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119-467: Yoko Ono ( Japanese : 小野 洋子 , romanized :  Ono Yōko , usually spelled in katakana オノ・ヨーコ ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist . Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking . Ono grew up in Tokyo and moved to New York City in 1952 to join her family. She became involved with New York City's downtown artists scene in

238-773: A Vienna press conference, where they satirised prejudice and stereotyping by wearing a bag over their entire bodies. Lennon detailed this period in the Beatles' song " The Ballad of John and Yoko ". During the Amsterdam Bed In press conference, Yoko also earned controversy in the Jewish community for saying during the press conference that, "If I was a Jewish girl in Hitler's day, I would approach him and become his girlfriend. After 10 days in bed, he would come to my way of thinking. This world needs communication. And making love

357-559: A pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent . Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure is topic–comment . Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or form questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender , and there are no articles . Verbs are conjugated , primarily for tense and voice , but not person . Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has

476-526: A stay-at-home dad to care for his infant son. Sean has followed in his parents' footsteps with a career in music; he performs solo work, works with Ono and formed a band, The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger . In early 1980, Lennon heard Lene Lovich and the B-52's ' " Rock Lobster " while on vacation in Bermuda. The latter reminded him of Ono's musical sound and he took this as an indication that she had reached

595-576: A 1971 custody battle , Cox disappeared with their eight-year-old daughter. He won custody after successfully claiming that Ono was an unfit mother due to her drug use. Ono's ex-husband changed Kyoko's name to "Ruth Holman" and subsequently raised the girl in an organization known as the Church of the Living Word . Ono and Lennon searched for Kyoko for years, but to no avail. She would finally see Kyoko again in 1998. Ono's first contact with any member of

714-461: A 2018 issue of Portland Magazine , editor Colin W. Sargent writes of interviewing Yoko while she was visiting Portland, Maine, in 2005. She spoke of driving along the coast with Lennon and dreamed of buying a house in Maine. "We talked excitedly in the car. We were looking for a house on the water… We did examine the place! We kept driving north along the water until I don't really remember the name of

833-850: A Chance" (backed by Ono's "Remember Love") was the first release to be credited to the Plastic Ono Band. It was followed in October by " Cold Turkey " (backed by Ono's " Don't Worry Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking for her Hand in the Snow) "). The singles were followed in December by the group's first album, Live Peace in Toronto 1969 , which had been recorded live at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival in September. This incarnation of

952-637: A benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action. Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one does not say in English: The amazed he ran down

1071-485: A companion piece to Lennon's John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band . The two albums also had companion covers: Ono's featured a photo of her leaning on Lennon, and Lennon's a photo of him leaning on Ono. Her album included raw, harsh vocals, which bore a similarity with sounds in nature (especially those made by animals) and free jazz techniques used by wind and brass players. Performers included Ornette Coleman , other renowned free jazz performers, and Ringo Starr . Some songs on

1190-594: A complex system of honorifics , with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters , known as kanji ( 漢字 , ' Han characters') , with two unique syllabaries (or moraic scripts) derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana ( ひらがな or 平仮名 , 'simple characters') and katakana ( カタカナ or 片仮名 , 'partial characters'). Latin script ( rōmaji ローマ字 )

1309-414: A distinct language of its own that has absorbed various aspects from neighboring languages. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, with each having both a short and a long version. Elongated vowels are usually denoted with a line over the vowel (a macron ) in rōmaji , a repeated vowel character in hiragana , or a chōonpu succeeding the vowel in katakana . /u/ ( listen )

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1428-492: A few weeks after Lennon's divorce from Cynthia was granted. On December 12, 1968, Lennon and Ono participated in the BBC documentary about The Rolling Stones , The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus , along with several other high-profile musicians. Lennon performed his Beatles composition " Yer Blues " towards the end, with an improvised vocal performance by Ono rounding out the set. The film would not be released until 1996, due to

1547-419: A glide /j/ and either the first part of a geminate consonant ( っ / ッ , represented as Q) or a moraic nasal in the coda ( ん / ン , represented as N). The nasal is sensitive to its phonetic environment and assimilates to the following phoneme, with pronunciations including [ɴ, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, ɰ̃] . Onset-glide clusters only occur at the start of syllables but clusters across syllables are allowed as long as

1666-644: A half-filled glass of water, with a window overlooking Central Park in the background. This photograph sold at an auction in London in April 2002 for about $ 13,000. In the liner notes to Season of Glass , Ono explained that the album was not dedicated to Lennon because "he would have been offended—he was one of us." The album received highly favorable reviews and reflected the public's mood after Lennon's assassination. In 1982, she released It's Alright . The cover featured Ono in her wrap-around sunglasses, looking towards

1785-416: A house together, and he refused to accept Ono's phone calls. The next month, Lennon agreed to meet Ono, who claimed to have found a cure for smoking. After the meeting, Lennon failed to return home or call Pang. When she telephoned the next day, Ono told her Lennon was unavailable, because he was exhausted after a hypnotherapy session. Two days later, Lennon reappeared at a joint dental appointment with Pang; he

