Edo Period - Blog Posts

Sean bienvenidos japonistasarqueológicos a una nueva entrega de arqueología nipona, nos vamos a trasladar a la excavación de las ruinas del castillo de Omido una vez dicho esto pónganse cómodos que empezamos. - El castillo de Omido, se localiza en la prefectura de Gifu, si nos vamos al japón más profundo lo podemos encontrar en el pueblo de Kokyo. El castillo de Omido está atrayendo la atención ya que fue el lugar de nacimiento del estratega Takenaka Hanbei y se desconoce la extensión exacta de las ruinas del castillo. - Durante los procesos de excavación, se descubrió mucha cerámica y tejas del periodo Edo, las capas del suelo y el muro de piedra, los investigadores pudieron rastrear que las casas habían sido repetidamente reconstruidas desde al menos el período Edo. - Espero que os haya gustado, y nos vemos en próximas publicaciones de arqueología japonesa, e historia entre otros temas, os deseo una feliz semana. - 日本の考古学者を歓迎します。これから大御堂城跡の発掘調査に移りますので、楽な姿勢で始めてください。 - 大御堂城は岐阜県にあり、もっと奥に行くと、古京という町があります。大御堂城は、竹中半兵衛の生誕地として注目されており、城跡の正確な範囲は不明である。 - 発掘調査では、江戸時代の土器や瓦が多数発見され、床層や石垣から、少なくとも江戸時代以降に家屋の建て替えが繰り返されたことが突き止められた。 - 日本の考古学、歴史などに関する今後の記事でお会いしましょう！今週もよろしくお願いします。 Welcome Japanese archaeologists to a new installment of Japanese archaeology, we are going to move to the excavation of the ruins of Omido Castle, so make yourselves comfortable and let's get started. - Omido Castle is located in Gifu prefecture, if we go deeper into Japan we can find it in the town of Kokyo. Omido castle is attracting attention as it was the birthplace of the strategist Takenaka Hanbei and the exact extent of the castle ruins is unknown. - During the excavation process, a lot of pottery and tiles from the Edo period were discovered, the floor layers and the stone wall, researchers were able to trace that the houses had been repeatedly rebuilt since at least the Edo period. - I hope you liked it, and see you in future posts on Japanese archaeology, history and other topics, I wish you a happy week.

日本の考古学と科学思想の歴史。 第3章 ： 日本の考古学者の皆さん、哲学的観点から見た新しい日本考古学へようこそ。 - 1868年当時、日本にはヨーロッパやアメリカで見られるような科学的根拠はありませんでした。日本がその精神やその一部を開放したのは、1868年から1869年の戊辰戦争後になります。米国のような国は日本の科学をモデルにするだろうから、非常に保守的だった。 日本で骨董品への関心が芽生えたのはいつ頃ですか？ 江戸時代にはすでに骨董品への関心があったことが知られており、はるか昔にヨーロッパでも同様のことが起こりました。 日本の発掘の始まりは19世紀のほぼ終わりに始まり、数年前に日本でいくつかのローマ硬貨が発見されました。どうやら日本の封建領主は古遺物を収集するのが好きでした。おそらくそれらは中国のどこかの港から海岸に到着しました。日本語。 - 過去を知りたいという欲求は、どの大陸に属していても、すべての人類に共通のものであり、問​​題の時代についても同じことが言えます。 ヨーロッパやアメリカの様々な勢力が日本に到来したとき、彼らはその住民に影響を与えました。そのため、日本人によって日本考古学の父と考えられているエドワード・モースを、他の登場人物の中でも特に取り上げています。 19 世紀には、アメリカ哲学の最も偉大な学派の 1 つであるテイラー主義があり、これは台湾で考古学的発掘を行い、中国および韓国との関係を確立する日本の考古学の最も偉大な人物の 1 人である鳥居龍蔵に影響を与えることになります。 - 気に入っていただければ幸いです。今後の投稿でお会いしましょう。良い一週間をお過ごしください。 - HISTORY OF JAPANESE ARCHEOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. Chapter 3 : Welcome, Japanesearchaeologicalists, to a new installment of Japanese archaeology, seen from a philosophical point of view. Having said that, get comfortable and let's begin. - In 1868 Japan did not have a scientific base per se as we can see in Europe or the United States, it will be after the Boshin War of 1868-69 when Japan opened its mentality or part of it, since a good part of the population was very conservative because Countries like the United States would model Japanese sciences. When did interest in antiques arise in Japan? It is known that in the Edo period there was already interest in antiquities, something similar happened in Europe a long time ago. The beginning of the Japanese excavations began almost at the end of the 19th century, a few years ago some Roman coins were discovered in Japan, apparently a feudal lord in Japan liked to collect antiquities, they probably arrived from some port in China to the coasts Japanese. - The desire to know the past is something that all human beings share, no matter what continent you belong to and the same can be said about the era in question. When the different powers from Europe and the United States arrived in Japan, they influenced its inhabitants, thus we have, among other characters, Edward Morse, considered by the Japanese, the father of Japanese archaeology. During the 19th century we have one of the greatest schools of American philosophy, Taylorism, which will influence one of the greatest figures of Japanese archeology Torii Ryūzō who will carry out archaeological excavations in Taiwan, establishing relations with China and Korea. - I hope you liked it and see you in future posts, have a good week.

