Irish Spring soap had a 1989 commercial parodying the film.

The video for the song "Take Me to Your Leader" by American rock band Incubus pays homage to the film.

title: The Gods Must Be Crazy


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List of military decorations

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 * Orders, decorations, and medals of South Africa
 * South African military decorations order of wearing
 * South African military decorations

Soviet Union

 * Orders, decorations, and medals of the Soviet Union

Spain

 * Orders, decorations, and medals of Spain

Kingdom of Spain

 * Laureate Cross of Saint Ferdinand
 * Medalla Militar (Military Medal)
 * Cruz de Guerra (War Cross)
 * Medalla del Ejército (Army Medal)
 * Medalla Naval (Navy Medal)
 * Medalla Aérea (Air Force Medal)
 * Orden del Mérito Militar (Order of Military Merit)
 * Orden del Mérito Naval (Order of Naval Merit)
 * Orden del Mérito Policial (Order of Policial Merit)
 * Orden del Mérito Aeronáutico (Order of Air Force Merit)
 * Real y Militar Orden de San Hermenegildo (Royal & Military Order of Saint Hermenegildo)
 * Cruz a la Constancia en el Servicio (Long Military Service Cross)
 * Medalla de Campaña (Campaign Medal)

Second Spanish Republic
Reference: Segunda República (1931–1939)
 * Laureate Plate of Madrid
 * Madrid Distinction
 * Order of the Spanish Republic
 * Medal of the International Brigades
 * Medalla al Valor (Medal of Valor)
 * Medalla de la Libertad (Medal of Freedom)
 * Medalla de Sufrimientos por la Patria (Medal of the Suffering for the Fatherland)
 * Medalla de la Segunda Guerra de la Independencia (Medal of the Second War of Independence)

Sri Lanka

 * Orders, decorations, and medals of Sri Lanka
 * Military awards and decorations of Sri Lanka

Suriname

 * Category:Orders, decorations, and medals of Suriname

Swaziland

 * Decorations
 * Umbutfo Swaziland Defence Force Medal for Distinguished Service (1980–present)
 * Umbutfo Swaziland Defence Force Medal for Meritorious Service (1980–present)
 * Long Service Medals
 * Umbutfo Swaziland Defence Force Long Service Medal (1980–present)

Sweden

 * Orders, decorations, and medals of Sweden

Syria

 * Category:Orders, decorations, and medals of Syria

Taiwan (Republic of China)

 * Orders, decorations, and medals of the Republic of China

Tanzania

 * Orders, decorations, and medals of Tanzania

Thailand

 * Orders, decorations, and medals of Thailand

Togo

 * Category:Orders, decorations, and medals of Togo

Tonga

 * Orders, decorations, and medals of Tonga

Tunisia

 * Category:Orders, decorations, and medals of Tunisia

Turkey

 * Orders, decorations, and medals of Turkey

Turkmenistan

 * Orders, decorations, and medals of Turkmenistan

Tuscany

 * Category:Orders, decorations, and medals of Tuscany

Two Sicilies

 * Category:Orders, decorations, and medals of the Two Sicilies

Uganda

 * Orders, decorations, and medals of Uganda

Ukraine

 * Orders, decorations, and medals of Ukraine

United Arab Emirates

 * Category:Orders, decorations, and medals of the United Arab Emirates

United Kingdom

 * Orders, decorations, and medals of the United Kingdom
 * Military awards and decorations of the United Kingdom

United States

 * Awards and decorations of the United States military
 * Awards and decorations of the United States government

Uruguay

 * Orders, decorations, and medals of Uruguay

Vanuatu

 * Category:Orders, decorations, and medals of Vanuatu

Venezuela

 * Category:Orders, decorations, and medals of Venezuela

Vietnam

 * Vietnam awards and decorations

South Vietnam (former)

 * Orders, decorations, and medals of South Vietnam

Zambia

 * Category:Orders, decorations, and medals of Zambia

Zanzibar

 * Category:Orders, decorations, and medals of the Sultanate of Zanzibar

Zimbabwe

 * Orders, decorations, and medals of Zimbabwe

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: List of military decorations


text:
Shōwa era

The Shōwa era (昭和時代) was the period of Japanese history corresponding to the reign of Emperor Shōwa (commonly known in English as Emperor Hirohito) from December 25, 1926, until his death on January 7, 1989. It was preceded by the Taishō era and succeeded by the Heisei era. The pre-1945 and post-war Shōwa periods are almost completely different states: the pre-1945 Shōwa era (1926–1945) concerns the Empire of Japan, and post-1945 Shōwa era (1945–1989) concerns the State of Japan.

Before 1945, Japan moved into political totalitarianism, ultranationalism and statism, culminating in Japan's invasion of China in 1937, part of a global period of social upheavals and conflicts such as the Great Depression and World War II.

Defeat in the Second World War brought about radical change in Japan. For the first and only time in its history, Japan was occupied by foreign powers, an American-led occupation which lasted for six years and eight months. Allied occupation brought forth sweeping democratic reforms. It led to the formal end of the emperor's status as a demigod and the transformation of Japan from a form of mixed constitutional and absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary system with a liberal democracy. In 1952, with the Treaty of San Francisco, Japan became a sovereign state again. The postwar Shōwa period was characterized by the Japanese economic miracle.