1904-522: A king-sized bed to be brought to the recording studio as he worked on the Beatles' last recorded album, Abbey Road . After "The Ballad of John and Yoko", Lennon and Ono decided it would be better to form their own band to release their newer, more personally representative art work, rather than release the sound material as the Beatles. To this end they formed the Plastic Ono Band , a name based on their 1968 Fluxus conceptual art project of

2023-484: A listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations. Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it

2142-460: A number of Fluxus experiments. She also received minor airplay with the ballad " Mrs. Lennon ". The track "Don't Worry, Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)" was an ode to Ono's missing daughter, and featured Eric Clapton on guitar. In 1971, while studying with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Majorca , Spain, Ono's ex-husband Anthony Cox accused Ono of abducting their daughter Kyoko from

2261-401: A painting on fire at one performance, Cage advised her to treat the paper with flame retardant . She is credited for the album cover art for the album Nirvana Symphony by Toshiro Mayuzumi , released by Time Records in 1962. After living apart for several years, Ono and Ichiyanagi filed for divorce in 1962. Ono returned home to live with her parents, and, suffering from clinical depression ,

2380-457: A reference to Ono: "Ocean child calls me", referring to the translation of Yoko's Japanese spelling. In May 1968, while his wife was on holiday in Greece, Lennon invited Ono to visit. They spent the night recording a selection of avant-garde tape loops, after which, he said, they "made love at dawn". The recordings made by the two during this session ultimately became their first collaborative album,

2499-408: A sentence need not be stated and pronouns may be omitted if they can be inferred from context. In the example above, hana ga nagai would mean "[their] noses are long", while nagai by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: Yatta! ( やった! ) "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below),

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2618-428: A single adjective can be a complete sentence: Urayamashii! ( 羨ましい! ) "[I'm] jealous [about it]!". While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. In some cases, Japanese relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate

2737-469: A solo artist, peaking at No. 58 and gaining significant underground airplay. Double Fantasy received an instant critical reappraisal, eventually becoming a landmark album of the 1980s, and winning Ono the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year at the 24th Annual Grammy Awards . In 1981, she released the album Season of Glass , which featured the striking cover photo of Lennon's bloody spectacles next to

2856-553: A sound and light installation in the Apple press office that consisted of four perspex columns, each representing a member of the Beatles, with one holding a tape recorder and amplifier, the second a closed-circuit TV and camera, the third a record player and amplifier, and the fourth a miniature light show and loud speaker. Soon after The Plastic Ono Band name was used in recording and releasing somewhat more standard rock -based albums. In July 1969, Lennon's first solo single, "Give Peace

2975-470: A wealthy banker and former classical pianist . Isoko's adoptive maternal grandfather Zenjiro Yasuda ( 安田 善次郎 , Yasuda Zenjirō ) was an affiliate of the Yasuda clan and zaibatsu . Eisuke came from a long line of samurai warrior-scholars. The kanji translation of Yōko ( 洋子 ) means "ocean child". Two weeks before Ono's birth, Eisuke was transferred to San Francisco, California , by his employer,

3094-624: Is compressed rather than protruded , or simply unrounded. Some Japanese consonants have several allophones , which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the 20th century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as [tɕi] , approximately chi ( listen ) ; however, now [ti] and [tɕi] are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī [tiː] "Western-style tea" and chii [tɕii] "social status". The "r" of

3213-411: Is a great way of communicating." Lennon changed his name by deed poll on April 22, 1969, switching out Winston for Ono as a middle name. Although he used the name John Ono Lennon after that, official documents referred to him as John Winston Ono Lennon. The couple settled at Tittenhurst Park at Sunninghill, Berkshire , in southeast England. When Ono was injured in a car crash, Lennon arranged for

3332-448: Is also seen in o-medetō "congratulations", from medetaku ). Late Middle Japanese has the first loanwords from European languages – now-common words borrowed into Japanese in this period include pan ("bread") and tabako ("tobacco", now "cigarette"), both from Portuguese . Modern Japanese is considered to begin with the Edo period (which spanned from 1603 to 1867). Since Old Japanese,

3451-527: Is also used in a limited fashion (such as for imported acronyms) in Japanese writing. The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals , but also traditional Chinese numerals . Proto-Japonic , the common ancestor of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages , is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers coming from the Korean peninsula sometime in the early- to mid-4th century BC (the Yayoi period ), replacing

3570-440: Is appropriate to use sensei ( 先生 , "teacher"), but inappropriate to use anata . This is because anata is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has higher status. Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun hon ( 本 ) may refer to a single book or several books; hito ( 人 ) can mean "person" or "people", and ki ( 木 ) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number

3689-701: Is associated with comedy (see Kansai dialect ). Dialects of Tōhoku and North Kantō are associated with typical farmers. The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and the Amami Islands (administratively part of Kagoshima ), are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family; not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages. However, in contrast to linguists, many ordinary Japanese people tend to consider

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3808-466: Is better documentation of Late Middle Japanese phonology than for previous forms (for instance, the Arte da Lingoa de Iapam ). Among other sound changes, the sequence /au/ merges to /ɔː/ , in contrast with /oː/ ; /p/ is reintroduced from Chinese; and /we/ merges with /je/ . Some forms rather more familiar to Modern Japanese speakers begin to appear – the continuative ending - te begins to reduce onto