alone in kyoto -------------------------------------------

prints | ko-fi | commission [edit: prints available for this one] Crowley in Edo period Japan on her way to the beach to find out what the Fisherman's Wife was going on about. This piece is the second of THREE that I painted for the VERY FIRST ISSUE EVER of /r/GoodOmensAfterDark's WINGZ Magazine, a filthy smut rag that all of us---editors, directors, writers, and visual artists alike---are very proud to present to you. Check it out here: WINGZ Mag Spring '24 (Reddit) Direct link (PDF, 90MB) Direct link for Mobile (PDF, 8MB)

Detail shots in full res after the jumppppppp

@goodomensafterdark

walk the streets of japan 'til i get lost -------------------------------------------

prints | ko-fi | commission [edit: prints available for this one]

AZIRAPHALE DISCOVERS JAPANESE STREET FOOD IN EDO PERIOD JAPAN, HOW COULD I NOT DRAW THIS This piece is one of THREE that I painted for the VERY FIRST ISSUE EVER of /r/GoodOmensAfterDark's WINGZ Magazine, a filthy smut rag that all of us---editors, directors, writers, and visual artists alike---are very proud to present to you. Check it out here: WINGZ Mag Spring '24 (Reddit) Direct link (PDF, 90MB) Direct link for Mobile (PDF, 8MB)

Detail shots in full res after the jumppppppp

title from Audioslave's "Doesn't Remind Me"

i walk the streets of japan 'til i get lost cause it doesn't remind me of anything with a graveyard tan and carryin' a cross cause it doesn't remind me of anything

@goodomensafterdark

Dans le vodoun ayitien, on dit que chaque humain marche avec son kò kadav = le corps matériel, son nanm = l'âme, son tibonanj, son gwobanang, ses lwa têt, ses mystères et ses anges. Le kò kadav est, entre autres, l'expression physique et actuelle de tout les ancêtres qui nous habitent. Quand je travaille sur les objets je me sens connectée à un tissage ancestral. Les objets sont plus que de simples ustensiles ou décorations. Ce sont des productions culturelles qui expriment des perceptions philosophiques, scientifiques, esthétiques et qui surtout témoignent de vie humaine !

So pretty!~

'Bird and Peonies' (Edo period) by an unknown Japanese artist.

Woodblock print.

Image and text information courtesy MFA Boston.

True Mountain Covered with Cloud

Hakuin Ekaku (白隠 慧鶴, January 19, 1686 - January 18, 1768) was one of the most influential figures in Japanese Zen Buddhism. He is regarded as the reviver of the Rinzai school from a moribund period of stagnation, refocusing it on its traditionally rigorous training methods integrating meditation and koan practice. 