The Shōwa era was longer than the reign of any previous Japanese emperor. Emperor Shōwa was both the longest-lived and longest-reigning historical Japanese emperor as well as the longest-reigning monarch in the world at the time. On 7 January 1989, Crown Prince Akihito succeeded to the Chrysanthemum Throne upon the death of his father, Emperor Shōwa, which marked the start of the Heisei era. Emperor Hirohito was served by total of 33 prime ministers, beginning with Wakatsuki Reijiro and ending with Noboru Takeshita.

Etymology
The two kanji characters in Shōwa (昭和) were from a passage of the Chinese Book of Documents: (Translated: "[T]he people (of his domain), ... all became brightly intelligent. (Finally), he united and harmonized the myriad states.") From this same quotation, Japan also adopted the era name Meiwa (明和) during the Edo period in the late-18th century. There were two other candidates at the time – Dōwa (同和) and Genka (元化).

The term could be roughly understood as meaning "enlightened peace" or in some interpretations "radiant Japan".

In his enthronement address which was read to the people, the Emperor referenced this era name:

"I have visited the battlefields of the Great War in France. In the presence of such devastation, I understand the blessing of peace and the necessity of concord among nations."

End of "Taishō Democracy"
The election of Katō Takaaki as the Prime Minister of Japan continued democratic reforms that had been advocated by influential individuals on the left. This culminated in the passage of universal adult male suffrage in May 1925. General Election Law gave all male subjects over the age of 25 the right to vote, provided they had lived in their electoral districts for at least one year and were not homeless. The electorate thereby nearly quadrupled in size, from 3.3 million to 12.5 million.

However the forces of reaction grew more powerful and steadily; after 1925 there was a retreat from reform, liberal policies and democracy. Pressure from the conservative right forced the passage of the Peace Preservation Law of 1925 along with other anti-left-wing legislation, only ten days before the passage of universal manhood suffrage. The Peace Preservation Act curtailed activism on the left—which was not extensive—and the screws were steadily tightened. It outlawed groups that sought to alter the system of government or to abolish private ownership. The small leftist movements that had been galvanized by the Russian Revolution were subsequently crushed and scattered. This was in part due to the Peace Preservation Act, but also due to the general fragmentation of the left. Conservatives forced the passage of the Peace Preservation Law because the party leaders and politicians of the Taishō era had felt that, after World War I, the state was in danger from revolutionary movements. The Japanese state never clearly defined a boundary between private and public matters and, thus, demanded loyalty in all spheres of society. Subsequently, any ideological attack, such as a proposal for socialist reforms, was seen as an attack on the very existence of the state. The meaning of the law was gradually stretched to academic spheres. After the passage of the Peace Preservation Law and related legislation, kokutai emerged as the symbol of the state. Kokutai was seen as the barrier against communist and socialist movements in Japan. With the challenge of the Great Depression on the horizon, this would be the death knell for parliamentary democracy in Japan.

Washington Conference to Mukden Incident
After World War I, the Western Powers, influenced by Wilsonian ideology, attempted an effort at general disarmament. At the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–1922, the Great Powers met to set limits on naval armament. The Five Power Naval Limitation Agreement worked out in Washington limited competition in battleships and aircraft carriers to a ratio of 5:5:3 (in terms of tonnage) for the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan respectively. Japanese ultra-nationalists viewed this as an attempt by Western powers to curb Japanese expansionism in an area of the globe over which they had no interest. However, those in power in Japan readily agreed to the disarmament, realizing that the global taste for war had been soured after the First World War and knowing that, the ratio was sufficient to maintain hegemony in the Pacific.

In 1924, however, friendly U.S.–Japanese relations were torpedoed by the Immigration Act of 1924. The act closed off Japanese immigration to the United States and dropped Japanese immigrants to the level of other Asians (who were already excluded). The overwhelming reaction in Japan, both at the highest levels and in mass rallies that reflected angry public opinion, was hostile and sustained. Commentators suggested the opening guns of a race war and called for a new buildup of the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces.

The Shōwa financial crisis was a financial panic in 1927, during the first year of the reign of Emperor Hirohito. It was a precursor of the Great Depression. It brought down the government of Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijirō and led to the domination of the zaibatsu over the Japanese banking industry.

From 1928 to 1932, a domestic crisis could no longer be avoided. As the left was vigorously put down by the state, the economic collapse brought new hardship to the people of Japan. Silk and rice prices plummeted and exports decreased 50%. Unemployment in both the cities and the countryside skyrocketed and social agitation came to a head.

Meanwhile, the London Naval Treaty was ratified in 1930. Its purpose was to extend the Washington Treaty System. The Japanese government had desired to raise their ratio to 10:10:7, but this proposal was swiftly countered by the United States. Thanks to back-room dealing and other intrigues, though, Japan walked away with a 5:4 advantage in heavy cruisers, but this small gesture would not satisfy the populace of Japan, which was gradually falling under the spell of the various ultra-nationalist groups spawning throughout the country. As a result of his failings regarding the London Naval Treaty, Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi was shot on November 14, 1930, by an ultranationalist and died in 1931.

By this time, the civilian government had lost control of the populace. A New York Times correspondent called Japan a country ruled by "government by assassination". The army, moving independently of the proper government of Japan, took the opportunity to invade Manchuria in the summer of 1931.

