Today is Culture Day (and bank holiday). The conferment of medals recipients in the autumn were announced. 4068 persons were awarded. Quite a number! From this time, the criticism to ranking people numerically abolished the grade in numbers, such as "the first order of merit", and the women were also contained in the candidate of Orders of the Rising Sun which was awarded to the men only. Well, I probably won't get it anyway. 38 people from other countries including Mstislav Rostropovich, a conductor and a cellist, were awarded too. The image shows Mr. Tanaka (who became very famous by receiving the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2002)' medal of culture awards from last year.