JIN (TV 2009)

Overview

Jin Minakata, a neurosurgeon, is transported back to the Edo period mysteriously. He attempts to save people's lives with inadequate technology while looking for a way back home. -From Google

-------------------✧*⁠´｡⁠*ﾟ⁠+⁠*⁠.⁠✧------------------

Y'all. I beg. Please go and watch JIN. It's a japanese TV drama about a modern doctor called Jin Minakata who, after operating on a patient with a fetus shaped tumor, is transported to the late Edo period of Japan. It's so good🙏🏾😭. Jin is giving wet cat energy and anxious golden retriever energy all the time, Saki is strong and understanding and we love her, Nokaze is so cool yet so sad and Ryouma is so unconventional and intelligent and... UGHDHRLAHWEIFBFIFB I LOVE THIS SHOW!! GO WATCH IT!! ITS ON NETFLIX AND ITS BEAUTIFUL!! ALSO THE SOUNDTRACK IS TOP-TIER😭😍

角屋（島原・京都）Shimabara, Kyoto 

Himeji Castle, Japan. 𝐣 𝐚 𝐩 𝐚 𝐧 ‏‏‎ ‎ 𝐮 𝐧 𝐢 𝐯 𝐞 𝐫 𝐬 𝐞‏‏‎ 🍜

@japuniverse

bro her lore is pretty wild (and lowkey sad too) 😭😭🙏

I love ur art btw ⊂((・▽・))⊃✏️

Don't mind her, she just took a bath ^^

Also the cut on her neck is from that one time Jack tried to slice her head off for being a kitsune (immortality is a bitch ngl)

I just realized that we have a painting by this artist, Ito Jakuchu!

Nijô-jô

In my experience, Nijô Castle in Kyôto is one of the most unusual in the Japanese castle landscape, in that the main focus of the conservation and tourist attraction is on a palace, the Ni-no-maru Goten, rather than a dungeon (whether reconstructed or original). It is true that, as the Tokugawa shôgun's residence in the Emperor's back yard, it was a focal point of Edo-period politics.

The palace sits behind a grand gate, decorated with lots of gold and colours. And as all noble residences from the Edo period go, there's a vast, carefully crafted garden on the side, complete with tea houses.

But all this is part of the Ni-no-maru, the area around the Hon-maru main keep. Given that the mountains around Kyôto are largely occupied by temples and shrines, there's not much of a height advantage to be gained in the city, to the point where, when the Hon-maru burned down in the 1780s, nothing was rebuilt, it was left bare!

Eerily, the Tokugawa shôgun's Kyôto castle has a similar story to the one in Edo: there was a keep, but it was destroyed during the Edo period and wasn't rebuilt, and both castle grounds were transferred to the Imperial Estate at the start of the Meiji era. It was in the 1880s that the Hon-maru palace was built, in the space the Tokugawas had left vacant.

Sangaku Saturday #14 - the grand finale!

We are only a few steps of algebra away from solving the "three circles in a triangle" problem we set in episode 7. This method will also yield general formulas for the solutions (first with height 1 and base b; for any height h and half-base k, set b=k/h and multiply the results by h).

Before we do that, it's worth noting what the sangaku tablet says. Now I don't read classical Japanese (the tablet dates back to 1854 according to wasan.jp), but I can read numbers, and fishing for these in the text at least allows me to understand the result. The authors of the sangaku consider an equilateral triangle whose sides measure 60: boxed text on the right: 三角面六尺, sankaku-men roku shaku (probably rosshaku), in which 尺, shaku, is the ten marker. In their writing of numbers, each level has its own marker: 尺 shaku for ten, 寸 sun for units, 分 fun for tenths and 厘 rin for hundredths (毛 mô for thousandths also appear, which I will ignore for brevity). Their results are as follows:

甲径三尺八寸八分六厘: diameter of the top (甲 kou) circle 38.86

乙径一尺六寸四分二厘: diameter of the side (乙 otsu) circle 16.42

反径一尺二寸四分二厘: diameter of the bottom (反 han) circle 12.42

I repeat that I don't know classical Japanese (or much modern Japanese for that matter), so my readings may be off, not to mention that these are the only parts of the tablet that I understand, but the results seem clear enough. Let's see how they hold up to our final proof.

1: to prove the equality

simply expand the expression on the right, taking into account that

(s+b)(s-b) = s²-b² = 1+b²-b² = 1.