Since the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, Japan had maintained a military presence in Manchuria. On September 18, 1931, the Mukden Incident occurred. There was a small explosion on the tracks of a Japanese railway, north of Mukden. Japan invaded Manchuria in the aftermath. The Imperial Japanese Army mobilized the Kwantung Army and attacked Chinese troops. The Minseito government, headed by Hamaguchi's successor Wakatsuki Reijirō, was unable to curb the army's offensive. The Kwantung Army conquered all of Manchuria and set up the puppet state of Manchukuo on March 1, 1932. The last Emperor of China, Puyi, was installed as the puppet ruler of Manchukuo. The Diet, now dominated by army officials, voted to withdraw from the League of Nations. The first seeds of the coming conflict had been sown.

Rise of nationalism
Prior to 1868, most Japanese more readily identified with their feudal domain rather than the idea of "Japan" as a whole. When the Tokugawa shogunate was overthrown, the leaders of the revolt, Satsuma and Chōshū, were ideologically opposed to the house of Tokugawa since the Battle of Sekigahara. The Meiji era changed all of that. With the introduction of mass education, conscription, industrialization, centralization, and successful foreign wars, Japanese nationalism began to foment as a powerful force in society. Mass education and conscription served as a means to indoctrinate the coming generation with "the idea of Japan" as a nation state instead of a series of daimyōs. In this way, loyalty to feudal domains was supplanted with loyalty to the central government. Industrialization and centralization gave the Japanese a strong sense that their country could once more rival and dominate Western powers technologically and socially. Moreover, successful foreign wars gave the populace a sense of martial pride in their country. The rise of Japanese nationalism paralleled the growth of nationalism within the West. Certain conservatives such as Gondō Seikei and Asahi Heigo saw the rapid industrialization of Japan as something that had to be tempered. During the Meiji era, such nationalists railed against the unequal treaties, but in the years following the First World War, Western criticism of Japanese imperial ambitions and restrictions on Japanese immigration changed the focus of the nationalist movement in Japan.

Japanese nationalism was buoyed by a romantic concept of Bushidō and driven by a modern concern for rapid industrial development and strategic dominance in East Asia. It saw the Triple Intervention of 1895 as a threat to Japanese success in East Asia and warned that the "ABCD Powers" (America, Britain, China, and the Dutch), were threatening the Empire of Japan. One solution was war.

During the first part of the Shōwa era, racial discrimination against other Asians was habitual in Imperial Japan, having begun with the start of Japanese colonialism. The Shōwa regime thus preached racial superiority and racialist theories, based on sacred nature of the Yamato-damashii. One of Emperor Shōwa's teachers, historian Kurakichi Shiratori, remarked, "Therefore nothing in the world compares to the divine nature (shinsei) of the imperial house and likewise the majesty of our national polity (kokutai). Here is one great reason for Japan's superiority."

The Anti-Comintern Pact brought Nazi ideologues to Japan who attempted but ultimately failed to inject Nazi-style anti-Semitic arguments into mainstream public discussion. Where the government presented the popular image of Jews, it was not so much to persecute but to strengthen domestic ideological uniformity.

The anti-Semitic policies of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany were refused when foreign minister of Japan Yōsuke Matsuoka stated that: "Nowhere have I promised that we would carry out his anti-Semitic policies in Japan. This is not simply my personal opinion, it is the opinion of Japan, and I have no compunction about announcing it to the world."

Imperial Japanese Army General Kiichiro Higuchi and Colonel Norihiro Yasue allowed 20,000 Jews to enter Manchukuo in 1938. Higuchi and Yasue were well regarded for their actions and were subsequently invited to the independence ceremonies of the State of Israel. Diplomat Chiune Sugihara wrote travel visas for over 6,000 Lithuanian Jews to flee the German occupation and travel to Japan. In 1985, Israel honored him as Righteous Among the Nations for his actions.

Military state
The withdrawal from the League of Nations meant that Japan was politically isolated. Japan had no strong allies and its actions had been internationally condemned, whilst internally popular nationalism was booming. Local leaders, such as mayors, teachers, and Shinto priests were recruited by the various movements to indoctrinate the populace with ultra-nationalist ideals. They had little time for the pragmatic ideas of the business elite and party politicians. Their loyalty lay to the Emperor and the military. In March 1932 the "League of Blood" assassination plot and the chaos surrounding the trial of its conspirators further eroded the rule of democratic law in Shōwa Japan. In May of the same year a group of right-wing Army and Navy officers succeeded in assassinating the Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi. The plot fell short of staging a complete coup d'état, but it effectively ended rule by political parties in Japan.

From 1932 to 1936, the country was governed by admirals. Mounting nationalist sympathies led to chronic instability in government. Moderate policies were difficult to enforce. The crisis culminated on February 26, 1936. In what became known as the February 26 Incident, about 1,500 ultranationalist army troops marched on central Tokyo. Their mission was to assassinate the government and promote a "Shōwa Restoration". Prime Minister Okada survived the attempted coup by hiding in a storage shed in his house, but the coup only ended when the Emperor personally ordered an end to the bloodshed.

Within the state, the idea of a Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere began to foment. The nationalists believed that the "ABCD powers" (Americans, British, Chinese, Dutch) were a threat to all Asians and that Asia could only survive by following the Japanese example. Japan had been the only Asian and non-Western power to industrialize itself successfully and rival great Western empires. While largely described by contemporary Western observers as a front for the expansion of the Japanese army, the idea behind the Co-Prosperity Sphere was that Asia would be united against the Western powers under the auspices of the Japanese. The idea drew influence in the paternalistic aspects of Confucianism and Koshitsu Shinto. Thus, the main goal of the Sphere was the hakkō ichiu, the unification of the eight corners of the world under the rule (kōdō) of the Emperor.