3927-509: Is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as watashi ( 私 , literally "private") or watakushi (also 私 , hyper-polite form), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ore ( 俺 "oneself", "myself") or boku . Similarly, different words such as anata , kimi , and omae ( お前 , more formally 御前 "the one before me") may refer to

4046-417: Is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word ) or (rarely) by adding a suffix, or sometimes by duplication (e.g. 人人 , hitobito , usually written with an iteration mark as 人々 ). Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus Tanaka-san usually means Mx Tanaka . Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through

4165-755: Is less common. In terms of mutual intelligibility , a survey in 1967 found that the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tōhoku dialects ) to students from Greater Tokyo were the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture ), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture ), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in Okayama Prefecture ). The survey

4284-420: Is often called a topic-prominent language , which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and that the two do not always coincide. The sentence Zō wa hana ga nagai ( 象は鼻が長い ) literally means, "As for elephant(s), (the) nose(s) (is/are) long". The topic is zō "elephant", and the subject is hana "nose". Japanese grammar tends toward brevity; the subject or object of

4403-498: Is preserved in words such as matsuge ("eyelash", lit. "hair of the eye"); modern mieru ("to be visible") and kikoeru ("to be audible") retain a mediopassive suffix - yu(ru) ( kikoyu → kikoyuru (the attributive form, which slowly replaced the plain form starting in the late Heian period) → kikoeru (all verbs with the shimo-nidan conjugation pattern underwent this same shift in Early Modern Japanese )); and

4522-402: Is the version of Japanese discussed in this article. Formerly, standard Japanese in writing ( 文語 , bungo , "literary language") was different from colloquial language ( 口語 , kōgo ) . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. Bungo was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then kōgo gradually extended its influence and

4641-471: Is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) aspect , similar to the suffix ing in English. For others that represent a change of state, the -te iru form indicates a perfect aspect. For example, kite iru means "They have come (and are still here)", but tabete iru means "They are eating". Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have

4760-405: Is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted (contracted from vuestra merced , "your ( majestic plural ) grace") or Portuguese você (from vossa mercê ). Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom. The choice of words used as pronouns

4879-835: The Every Man Has a Woman tribute album to Yoko Ono, the B-52's , Sonic Youth and Meredith Monk . As Lennon's widow, Ono works to preserve his legacy. She funded the Strawberry Fields memorial in Manhattan 's Central Park , the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland, and the John Lennon Museum in Saitama , Japan (which closed in 2010). She has made significant philanthropic contributions to

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4998-749: The Japanese diaspora worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language . There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as the Ainu , Austronesian , Koreanic , and the now-discredited Altaic , but none of these proposals have gained any widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from

5117-462: The Japonic language family, which also includes the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands . As these closely related languages are commonly treated as dialects of the same language, Japanese is sometimes called a language isolate . According to Martine Irma Robbeets , Japanese has been subject to more attempts to show its relation to other languages than any other language in

5236-512: The Mitsui family. She remained in Tokyo throughout World War II and the fire-bombing of March 9, 1945 , during which she was sheltered with other family members in a special bunker in Tokyo's Azabu district, away from the heavy bombing. Ono later went to the Karuizawa mountain resort with members of her family. Starvation was rampant in the destruction that followed the Tokyo bombings;

5355-514: The Philippines , and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries learned Japanese as the language of the empire. As a result, many elderly people in these countries can still speak Japanese. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil , with 1.4 million to 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and descendants, according to Brazilian IBGE data, more than

5474-738: The United States (notably in Hawaii , where 16.7% of the population has Japanese ancestry, and California ), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao Region and the Province of Laguna ). Japanese has no official status in Japan, but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard : hyōjungo ( 標準語 ) , meaning "standard Japanese", or kyōtsūgo ( 共通語 ) , "common language", or even "Tokyo dialect" at times. The meanings of

5593-523: The Viennese -trained André Singer. Ono has said that her heroes at this time were the twelve-tone composers Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg . She said, "I was just fascinated with what they could do. I wrote some twelve-tone songs, then my music went into [an] area that my teacher felt was really a bit off track, and... he said, 'Well, look, there are people who are doing things like what you do, and they're called avant-garde. ' " Singer introduced her to

5712-538: The Yokohama Specie Bank . The rest of the family followed soon after, with Ono first meeting her father when she was two years old. Her younger brother Keisuke was born in December 1936. In 1937, the family was transferred back to Japan, and Ono enrolled at Tokyo's elite Gakushūin (also known as the Peers School), one of the most exclusive schools in Japan. Ono was enrolled in piano lessons from

5831-806: The de facto standard Japanese had been the Kansai dialect , especially that of Kyoto . However, during the Edo period, Edo (now Tokyo) developed into the largest city in Japan, and the Edo-area dialect became standard Japanese. Since the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages has increased significantly. The period since 1945 has seen many words borrowed from other languages—such as German, Portuguese and English. Many English loan words especially relate to technology—for example, pasokon (short for "personal computer"), intānetto ("internet"), and kamera ("camera"). Due to