2: the equation 2x²-(s-b)x-1 = 0 can be solved via the discriminant

As this is positive (which isn't obvious as s>b, but it can be proved), the solutions of the equation are

x+ is clearly positive, while it can be proved the x- is negative. Given that x is defined as the square root of 2p in the set-up of the equation, x- is discarded. This yields the formulas for the solution of the geometry problem we've been looking for:

3: in the equilateral triangle, s=2b. Moreover, the height is fixed at 1, so b can be determined exactly: by Pythagoras's theorem in SON,

Replacing b with this value in the formulas for p, q and r, we get

Now we can compare our results with the tablet, all we need to do is multiply these by the height of the equilateral triangle whose sides measure 60. The height is obtained with the same Pythagoras's theorem as above, this time knowing SN = 60 and ON = 30, and we get h = SO = 30*sqrt(3). Bearing in mind that p, q and r are radii, while the tablet gives the diameters, here are our results:

diameter of the top circle: 2hp = 45*sqrt(3)/2 = 38.97 approx.

diameter of the side circle: 2hr = 10*sqrt(3) = 17.32 approx.

diameter of the bottom circle: 2hq = 15*sqrt(3)/2 = 12.99 approx.

We notice that the sangaku is off by up to nearly a whole unit. Whether they used the same geometric reasoning as us isn't clear (I can't read the rest of the tablet and I don't know if the method is even described), but if they did, the difference could be explained by some approximations they may have used, such as the square root of 3. Bear in mind they didn't have calculators in Edo period Japan.

With that, thank you very much for following the Sangaku Weekends series, hoping that you found at least some of it interesting.

Sangaku Saturday #12

Having mentioned previously how mathematical schools were organised during the Edo period in Japan, we can briefly talk about how mathematicians of the time worked. This was a time of near-perfect isolation, but some information from the outside did reach Japanese scholars via the Dutch outpost near Nagasaki. In fact, a whole field of work became known as "Dutch studies" or rangaku.

One such example was Fujioka Yûichi (藤岡雄市, a.k.a. Arisada), a surveyor from Matsue. I have only been able to find extra information on him on Kotobank: lived 1820-1850, described first as a wasanka (practitioner of Japanese mathematics), who also worked in astronomy, geography and "Dutch studies". The Matsue City History Museum displays some of the tools he would have used in his day: ruler, compass and chain, and counting sticks to perform calculations on the fly.

No doubt that those who had access to European knowledge would have seen the calculus revolution that was going on at the time. Some instances of differential and integral calculus can be found in Japan, but the theory was never formalised, owing to the secretive and clannish culture of the day.

That said, let's have a look at where our "three circles in a triangle" problem stands.

The crucial step is to solve this equation,

and I suggested that we start with a test case, setting the sizes of the triangle SON as SO = h = 4 and ON = k = 3. Therefore, simply, the square root of h is 2, and h²+k² = 16+9 = 25 = 5², and our equation is

x = 1 is an obvious solution, because 32+64 = 96 = 48+48. This means we can deduce a solution to our problem:

Hooray! We did it!

What do you mean, "six"? The triangle is 4x3, that last radius makes the third circle way larger...

Okay, looking back at how the problem was formulated, one has to admit that this is a solution: the third circle is tangent to the first two, and to two sides of the triangle SNN' - you just need to extend the side NN' to see it.

But evidently, we're not done.

Sangaku Sunday #10

On the historical front, we previously established that mathematics didn't stop during the Edo period. Accountants and engineers were still in demand, but these weren't necessarily the people who were making sangaku tablets. The problems weren't always practical, and often, the solutions were incomplete, as they didn't say how the problems were solved.

There was another type of person who used mathematics at the time: people who regarded mathematics as a field in which all possibilities should be explored. Today, these would be called researchers, but in Edo-period Japan, they probably regarded mathematics more as an art form.

As in many other art forms (Hiroshige's Okazaki from The 53 Stations of the Tôkaidô series as an example), wasan mathematics organised into schools with masters and apprentices. This would have consequences on how mathematics advanced during this time, but besides that, wasan schools were on the look-out for promising talents. In this light, sangaku appear as an illustration of particular school's abilities with solved or unsolved problems to bait potential recruits, who would prove their worth by presenting their solutions.