The reality during this period differed from the propaganda. Some nationalities and ethnic groups were marginalized, and during rapid military expansion into foreign countries, the Imperial General Headquarters tolerated many atrocities against local populations, such as the experimentations of Unit 731, the sankō sakusen, the use of chemical and biological weapons, and civilian massacres such as those in Nanjing, Singapore and Manila.

Some of the atrocities were motivated by racism. For instance, Japanese soldiers were taught to think of captured Chinese as not worthy of mercy.

Second Sino-Japanese War
On July 7, 1937, at the Marco Polo Bridge, the Japanese Kwantung army stationed there used explosions heard on the Chinese side of Manchuria as a pretext for invasion. The invasion led to a large-scale war known as the Second Sino-Japanese War approved by the Emperor that was called a "holy war" (Seisen) in Imperial propaganda.

At the time, China was divided internally between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which was under the leadership of Mao Zedong, and the Nationalist government of China, the Kuomintang (KMT), which was under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek.

The years of 1937–38 were a time of rapid and remarkable success by the Japanese, who had a number of advantages over the Chinese army. While the Japanese army possessed a smaller force of armour and artillery than many Western powers, it was far ahead of China in this respect, and was also in command of the world's third largest navy with 2,700 watercraft at its disposal.

By the end of July 1937, the Japanese had slaughtered the elite 29th Army at Kupeikou and soon captured Beijing. From there, the Japanese advanced down south through the major railway lines (Peiping-Suiyan, Peiping-Hankow, and Tientsin-Pukow). These were easily conquered by the superior Japanese army.

By October, Chiang Kai-shek's best armies had been defeated at Shanghai. By the end of the year, the Chinese capital at Nanjing had also been seized. The use of brutal scorched earth tactics by both sides, the Chinese as in 1938 Yellow River flood and later by the Japanese with the Three Alls Policy, "kill all, burn all, loot all", initiated in 1940, claimed millions of lives. The Chinese nationalists resorted to massive civilian guerrilla tactics, which fatigued and frustrated Japanese forces. Countless Chinese civilians were executed on the suspicion of being resistance fighters. Japanese war crimes at Nanking and other sites in China and Manchukuo have been well documented.

On December 13, 1937, the Imperial Japanese Army, following the capture of Nanjing, began the Nanjing Massacre (sometimes called the "Rape of Nanking"), which resulted in a massive number of civilian deaths including infants and elderly, and the large-scale rape of Chinese women. The exact number of casualties is an issue of fierce debate between Chinese and Japanese historians.

By 1939, the Japanese war effort had become a stalemate. The Japanese Army had seized most of the vital cities in China, including Shanghai, Nanjing, Beijing, and Wuhan. The Nationalists and the Communists, however, fought on from Chongqing and Yenan, respectively.

Second World War
Negotiations for a German-Japanese alliance began in 1937 with the onset of hostilities between Japan and China. On September 27, 1940, the Tripartite Pact was signed, creating the Rome-Tokyo-Berlin Axis. The alliance was shallow, with very little coordination or mutual help until the last two years of the war, when it was too late to make much difference.

By 1938, the United States increasingly was committed to supporting China and, with the cooperation of Britain and the Netherlands, threatening to restrict the supply of vital materials to the Japanese war machine, especially oil, steel and money. The Japanese army, after sharp defeats by the Russians in Mongolia, wanted to avoid war with the Soviet Union, even though it would have aided the German war against the USSR. The Emperor became fatalistic about going to war, as the military assumed more and more control. Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe was replaced by the war cabinet of General Hideki Tojo (1884–1948), who demanded war. Tōjō had his way and the attack was made on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, as well as British and Dutch strong points. The main American battle fleet was disabled, and in the next 90 days Japan made remarkable advances including the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, Malaya and Singapore.

The quagmire in China did not stall imperial ambitions for the creation of a Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Indeed, the Second Sino-Japanese War fueled the need for oil that could be found in the Dutch East Indies. After the Imperial General Headquarters refused to remove its troops from China (excluding Manchukuo) and French Indochina, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced in July 1941 an oil embargo on Japan. The Imperial Japanese Navy, increasingly threatened by the loss of its oil supplies, insisted on a decision, warning the alternatives were a high risk war, that Japan might lose, or a certain descent into third class status and a loss of China and Manchuria. Officially the Emperor made the decision, but he was told by a key civilian official on 5 November 1941:

"it is impossible, from the standpoint of our domestic political situation and of our self-preservation, to accept all of the American demands. ...we cannot let the present situation continue. If we miss the present opportunity to go to war, we will have to submit to American dictation. Therefore, I recognize that it is inevitable that we must decide to start a war against the United States. I will put my trust in what I have been told: namely, that things will go well in the early part of the war; and that although we will experience increasing difficulties as the war progresses, there is some prospect of success."

With the Emperor's approval, Imperial General Headquarters launched the Greater East Asia War. It began with a surprise attack on the U.S. naval base in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Japan declared war to the United States, Dutch and British. This marked the start of the Pacific War theatre of World War II. For the next six months, the Japanese had the initiative and went on the offensive. Hong Kong was overrun on December 8, 1941. By the summer of 1942, the Japanese had conquered Burma, Siam, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines. The Empire of Japan was one of the largest in history. In 1942 the Empire of Japan was at its greatest extent with colonies in Manchuria, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, French Indochina, Burma and many Pacific islands.