5950-448: The standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region (modern Tokyo ) in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid 19th century). Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, and words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese is an agglutinative , mora -timed language with relatively simple phonotactics ,

6069-615: The "Main Hall"). This concert featured radical experimental music and performances. The Chambers Street series hosted some of Ono's earliest conceptual artwork, including Painting to Be Stepped On , a scrap of canvas on the floor that became a completed artwork as footprints were left on it. With that work, Ono suggested that a work of art no longer needed to be mounted on a wall and inaccessible. She showed this work and other instructional work again at Macunias's AG Gallery in July 1961. After Ono set

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6188-527: The 1.2 million of the United States ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 12% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese, with an estimated 12.6% of the population of Japanese ancestry in 2008. Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru , Argentina , Australia (especially in the eastern states), Canada (especially in Vancouver , where 1.4% of the population has Japanese ancestry),

6307-465: The 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese . Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords . The basis of

6426-495: The Beatles occurred when she visited Paul McCartney at his home in London to obtain a Lennon–McCartney song manuscript for a book John Cage was working on, Notations . McCartney declined to give her any of his manuscripts but suggested that Lennon might oblige. Lennon later gave Ono the original handwritten lyrics to " The Word ". Ono and Lennon first met on November 7, 1966, at the Indica Gallery in London, where she

6545-434: The Beatles (even as she had gone to see Paul McCartney asking for a Beatle song score), but relented on the condition that Lennon pay her five shillings , to which Lennon replied, "I'll give you an imaginary five shillings and hammer an imaginary nail in." In a 2002 interview, Ono said, "I was very attracted to him. It was a really strange situation." Ono started writing to Lennon, sending him her conceptual artworks, and soon

6664-862: The Carnegie Recital Hall in 1965, in which she debuted Cut Piece . In September 1966, Ono visited London to meet artist and political activist Gustav Metzger 's Destruction in Art Symposium in September 1966. She was the only woman artist chosen to perform her own events and only one of two invited to speak. She premiered The Fog Machine during her Concert of Music for the Mind at the Bluecoat Society of Arts in Liverpool, England in 1967. Ono and Cox divorced on February 2, 1969, and she married John Lennon later that same year. During

6783-486: The Japanese language is of particular interest, ranging between an apical central tap and a lateral approximant . The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, it may be pronounced [ ŋ ] , in the Kanto prestige dialect and in other eastern dialects. The phonotactics of Japanese are relatively simple. The syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), that is, a core vowel surrounded by an optional onset consonant,

6902-509: The New School in the summer of 1960, Ono was determined to rent a place to present her works along with the work of other avant-garde artists in the city. She eventually found an inexpensive loft in downtown Manhattan at 112 Chambers Street and used the apartment as a studio and living space, also allowing composer La Monte Young to organize concerts in the loft. They both held a series of events there from December 1960 through June 1961;

7021-736: The Old Japanese sections are written in Man'yōgana , which uses kanji for their phonetic as well as semantic values. Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct morae . Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different sets of kanji for each of the morae now pronounced き (ki), ひ (hi), み (mi), け (ke), へ (he), め (me), こ (ko), そ (so), と (to), の (no), も (mo), よ (yo) and ろ (ro). (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo 1 and mo 2 apparently

7140-507: The Ono family was forced to beg for food while pulling their belongings in a wheelbarrow. Ono said it was during this period in her life that she developed her "aggressive" attitude and understanding of "outsider" status. Other stories tell of her mother bringing a large number of goods to the countryside, where they were bartered for food. In one anecdote, her mother traded a German-made sewing machine for 60 kilograms (130 lb) of rice to feed

7259-488: The Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. The imperial court also seems to have spoken an unusual variant of the Japanese of the time, most likely the spoken form of Classical Japanese , a writing style that was prevalent during the Heian period , but began to decline during the late Meiji period . The Ryūkyūan languages are classified by UNESCO as 'endangered', as young people mostly use Japanese and cannot understand

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7378-686: The UK, where its release was delayed until 1972, and has periodically reemerged on the UK Singles Chart. Originally a protest song about the Vietnam War , "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" has since become a Christmas standard. That August the couple appeared together at a benefit in Madison Square Garden with Roberta Flack , Stevie Wonder , and Sha Na Na for mentally disabled children organized by WABC-TV 's Geraldo Rivera . In

7497-543: The addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as -tachi , but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as Tanaka-san-tachi may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as hitobito "people" and wareware "we/us", while the word tomodachi "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form. Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present (or non-past) which

7616-588: The age of 4, until the age of 12 or 13. She attended kabuki performances with her mother, who was trained in shamisen , koto , otsuzumi , kotsuzumi , nagauta , and could read Japanese musical scores. The family moved to New York City in 1940. The next year, Eisuke was transferred from New York City to Hanoi in French Indochina , and the family returned to Japan. Ono was enrolled in Keimei Gakuen, an exclusive Christian primary school run by

7735-710: The album consisted of wordless vocalizations, in a style that would influence Meredith Monk and other musical artists who have used screams and vocal noise instead of words. The album reached No. 182 on the US charts. When Lennon was invited to play with Frank Zappa at the Fillmore (then the Filmore West) on June 5, 1971, Ono joined them. Later that year, she released Fly , a double album. In it, she explored slightly more conventional psychedelic rock with tracks including "Midsummer New York" and "Mind Train", in addition to