Speaking which, we now continue to present our solution to the "three circles in a triangle" problem.

Recall that we are looking for two expressions of the length CN.

1: Knowing that ON = b and OQ = 2*sqrt(qr), it is immediate that QN is the subtraction of the two. Moreover, CQ = r, so by using Pythagoras's theorem in the right triangle CQN, we get

2: We get a second expression by using a cascade of right triangles to reach CN "from above". Working backwards, in the right triangle CRN, we known that CR = r, but RN is unknown, and we would need it to conclude with Pythagoras's theorem. We can get RN if we know SR, given that SN = SR+RN is known by using Pythagoras's theorem in the right triangle SON, with SO = 1 and ON = b. But again, in the right triangle CRS, we do not know CS, but (counter-but!) we could get CS by using the right triangle PCS, where PC and PS are both easy to calculate. We've reached a point where we can start calculating, so let's work forward from there.

Step 1: CPS. PCQO is a rectangle, so PC = OQ and PS = SO-OP = SO-CQ = 1-r, therefore

Step 2: CRS. Knowing CR = r, we deduce

At this point, we can note that 2r-4qr = 2r(1-2q) = 2r*2p, using the first relation between p and q obtained in the first post on this problem. So SR² = 1-4pr.

Step 3a: SON. Knowing SO = 1 and ON = b, we have SN² = 1+b².

Step 3b: CRN. From SN and SR, we deduce

so, using Pythagoras's theorem one more time:

Conclusion. At the end of this lengthy (but elementary) process, we can write CN² = CN² with different expressions either side, and get the final equation for our problem:

Note that 2*(p+q) = 1, and divide by 2 to get the announced result.

Sangaku Saturday #8

Having established that sangaku were, in part, a form of advertisement for the local mathematicians, we can look at the target demographic. Who were the mathematicians of the Edo period? What did they work on and how?

The obvious answer is that the people in the Edo period who used mathematics were the ones who needed mathematics. As far back as the time when the capital was in Kashihara, in the early 8th century, evidence of mathematical references has been uncovered (link to a Mainichi Shinbun article, with thanks to @todayintokyo for the hat tip). All kinds of government jobs - accounting, such as determining taxes, customs, or engineering... - needed some form of mathematics. Examples above: 8th-century luggage labels and coins at the Heijô-kyô Museum in Nara, and an Edo-period ruler used for surveying shown at Matsue's local history museum.

As such, reference books for practical mathematics have existed for a long time, and continued to be published to pass on knowledge to the next generation. But sangaku are different: they are problems, not handbooks.

More on that soon. Below the cut is the solution to our latest puzzle.

Recall that SON is a right triangle with SO = 1 and ON = b. These are set values, and our unknowns are the radii p, q and r of the circles with centres A, B and C. While these are unknown, we assume that this configuration is possible to get equations, which we can then solve.

1: The two circles with centres B and C are tangent to a same line, so we can just re-use the very first result from this series, so

2: Also recalling what we said in that first problem about tangent circles, we know that

Moreover, PA = AO - OP = AO - CQ = (p+2*q) - r. Thus, using Pythagoras's theorem in the right triangle APC, we get a new expression for PC:

since 2(p+q)=1 (the first relation). Equating the two expressions we now have of PC², we solve the equation for r:

again using the first relation to write 2q-1 = -2p.

It only remains to find a third equation for p to solve the problem.

Sangaku Sunday #6

We are about to solve our first sangaku problem, as seen on the tablet shown above from Miminashi-yamaguchi-jinja in Kashihara.

First, we should conclude our discussion: what are sangaku for? There's the religious function, as an offering, and this offering was put on display for all to see, though not all fully understood the problems and their solutions. But a few people would understand, and these would have been the mathematicians of the time. When they visited a new town, they would typically stop at a temple or shrine for some prayers, and they would see the sangaku, a sample of what the local mathematicians were capable of. Whether the problems were solved or open, the visitor could take up the challenges and find the authors to discuss.

