Japan has a historic preoccupation with gems and their organized structure. Here just four examples of how Japan has incorporated gems and their metaphors into their culture:
1) the term "ruby" denotes the small size of furigana, the kana that are placed either above or alongside Kanji or Chinese characters, to assist readers in the correct pronunciation of the characters;
2) the megacompany Mitsubishi, has a name that means "three diamonds", where "bishi" means diamond;
3) the classification system for Japanese patents includes themes and "facets", where the facet is a metaphor borrowed from gemology, i.e., the facets of gem crystals; and,
4) the latest MVC-based (model-view-controller) computer programming language called Ruby was first developed in Japan.
Francis Lorin
siberkhem.com
20080408
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