The decisive naval/aerial Battle of Midway took place in early June 1942. That changed the momentum of the war. Japan was put on the defensive as the Americans pursued their policy of island hopping. Tokyo was repeatedly firebombed in 1945 and in the early spring and summer of 1945, Iwo Jima and Okinawa were seized by the Americans. Finally, the death agony of the Empire of Japan came in August 1945. On August 6, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, instantly killing approximately 70,000 people when the attack took place (plus another estimated 130,000 by 1960 due to after-effects). On August 8, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria began. The following day, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing approximately 40,000 people. These attacks with the new atomic weapons were a surprise. Japan lacked any atomic bomb technology and could not counter it. The government of the Empire of Japan (Prime Minister Kantarō Suzuki) surrendered on August 14. The official surrender ceremony was held on September 2.

Total Japanese military fatalities between 1937 and 1945 were 2.1 million; most came in the last year of the war. Starvation or malnutrition-related illness accounted for roughly 80 percent of Japanese military deaths in the Philippines, and 50 percent of military fatalities in China. The aerial bombing of a total of 69 Japanese cities appears to have taken a minimum of 400,000 and possibly closer to 600,000 civilian lives (over 100,000 in Tokyo alone, over 200,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, and 80,000–150,000 civilian deaths in the battle of Okinawa). Civilian deaths among settlers who died attempting to return to Japan from Manchuria in the winter of 1945 were probably around 100,000.

Imperial rule
Japan launched multiple attacks in East Asia. In 1937, the Japanese Army invaded and captured most of the coastal Chinese cities such as Shanghai. On 22 September 1940, the Japanese invasion of French Indochina began. Japan took over French Indochina (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), British Malaya (Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore) as well as the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). Thailand managed to stay independent by becoming a satellite state of Japan. On 13 April 1941, the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact was signed. In December 1941 to May 1942, Japan sank major elements of the American, British and Dutch fleets, captured Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies, and reached the borders of India and Australia. Japan suddenly had achieved its goal of ruling the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

The ideology of Japan's colonial empire, as it expanded dramatically during the war, contained two somewhat contradictory impulses. On the one hand, it preached the unity of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, a coalition of Asian nations, directed by Japan, against Western imperialism. This approach celebrated the spiritual values of the East in opposition to the "crass" materialism of the West. In practice, however, the Japanese installed organizationally-minded bureaucrats and engineers to run their annexed territories, and they believed in ideals of efficiency, modernization, and engineering solutions to social problems. It was fascism based on technology and rejected Western norms of democracy. After 1945, the engineers and bureaucrats took over and turned the wartime techno-fascism into entrepreneurial management skills.

The Japanese government established puppet regimes in Manchuria and China; they were dismantled at the end of the war. The Army operated ruthless governments in most of the conquered areas but paid more favorable attention to the Dutch East Indies. The main goal was to obtain oil. The Dutch sabotaged their oil wells but the Japanese were able to reopen them. However most of the tankers taking oil to Japan were sunk by American submarines, so Japan's oil shortage became increasingly acute. Japan sponsored an Indonesian nationalist movement under Sukarno. Sukarno finally came to power in the late 1940s after several years of battling the Dutch.

Defeat and Allied occupation
With the defeat of the Empire of Japan, the Allied Powers dissolved it and placed the territories under occupation. The Soviet Union was made responsible for North Korea, and annexed the Kuril Islands and the southern portion of the island of Sakhalin. The United States took responsibility for the rest of Japan's possessions in Oceania and took over South Korea. China, meanwhile, plunged back into its civil war, with the Communists in control by 1949. General Douglas MacArthur, from the US, was put in charge of the Allied Occupation of Japan as the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers; he and his staff exerted wide but indirect power, for the decisions were carried out by Japanese officials.

A War Crimes Tribunal, similar to that at Nuremberg, was set up in Tokyo. On 3 May 1946, the prosecution began of Japanese military leaders for war crimes. Several prominent members of the Japanese cabinet were executed, most notably former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. But the Emperor Hirohito was neither tried at the Tokyo trials nor dethroned, nor any members of the imperial family. Instead, under the Post-war Constitution, the Japanese Emperor was reduced to a figurehead nominal monarch without divine characteristics and is forbidden to play a role in politics.

Douglas MacArthur sought to break the power of the zaibatsu; Japan was democratized and liberalized along American "New Deal" liberal lines. Parliamentary party politics was restored. Old left-wing organizations such as the Social Democratic Party and the Japanese Communist Party reasserted themselves. The first post-war general election was held in 1946, and for the first time, women were allowed to vote.

On 3 May 1947, the Constitution of Japan went into effect. This changed the Empire of Japan into the State of Japan (Nihon Koku, 日本国) with a liberal democracy (constitutional monarchy and parliamentary system). pre-war Japanese military was disarmed completely and the absoluteness of the Emperor of Japan was repealed by the Post-war Constitution. Article 9 turned Japan into a pacifist country without a military.

In July 1947, the Japanese government, with the encouragement of the U.S. occupation forces, established a National Police Reserve (警察予備隊 Keisatsu-yobitai). This consisted of 75,000 men equipped with light infantry weapons. This was the first step of its post-war rearmament.

Shigeru Yoshida was elected as the Prime Minister of Japan from 1946 to 1947 and from 1948 to 1954. His policy, known as the "Yoshida Doctrine", emphasized military reliance on the United States and promoted unrestrained economic growth. On 8 September 1951, the US-led Allied Occupation of Japan ended after the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco, which became effective on April 28, 1952. It restored the sovereignty of Japan. On the same day, the Security Treaty Between the United States and Japan was signed as Cold War tensions rose; it was later replaced by the 1960 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security Between the United States and Japan. The 1960 treaty requires the U.S. to protect Japan from external aggression. It allows United States forces to be stationed in Japan. Meanwhile, Japanese ground and maritime forces deal with internal threats and natural disasters. This established the U.S.–Japan alliance.