7854-559: The arts, peace and disaster relief in Japan and the Philippines , and other such causes. In 2002, she inaugurated a biennial $ 50,000 LennonOno Grant for Peace . In 2012, she received the Dr. Rainer Hildebrandt Human Rights Award and co-founded the group Artists Against Fracking . Ono was born in Tokyo City on February 18, 1933, to mother Isoko Ono ( 小野 磯子 , Ono Isoko ) (1911–1999) and father Eisuke Ono ( 小野 英輔 , Ono Eisuke ) ,

7973-401: The couple continued working together for the sake of their joint careers. They performed at Tokyo's Sogetsu Hall, with Ono lying atop a piano played by John Cage. Soon, the couple returned to New York with Kyoko. In the early years of the marriage, Ono left most of Kyoko's parenting to Cox while she pursued her art full-time, with Cox also managing her publicity. Ono had a second engagement at

8092-426: The couple's apartment building, the Dakota , on December 8, 1980. Together they had one son, Sean , who later also became a musician. Ono began a career in popular music in 1969, forming the Plastic Ono Band with Lennon and producing a number of avant-garde music albums in the 1970s. She achieved commercial and critical success in 1980 with the chart-topping album Double Fantasy , a collaboration with Lennon that

8211-413: The death of The Rolling Stones' founding member Brian Jones a few months after it was shot. During the final two years of the Beatles, Lennon and Ono created and attended public protests against the Vietnam War . They collaborated on a series of avant-garde recordings, beginning in 1968 with Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins , which notoriously featured an unretouched image of the two artists nude on

8330-596: The department. However, she left the school after two semesters. Ono joined her family in New York in September 1952, enrolling at nearby Sarah Lawrence College . Ono's parents approved of her college choice, but disapproved of her lifestyle and chastised her for befriending people they felt were beneath her. In 1956, Ono left college to elope with Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi , a star in Tokyo's experimental community, then studying at Juilliard. At Sarah Lawrence, Ono studied poetry with Alastair Reid , English literature with Kathryn Mansell, and music composition with

8449-414: The early 1960s, which included the Fluxus group, and became well known in 1969 when she married English musician John Lennon of the Beatles , with whom she would subsequently record as a duo in the Plastic Ono Band . The couple used their honeymoon as a stage for public protests against the Vietnam War with what they called a bed-in . She and Lennon remained married until he was murdered in front of

8568-578: The effect of changing Japanese into a mora-timed language. Late Middle Japanese covers the years from 1185 to 1600, and is normally divided into two sections, roughly equivalent to the Kamakura period and the Muromachi period , respectively. The later forms of Late Middle Japanese are the first to be described by non-native sources, in this case the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries; and thus there

8687-411: The events were attended by people such as Marcel Duchamp and Peggy Guggenheim . Ono and Young both claimed to have been the primary curator of these events, with Ono claiming to have been eventually pushed into a subsidiary role by Young. Ono presented work only once during the series. In 1961, Ono had her first major public performance in a concert at the 258-seat Carnegie Recital Hall (smaller than

8806-803: The family. During this time, Ono's father, who had been in Hanoi, was believed to be in a prisoner of war camp in China. Ono told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! on October 16, 2007, that "He was in French Indochina , which is Vietnam actually.... in Saigon. He was in a concentration camp." After the war ended in 1945, Ono remained in Japan when her family moved to the United States and settled in Scarsdale, New York , an affluent town 25 miles (40 km) north of midtown Manhattan . By April 1946, Gakushūin

8925-419: The front cover. The same year, the couple contributed an experimental sound collage to The Beatles' self-titled " White Album " called " Revolution 9 ", with Ono contributing additional vocals to " Birthday ", and one lead vocal line on " The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill ", marking the only occasion in a Beatles recording in which a woman sings lead vocals. On March 20, 1969, Lennon and Ono were married at

9044-609: The genitive particle ga remains in intentionally archaic speech. Early Middle Japanese is the Japanese of the Heian period , from 794 to 1185. It formed the basis for the literary standard of Classical Japanese , which remained in common use until the early 20th century. During this time, Japanese underwent numerous phonological developments, in many cases instigated by an influx of Chinese loanwords . These included phonemic length distinction for both consonants and vowels , palatal consonants (e.g. kya ) and labial consonant clusters (e.g. kwa ), and closed syllables . This had

9163-485: The group also consisted of guitarist Eric Clapton , bass player Klaus Voormann , and drummer Alan White . The first half of their performance consisted of rock standards. During the second half, Ono took to the microphone and performed two original feedback-driven compositions, "Don't Worry Kyoko" and "John John (Let's Hope For Peace)", constituting the entirety of the second half of the live album. Ono released her first solo album, Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band in 1970, as

