Islam in Burkina Faso and order and by stimulating trade. They also tended to regard Muslims as culturally and educationally more advanced than non-Muslim Africans, and appointed Muslim chiefs and clerks as administrators in non-Muslim areas. In Upper Volta at the end of the 19th century there were only some 30,000 Muslims, but by 1959 there were 800,000, approximately 20 percent of the population. In 1984, Upper Volta was renamed Burkina Faso. After a succession of military coups, a constitutional republic was established in 1991. In Burkina Faso the Arabist and Islamist movement is viewed a counter-culture to the European style of modernity, and
The Garden of Words seeing the finished product. According to Shinkai's announcement of the film early during its production, "The Garden of Words" was his first attempt at making a love story using the traditional Japanese meaning of "love". During the era of the Man'yōshū, the native Japanese words today known as were starting to be written using kanji, and the word for "love", "koi" (today written 恋) was written as 孤悲, or "lonely sadness". As noted by Shinkai, a more modern concept of "romance", represented by , came about by Western influence. "The Garden of Words" emphasizes the original meaning of "koi"—a "longing