In mid-1952, The Coastal Safety Force (海上警備隊 Kaijō-keibitai) was founded. It was the waterborne counterpart of National Police Reserve.

By the late 1940s, there were two conservative parties (the Democratic Party and Liberal Party); after a series of mergers, they came together in 1955 as the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). By 1955, the political system stabilized in what was called the 1955 System. The two chief parties were the conservative LDP and the leftist Japan Socialist Party (JSP). Throughout the period 1955 to 2009, the LDP was dominant (with a brief interlude in 1993–94). The LDP was pro-capitalism, pro-American, and had a strong rural base.

The "Japanese Miracle"
Japan's remarkable economic growth in the decades following 1950 has been called the "Japanese Miracle", as the economy grew three times faster than other major nations. It was achieved almost without foreign capital. The miracle slackened off in 1973 in the face of an upsurge in oil prices and the destabilization of international trade. By the mid-1990s the economy entered an era of stagnation and low growth that still persists.

Saburō Ōkita (1914–93), an economist, realized by 1942 that the war was lost; economic recovery that was published in 1945 as "The Fundamental Directions for the Reconstruction of the Japanese Economy". He became foreign minister in 1979 and endeavored to integrate Japan economically and politically with the world economy.

From 1950 onward, Japan rebuilt itself politically and economically. Sugita finds that "the 1950s was a decade during which Japan formulated a unique corporate capitalist system in which government, business, and labor implemented close and intricate cooperation".

Japan's newfound economic power soon gave it dominant economic influence in the world. The Yoshida Doctrine and the Japanese government's economic intervention spurred on an economic miracle on par with the record of West Germany. The Japanese government strove to spur industrial development through a mix of protectionism and trade expansion. The establishment of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) was instrumental in the Japanese post-war economic recovery. By 1954, the MITI system was in full effect. It coordinated industry and government action and fostered cooperative arrangements, and sponsored research to develop promising exports as well as imports for which substitutes would be sought (especially dyestuffs, iron and steel, and soda ash). Yoshida's successor, Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda, began implementing economic policies which removed much of Japan's anti-monopoly laws. Foreign companies were locked out of the Japanese market and strict protectionist laws were enacted.

Meanwhile, the United States under President Dwight D. Eisenhower saw Japan as the economic anchor for Western Cold War policy in Asia. Japan was completely demilitarized and did not contribute to military power, but did provide the economic power. The US and UN forces used Japan as their forward logistics base during the Korean War (1950–53), and orders for supplies flooded Japan. The close economic relationship strengthened the political and diplomatic ties, so that the two nations survived a major political crisis in 1960 involving left-wing opposition to the revision of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. The left failed to force the removal of large American military bases in Japan, especially on Okinawa Prefecture. Shimizu argues that the American policy of creating "people of plenty" was a success in Japan and reached its goal of defusing anti-capitalist protest on the left.

On 1 July 1954, the Self-Defense Forces Act (Act No. 165 of 1954) reorganized the National Security Board as the Defense Agency on July 1, 1954. Afterward, the National Security Force was reorganized as the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) (陸上自衛隊 Rikujō Jieitai). The Coastal Safety Force was reorganized as the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) (海上自衛隊 Kaijō Jieitai). The Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) (航空自衛隊 Kōkū Jieitai) was established as a new branch of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) (自衛隊 Jieitai). These are the de facto postwar Japanese army, navy and air force as the successor to the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy.

On 12 December 1956, Japan joined the United Nations.

In 1957, Japan was the first country to build dedicated railway lines for high-speed travel. In 1957, Odakyu Electric Railway introduced its 3000 series SE Romancecar train, setting a world speed record of 145 km/h (90 mph) for a narrow gauge train. This would lead to the design of the first Shinkansen, This record gave impetus for the design of the first 0 Series Shinkansen.

In 1960, Japan was wracked by the massive Anpo Protests against the revision of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty.

On 1 October 1964, the largest Japanese land reclamation project thus far was completed in Lake Hachirōgata. The village of Ōgata was established. Land reclamation work began at Lake Hachirōgata in April 1957.

On 1 October 1964, Tokaido Shinkansen was the first high-speed rail line in Japan and the oldest high-speed rail system in the world.

On 10 October 1964, Tokyo hosted the 1964 Summer Olympics. This marked the first time that the Olympic Games were held in Asia.

In 1968, Japan surpassed West Germany to become the second largest economic power in the world. In the same year, the Ogasawara Islands were returned from US occupation to Japanese sovereignty. Japanese citizens were allowed to return.

By the 1970s, Japan ascended to great power status again. It had the world's second largest economy after the United States. However, its military power was very limited due to pacifist policies and article 9 of the 1947 constitution. This made Japan an abnormal great power.

On 11 February 1970, the first successful launch of the Lambda 4S rocket placed the Japanese Ohsumi satellite on orbit.

On 20 December 1970, the Koza riot was a violent and spontaneous protest against the US military presence in Okinawa.

On 30 September 1971, the Zengakuren demonstrated and rioted in Tokyo against terms for the return of Okinawa from the US to Japanese control. They wanted to remove all American military presence.