9282-521: The kindergarten. They reached an out of court agreement and the charges were dismissed. Cox eventually moved away with Kyoko. Ono would not see her daughter until 1998. During this time, she wrote "Don't Worry Kyoko", which also appears on Lennon and Ono's album Live Peace in Toronto 1969 , in addition to Fly . Kyoko is also referenced in the first line of " Happy Xmas (War Is Over) " when Yoko whispers "Happy Christmas, Kyoko", followed by Lennon whispering, "Happy Christmas, Julian ." The song reached No. 4 in

9401-458: The languages of the original Jōmon inhabitants, including the ancestor of the modern Ainu language . Because writing had yet to be introduced from China, there is no direct evidence, and anything that can be discerned about this period must be based on internal reconstruction from Old Japanese , or comparison with the Ryukyuan languages and Japanese dialects . The Chinese writing system

9520-449: The languages. Okinawan Japanese is a variant of Standard Japanese influenced by the Ryūkyūan languages, and is the primary dialect spoken among young people in the Ryukyu Islands . Modern Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education , mass media , and an increase in mobility within Japan, as well as economic integration. Japanese is a member of

9639-427: The large quantity of English loanwords, modern Japanese has developed a distinction between [tɕi] and [ti] , and [dʑi] and [di] , with the latter in each pair only found in loanwords. Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has also been spoken outside of the country. Before and during World War II , through Japanese annexation of Taiwan and Korea , as well as partial occupation of China ,

9758-444: The mainstream (the band had in fact been influenced by Ono). Ono and Lennon began trading songs over the phone with each other, quickly accumulating enough material to record. The emerging album was structured as a dialogue, and was to be credited to John Lennon and Yoko Ono as a duo. It would also mark the return of Lennon to the public eye after a five-year absence, as well as a public reconciliation of Ono and Lennon. Double Fantasy

9877-403: The musique concrete work Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins . When Lennon's wife returned home, she found Ono wearing her bathrobe and drinking tea with Lennon, who simply said, "Oh, hi." On September 24 and 25, 1968, Lennon wrote and recorded " Happiness Is a Warm Gun ", which contains sexual references to Ono. Ono became pregnant, but had a miscarriage of a male child on November 21, 1968,

9996-425: The only strict rule of word order is that the verb must be placed at the end of a sentence (possibly followed by sentence-end particles). This is because Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions. The basic sentence structure is topic–comment . For example, Kochira wa Tanaka-san desu ( こちらは田中さんです ). kochira ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by

10115-470: The out-group gives a benefit to the in-group, and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group does not, and their boundary depends on context. For example, oshiete moratta ( 教えてもらった ) (literally, "explaining got" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained [it] to [me/us]". Similarly, oshiete ageta ( 教えてあげた ) (literally, "explaining gave" with

10234-415: The particle wa . The verb desu is a copula , commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, Tanaka-san desu is the comment. This sentence literally translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mx Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like many other Asian languages,

10353-565: The peerage system, enrollment in Gakushuin was fully opened to the general public. At the same time, administration of the school was transferred to the Ministry of Education . Emperor Ninko had four maxims inscribed on the walls of the Gakushūin building, including The school was moved to Tokyo in 1877. Its new purpose was to educate the children of the modern aristocracy . Members of

10472-543: The poet Jackson Mac Low , among others associated with the group. Ono first met John Cage through his student Ichiyanagi Toshi, in Cage's experimental composition class at the New School for Social Research . She was introduced to more of Cage's unconventional neo-Dadaism first hand, and via his New York City protégés Allan Kaprow , Brecht, Mac Low, Al Hansen and the poet Dick Higgins . After Cage finished teaching at

10591-481: The proposed larger Altaic family, or to various Southeast Asian languages , especially Austronesian . None of these proposals have gained wide acceptance (and the Altaic family itself is now considered controversial). As it stands, only the link to Ryukyuan has wide support. Other theories view the Japanese language as an early creole language formed through inputs from at least two distinct language groups, or as

10710-855: The registry office in Gibraltar and spent their honeymoon in Amsterdam , campaigning with a week-long bed-in for peace. They planned another bed-in in the US, but were denied entry to the country. They held one instead at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, where they recorded " Give Peace a Chance ". Lennon later stated his regrets about feeling "guilty enough to give McCartney credit as co-writer on my first independent single instead of giving it to Yoko, who had actually written it with me." The couple often combined advocacy with performance art, such as in " bagism ", first introduced during

10829-698: The same name. that emerged from Ono's Fluxus concept of an open-ended plastic band. Plastic Ono Band was first conceived of by Ono in 1967 as an idea for an art exhibition in Berlin but The Plastic Ono Band was first physically realized in 1968 as a multi-media machine maquette by John Lennon, also called The Plastic Ono Band . In 1968, Lennon and Ono began a personal and artistic relationship in which they decided to credit their future endeavours as work of The Plastic Ono Band. Under that name Ono and Lennon collaborated on several art exhibitions, concerts, happenings and experimental noise music recording projects, including

10948-459: The same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle -ka is added. For example, ii desu ( いいです ) "It is OK" becomes ii desu-ka ( いいですか。 ) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle -no ( の ) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: Dōshite konai-no? "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning

11067-817: The state as at the time the constitution was written, many of the elders participating in the process had been educated in Japanese during the South Seas Mandate over the island shown by the 1958 census of the Trust Territory of the Pacific that found that 89% of Palauans born between 1914 and 1933 could speak and read Japanese, but as of the 2005 Palau census there were no residents of Angaur that spoke Japanese at home. Japanese dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent , inflectional morphology , vocabulary , and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this

11186-481: The street. (grammatically incorrect insertion of a pronoun) But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese: 驚いた彼は道を走っていった。 Transliteration: Odoroita kare wa michi o hashitte itta. (grammatically correct) This is partly because these words evolved from regular nouns, such as kimi "you" ( 君 "lord"), anata "you" ( あなた "that side, yonder"), and boku "I" ( 僕 "servant"). This

11305-464: The sun, while on the back the ghost of Lennon looks over her and their son. The album scored minor chart success and airplay with the single " Never Say Goodbye ". In 1984, a tribute album titled Every Man Has a Woman was released, featuring a selection of songs written by Ono performed by artists such as Elvis Costello, Roberta Flack, Eddie Money , Rosanne Cash , and Harry Nilsson . Later that year, Ono and Lennon's final album, Milk and Honey ,

11424-609: The topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: Kore wa? "(What about) this?"; O-namae wa? ( お名前は？ ) "(What's your) name?". Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, Pan o taberu ( パンを食べる。 ) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes Pan o tabenai ( パンを食べない。 ) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread". Plain negative forms are i -adjectives (see below) and inflect as such, e.g. Pan o tabenakatta ( パンを食べなかった。 ) "I did not eat bread". Gakush%C5%ABin The Peers' School

11543-564: The town. We went quite a ways up, actually, because it was so beautiful." In 1973, Ono recorded a single, "Joseijoi Banzai, Parts 1 and 2" with musicians billed as the Plastic Ono Band and Elephants Memory and released it only in Japan. She cheered feminism by combining lyrics inspired by Japanese war songs with Pop rhythms, signalling a new direction. After the Beatles disbanded in 1970, Ono and Lennon lived together in London and then moved permanently to Manhattan to escape tabloid racism towards Ono. Their relationship became strained because Lennon

11662-420: The two began corresponding. In September 1967, Lennon sponsored Ono's solo Half-A-Wind Show , at Lisson Gallery in London. When Lennon's wife Cynthia asked for an explanation of why Ono was telephoning them at home, he told her that Ono was only trying to obtain money for her "avant-garde bullshit". In early 1968, while the Beatles were making their visit to India, Lennon wrote the song " Julia " and included

11781-419: The two consonants are the moraic nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Japanese also includes a pitch accent , which is not represented in moraic writing; for example [haꜜ.ɕi] ("chopsticks") and [ha.ɕiꜜ] ("bridge") are both spelled はし ( hashi ) , and are only differentiated by the tone contour. Japanese word order is classified as subject–object–verb . Unlike many Indo-European languages ,

11900-577: The two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. Bungo still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in bungo , although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). Kōgo is the dominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect. The 1982 state constitution of Angaur , Palau , names Japanese along with Palauan and English as an official language of

12019-480: The two terms (''hyōjungo'' and ''kyōtsūgo'') are almost the same. Hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration ( 明治維新 , meiji ishin , 1868) from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo (see Yamanote ). Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications. It

12138-407: The verb (e.g. yonde for earlier yomite ), the -k- in the final mora of adjectives drops out ( shiroi for earlier shiroki ); and some forms exist where modern standard Japanese has retained the earlier form (e.g. hayaku > hayau > hayɔɔ , where modern Japanese just has hayaku , though the alternative form is preserved in the standard greeting o-hayō gozaimasu "good morning"; this ending

12257-937: The work of Edgar Varèse , John Cage , and Henry Cowell . Ono left college and moved to New York in 1957, supporting herself through secretarial work and lessons in the traditional Japanese arts at the Japan Society . Ono has often been associated with the Fluxus group, a loose association of Dada -inspired avant-garde artists which was founded in the early 1960s by Lithuanian-American artist George Maciunas . Maciunas promoted her work, giving Ono her first solo exhibition at his AG Gallery in New York in 1961. He formally invited Ono to join Fluxus, but she declined because she wanted to remain independent. However, she did collaborate with Maciunas, Charlotte Moorman , George Brecht , and

12376-548: The world. Since Japanese first gained the consideration of linguists in the late 19th century, attempts have been made to show its genealogical relation to languages or language families such as Ainu , Korean , Chinese , Tibeto-Burman , Uralic , Altaic (or Ural-Altaic ), Austroasiatic , Austronesian and Dravidian . At the fringe, some linguists have even suggested a link to Indo-European languages , including Greek , or to Sumerian . Main modern theories try to link Japanese either to northern Asian languages, like Korean or

12495-479: Was shot dead by Mark David Chapman , who had been stalking Lennon for two months. Yoko cradled the dying Lennon in her arms, and for a time afterward, lived in constant fear of her own and her son Sean's assassination. After John's death, the interior decorator Sam Havadtoy moved in to support her. "Walking on Thin Ice (For John)" was released as a single less than a month later, and became Ono's first chart success as

