Laputa (disambiguation)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Laputa can have several meanings:

• Laputa is a fictional place from the book Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.
• The satirical Free Republic of Laputa claims to be the legal successor of Swift's Laputa.

• The 1986 anime film Laputa: Castle in the Sky by Hayao Miyazaki features a floating city named Laputa after that of Gulliver's Travels. The original title of the movie was Raputa, but it was initially re-named for the English-speaking market when dubbed into English by Disney but is now released in the UK under the name Laputa: Castle in the sky.

• Laputa also appeared in Charles Kingsley's novel The Water Babies. This was obviously a reference to Swift, as Kingsley identifies the island as being visited by "Captain Gulliver".

• The "Laputa Missile Complex" is the target of the B-52 bomber "Leper Colony" in the 1964 satire Dr. Strangelove, a reference to the highly theoretical discussions of nuclear war and deterrence that led the world to catastrophe in that film.

• The Laputa is a Mazda sedan that began production in 2005, and takes its name from the floating island in "Gulliver's Travels". It is a micro-mini vehicle that will be sold through the Mazda Autozam dealerships throughout Japan. The Laputa is a designed to provide off-road driving performance uncharacteristic in micro-mini automobiles. The Laputa comes with two body types, a three door and a five door model.

• Laputa is also a Japanese Visual Kei band.

• The term "Laputa" appears in the 2005 computer game "UFO: Aftershock", and refers to large orbital alien bases upon which the remnants of human civilisation have been forced to live. People from these bases are referred to as the "Laputians"

• Laputa is also the name of a bread sold in Sweden.