On 24 November 1971, the Okinawa Reversion Agreement was ratified and returned the Okinawa Prefecture to Japanese sovereignty.

In 1974, Prime Minister Eisaku Satō was the first Asian to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1980, Japan became the biggest motor vehicle producing country in the world with 11,042,884 motor vehicles compared to the US's 8,009,841.

The beginning of 1980s saw the introduction of Japanese anime into the American and western culture. In the 1990s, Japanese animation slowly gained popularity in the United States.

In 1985, the home video game industry was revitalized by the widespread success of the Nintendo Entertainment System. The success of the NES marked a shift in the dominance of the video game industry from the United States to Japan during the third generation of consoles.

Organisms named after Shōwa era
A new genus, Showajidaia, and new family, Showajidaiidae, of nudibranch mollusks were named in 2020.

Conversion table
To convert any Gregorian calendar year between 1926 and 1989 to Japanese calendar year in Shōwa era, 1925 needs to be subtracted from the year in question.

title: Shōwa era


text:
Nǃxau ǂToma

Nǃxau ǂToma (short: Nǃxau, alternative spelling Gcao Tekene Çoma; 16 December 1944 – 5 July 2003) was a Namibian bush farmer and actor who starred in the 1980 film The Gods Must Be Crazy and its sequels, in which he played the Kalahari Bushman Xixo. The Namibian called him "Namibia's most famous actor".

Biography
Nǃxau was a member of the ǃKung people, one of several peoples known as Bushmen. N!xau was a Namibian who starred in the 1980 movie The Gods Must Be Crazy and its sequels, in which he played the Kalahari Bushman Xixo.

He spoke Juǀʼhoan, Otjiherero, and Tswana fluently, as well as some Afrikaans. He did not know his exact age, and before his appearance in the films he had little experience beyond his home. He had only ever seen three white people before casting, and when director Jamie Uys gave him his first cash payment of $300 for The Gods Must Be Crazy, he allegedly let it blow away in the wind because he did not understand its value. This was despite money already being a serious matter for other San since many of them depended on purchased food and government aid and/or had enlisted in the South African Army due to the high wages it paid. He was, however, able to negotiate for near several hundred thousand for his appearance in the sequel. He came from a culture that did not value the material things that money could buy and consequently had not learned money management skills, although he used some of his income to build a brick house with running water and electricity for his family. He also bought a used car and subsequently hired a chauffeur, as he had no desire to learn to drive.

Nǃxau converted to Christianity and in July 2000, he was baptized as a Seventh-day Adventist.

He was found dead in late June 2003 near his home in Namibia after going out to collect wood and on an excursion to hunt guineafowl. He died from multiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis. According to official estimates, he was about 58 or 59 years old at the time. He was buried on 12 July in a semi-traditional ceremony at Tsumkwe, next to the grave of his second wife. He had six surviving children.

Career
In addition to The Gods Must Be Crazy, Nǃxau starred in a series of sequels: The Gods Must Be Crazy II, Crazy Safari, Crazy Hong Kong and The Gods Must Be Funny in China. After his film career ended, he returned to Namibia, where he farmed maize, pumpkins, and beans, and kept several heads of cattle (but no more than 20 at a time because, according to The Independent, without the complex farming systems of the "modern world", he had trouble keeping track of more). The Namibian local daily New Era stated that he simply could not count further than 20.

TV drama

 * Sekai Ururun Taizaiki (1996) – Self (nihon dorama)

title: Nǃxau ǂToma


text:
Talk:XML pipeline

[Please. Could we have some context here? It is unclear whether this is about the Alaska oil pipeline or computer software or something else? An educated reader who reads the sentence above would not find the answer. You could start with "In software...", etc. (if in fact that's what this is).] Michael Hardy

[The first sentence seems very explanatory that this is a software construct] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.137.184.81 (talk) 23:44, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

When I came here just now the opening clause reads "in computer science". Since computer science is the theoretical side of computing that's not really correct. In software would be better. I shall amend. Rob Burbidge (talk) 13:59, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Page has a lot of dead links.
This page under the "product specific" section has a huge number of dead or misdirected links. The first three I checked were broken. Anyone who wants to fix that up would be appreciated. I might be able to do it later, but wanted to say "hey this is broken" in case someone else beats me to it. Sesquiannual (talk) 19:05, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 one external links on XML pipeline. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150408054606/http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/hist.html to http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/hist.html
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20070209060027/http://pipes.yahoo.com:80/ to http://pipes.yahoo.com/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 17:55, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

title: Talk:XML pipeline


text:
Defense Superior Service Medal

The Defense Superior Service Medal (DSSM) is a military decoration of the United States Department of Defense, which is presented to United States Armed Forces service members who perform superior meritorious service in a position of significant responsibility.

It is most often presented to general and flag officers, followed by a lesser number of Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Space Force colonels and Navy and Coast Guard captains. Presented in the name of the United States Secretary of Defense, it was established by President Gerald R. Ford on February 6, 1976 in. It is analogous and senior to the Legion of Merit, albeit awarded for service in a joint duty capacity.

Criteria
The Defense Superior Service Medal is the United States Department of Defense's second-highest non-combat-related military award and the second-highest joint service decoration. It is given by the Secretary of Defense to members of the United States Armed Forces who render superior meritorious service in a position of great responsibility. This service must be part of a joint activity. The award is generally for a period of time exceeding 12 months and encompassing an entire joint assignment. Service members assigned to or attached to a Joint Task Force as individuals, not members of a specific military service's unit, can be eligible. It has also been awarded to a small cohort of U.S. military officers serving as astronauts for service leading up to and during Space Shuttle missions carrying classified and unclassified Department of Defense payloads. In these cases, the 12-month time period was considered to include the training period prior to that flight, which typically exceeded a year in duration.