12614-458: Was a positive message, whereas most concept art he encountered at the time was anti-everything. Lennon was also intrigued by Ono's Hammer a Nail where viewers were invited to hammer a nail into a wooden board painted white. Although the exhibition had not yet opened, Lennon wanted to hammer a nail into the clean board, but Ono stopped him. Dunbar asked her, "Don't you know who this is? He's a millionaire! He might buy it." Ono feigned not knowing of

12733-539: Was based on 12- to 20-second-long recordings of 135 to 244 phonemes , which 42 students listened to and translated word-for-word. The listeners were all Keio University students who grew up in the Kanto region . There are some language islands in mountain villages or isolated islands such as Hachijō-jima island , whose dialects are descended from Eastern Old Japanese . Dialects of the Kansai region are spoken or known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular

12852-549: Was briefly placed into a Japanese mental institution . On November 28, 1962, Ono married Anthony Cox , an American film producer and art promoter who had been instrumental in securing her release from the mental institution. Ono's second marriage was annulled on March 1, 1963, because she had neglected to finalize her divorce from Ichiyanagi. After finalizing that divorce, Cox and Ono married again on June 6, 1963. She gave birth to their daughter Kyoko Chan Cox two months later, on August 8, 1963. The marriage quickly fell apart, but

12971-459: Was facing deportation due to drug charges that had been filed against him in England, and because of Ono's separation from her daughter. The couple separated in July 1973, with Ono pursuing her career and Lennon living between Los Angeles and New York with personal assistant May Pang ; Ono had given her blessing to Lennon and Pang's relationship. By December 1974, Lennon and Pang considered buying

13090-808: Was founded in 1847 by Emperor Ninkō in Kyoto and placed under the administration of the Imperial Household Agency . Its purpose was to educate the children of the Imperial aristocracy ( kuge ). Prior to the disestablishment of the Peerage in 1947, commoners had restricted access to Gakushuin , with limited slots only to the Elementary School and Middle School. In 1947, with the American-mandated disestablishment of

13209-735: Was imported to Japan from Baekje around the start of the fifth century, alongside Buddhism. The earliest texts were written in Classical Chinese , although some of these were likely intended to be read as Japanese using the kanbun method, and show influences of Japanese grammar such as Japanese word order. The earliest text, the Kojiki , dates to the early eighth century, and was written entirely in Chinese characters, which are used to represent, at different times, Chinese, kanbun , and Old Japanese. As in other texts from this period,

13328-474: Was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of morae shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese , though some were added through Chinese influence. Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/ , which merges with /e/ before the end of the period. Several fossilizations of Old Japanese grammatical elements remain in the modern language – the genitive particle tsu (superseded by modern no )

13447-450: Was officially dedicated on October 9, 1985, which would have been his 45th birthday. Japanese language Japanese ( 日本語 , Nihongo , [ɲihoŋɡo] ) is the principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people . It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan , the only country where it is the national language , and within

13566-452: Was preparing Unfinished Paintings , her conceptual art exhibit about interactive painting and sculpture. They were introduced by gallery owner John Dunbar . One piece, Ceiling Painting/Yes Painting , had a ladder painted white with a magnifying glass at the top. When Lennon climbed the ladder, he looked through the magnifying glass and was able to read the word YES which was written in miniature. He greatly enjoyed this experience as it

13685-631: Was released as a mixture of unfinished Lennon recordings from the Double Fantasy sessions, and new Ono recordings. It peaked at No. 3 in the UK and No. 11 in the U.S., going gold in both countries as well as in Canada. Ono funded the construction and maintenance of the Strawberry Fields memorial in Manhattan's Central Park , directly across from the Dakota, which was the scene of the murder. It

13804-643: Was released on November 17, 1980, and received tepid initial reviews, with much of the criticism centering on the idealization of Lennon and Ono's marriage and supposed domestic bliss. However, the reception and the legacy of the album would be forever linked with what happened just weeks after its release. On the evening of December 8, 1980, Lennon and Ono were at the Record Plant Studio and working on Ono's song " Walking on Thin Ice ". When they returned to The Dakota (their home in Manhattan), Lennon

13923-588: Was released three weeks before his murder, winning the Grammy Award for Album of the Year . To date, she has had twelve number one singles on the US Dance charts, and in 2016 was named the 11th most successful dance club artist of all time by Billboard magazine. Many musicians have paid tribute to Ono as an artist in her own right and as a muse and icon , including Elvis Costello who recorded his version of " Walking on Thin Ice " with The Attractions for

14042-541: Was reopened and Ono re-enrolled. The school, located near the Tokyo Imperial Palace , had not been damaged by the war, and Ono found herself a classmate of Prince Akihito , the future emperor of Japan . At 14 years old, she took up vocal training in lieder -singing. Ono graduated from Gakushūin in 1951, and was accepted into the philosophy program of Gakushuin University as the first woman to enter

14161-421: Was stupefied and confused to such an extent that Pang believed he had been brainwashed. He told her his separation from Ono was now over, though Ono would allow him to continue seeing her as his mistress, which did not happen. Ono and Lennon's son, Sean , was born on October 9, 1975, Lennon's 35th birthday. Following the birth of Sean, both Lennon and Ono took a hiatus from the music industry, with Lennon becoming

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