Members of service-specific units are eligible for awards of personal decorations from their parent service. The DSSM specifically recognizes exceptionally superior service, and to honor a person's accomplishments over a sustained period. Joint or Department of Defense awards, including the DSSM, may be awarded posthumously.

Appearance
At its time of creation, it was decided the DSSM would be obtained at the lowest possible cost and with as little involvement as possible. For these reasons, and because it would rank just below the Defense Distinguished Service Medal for similar service, it was decided to use the same design as the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, finished in silver rather than gold, and with the inscriptions on the medal's reverse appropriately modified.

The medal is made of a silver-colored metal with blue enamel, and is 1+7/8 in high. The obverse depicts a silver American eagle superimposed over a medium blue pentagon. The eagle has outstretched wings, with the shield of the United States charged on its breast. In its talons are three crossed arrows in silver. The tips of the wings cover a surrounding arc of silver five-pointed stars encircling the top and sides of the pentagon, while the bottom is surrounded by a silver wreath encircling the base composed of a laurel branch on the left and an olive branch on the right.

The reverse is plain except for the inscription at the top, For Superior Service. Below in the pentagon is the inscription From The Secretary of Defense To.

The medal is suspended from a ribbon 1+3/8 in wide composed of these vertical stripes: Golden Yellow 3/16 in, Bluebird 1/4 in, White 3/16 in, Scarlet 1/8 in, White 3/16 in, Bluebird 1/4 in Golden Yellow 3/16 in.

Subsequent awards of the Defense Superior Service Medal are denoted by oak leaf clusters worn on the suspension and service ribbons of the medal.

Notable recipients
• Vice Admiral David Architzel, Navy

• Colonel Casey M. Beard, Space Force

• General David H. Berger, 38th Commandant of the Marine Corps

• Command Master Chief Petty Officer Rudy Boesch, Navy

• Colonel Curtis Brown, Air Force

• Vice Admiral Nancy Elizabeth Brown, Navy

• Captain Daniel Christopher Burbank, Coast Guard

• General Michael P.C. Carns, Air Force

• Sergeant Major of the Army Raymond F. Chandler, Army

• Lieutenant Colonel Michael R. Clifford, Army

• Colonel Eileen Collins, Air Force, NASA astronaut

• Colonel Kim Campbell (pilot), Air Force

• Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman Ramon Colon-Lopez, Air Force

• Brigadier General Jesse Cross, Army

• Stephen E. Cross, Air Force

• Brigadier General Susan Y. Desjardins, Air Force

• Major General Sharon K.G. Dunbar, Air Force

• Major General Charles J. Dunlap Jr. USAF

• Colonel Patrick G. Forrester, Army

• Lieutenant General Walter E. Gaskin, Marine Corps

• Sergeant Major of the Army Julius W. Gates, Army

• Lieutenant General John F. Goodman, Marine Corps

• General Frank Gorenc, Air Force

• Major General Wendell L. Griffin, Air Force

• Rear Admiral Vincent L. Griffith, U.S. Navy

• Sergeant Major of the Army Robert E. Hall, Army

• Brigadier General Rebecca S. Halstead, Army

• General Carter Ham, Army

• Admiral Harry Harris, Navy

• Lieutenant General Robert C. Hinson, Air Force

• General Donald J. Hoffman, Air Force

• Admiral Jonathan Howe, Navy

• Lieutenant General Kenneth W. Hunzeker, Army

• General Charles H. Jacoby Jr., Army

• Major General Rodney P. Kelly, Air Force

• Lieutenant General Frank Klotz, Air Force

• Colonel W. Patrick Lang

• Colonel Mark C. Lee, Air Force, NASA astronaut

• Captain Rick Miller, Navy

• Admiral Michael Mullen, Navy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

• Major General Dennis J. Murphy, Marine Corps

• Brigadier General Rafael O'Ferrall, U.S. Army

• General Peter Pace, Marine Corps, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

• Major General Susan Pamerleau, Air Force

• General David Petraeus, Army

• General Colin Powell, Army

• Brigadier General Chad Raduege, Air Force

• Brigadier General John W. Raymond, Air Force

• Vice Admiral Ann E. Rondeau, Navy

• Colonel Jack Warren Russell, Army

• Vice Admiral Joe Sestak, Navy

• General John J. Sheehan, Marine Corps

• Rear Admiral Jacob L. Shuford, Navy

• Brigadier General Donald B. Smith, Army

• Commander Guy Snodgrass, Navy

• Rear Admiral Joseph C. Strasser, Navy

• Brigadier General John Tree, Air Force

• Lieutenant General David P. Valcourt, Army

• Colonel James Voss, Army, NASA astronaut

• General Glenn M. Walters, Marine Corps

• Major General H. Marshal Ward, Air Force

• Rear Admiral Edward F. Welch, Jr., Navy

• Vice Admiral Frank D. Whitworth, Navy

• Lieutenant General Frances C. Wilson, Marine Corps

• Admiral James A. Winnefeld, Jr., Navy

• Vice Admiral James P. Wisecup, U.S. Navy

• Colonel Fred H Wisely, U.S. Air Force

• Major General Walter H. Yates, Jr., Army

• General Anthony Zinni, Marine Corps

title: Defense Superior Service Medal