And this is where everything lined up: the local school of mathematics would have someone new to talk to, possibly to impress or be impressed by, and maybe even recruit. With the Japanese-style mathematics of the time, called wasan, being considered something of an art form, there would be masters and apprentices, and the sangaku was therefore a means to perpetuate the art.

Now, what about that configuration of circles, second from right on the tablet?

Recall that we had a formula for the radii of three circles which are pairwise tangent and all tangent to the same line. Calling the radii p, q, r, s and t for the circles of centres A, B, C, D and E respectively, we have

for the circles with centres A, B and C (our previous problem), and adapting this formula to two other systems of three circles, we get

for the circles with centres A, C and D, and

for the circles with centres B, C and E. Add these together, and use the first relation on the right-hand side, we get a rather elegant relation between all five radii:

Of course, we can get formulas for s and t,

r having been calculated previously using just p and q, which were our starting radii.

For example, setting p=4 and q=3, we get, approximately, r=0.86, s=0.4 and t=0.37 (this is the configuration shown in the figure, not necessarily the one on the tablet - I will be able to make remarks about that on another example).

Sangaku Sunday #2

As the tags in a reblog by @todayintokyo indicated, I waffled about what we'll do in this series in the first post without really defining its main object!

Sangaku are wooden tablets on display at Shintô shrines or Buddhist temples in Japan, featuring geometry problems and their solutions, usually without proof. They started appearing in the Edo period, a particular time for the Japanese people and Japanese scientists. The votive role of these tablets has been debated as far back as the Edo period, as indicated by Meijizen who wrote in 1673:

"There appears to be a trend these days, of mathematical problems on display at shrines. If they were true votive tablets (ema), they should contain a prayer of some sort. Lacking that, one wonders what they are for, other than to celebrate the mathematical genius of their authors. Their meaning eludes me."

I feel the debate on their religious role is overrated. If you look at some food offerings at shrines today, I don't think you'll find a prayer on the bottle of tea or pack of rice, as the prayer is made at the time of offering. It likely is the same for sangaku tablets, which went on display with other offerings. But, as Meijizen hinted, they did have another purpose.

Until we expand on that, below the cut is the solution of last weekend's problem.

Place the point H on the line between A and C1 so that the distance between A and C1 is equal to r2. As the lines (AC1) and (BC2) are both perpendicular to the line (AB), they are parallel, and since AH=BC2=r2, HABC2 is a parallelogram with two right angles: it's a rectangle.

So the length we want, AB, is equal to HC2. The triangle HC1C2 has a right angle at the vertex H, so we can use Pythagoras's theorem:

HC1² + HC2² = C1C2²

In this equality, two lengths are known: C1C2=r1+r2, and

HC1 = AC1-AH = r1-r2 (assuming r1>r2, if not just switch the roles of r1 and r2)

Thus, HC2² = (r1+r2)²-(r1-r2)² = 4 r1 r2 after expanding both expressions (e.g. (r1+r2)² = (r1+r2)x(r1+r2) = r1² + 2 r1 r2 + r2²).

Taking the square root yields the result.

Hello! I just saw your post about the conference. I know it's very niche, but I'd love to hear / read more about your sangaku presentation. I actually went back to Konnō Hachiman-gū this afternoon, hoping to see more examples, but no such luck. (I cannot decipher them, of course, but I taught English at a faculty of engineering, and my students could. Sometimes. )

I'll put together something about the shrine, but どうぞお先に。Nudge nudge hint hint.

Hi, thanks for the message!

The presentation was in two main parts: first the historical context of the Edo period and function of sangaku in developing mathematics during that time, and second a closer look at Kashihara Miminashi Yamaguchi-jinja's example with a modern solution. I can't read the sangaku in full, but I have been able to pick out the parts with numbers and compare some of their results with the formulas.

I can probably put together a mini-series at some point. Which parts would you want to hear more about? (That's a general question btw: anyone can reply and add the conversation of course.)

Everything is ready for Tuesday! How this particular configuration works, as well as the one below, will be covered - we can talk about it on here too afterwards if anyone's interested.

C'est avec grand plaisir que je présenterai le mardi 16 avril à la Maison Universitaire France-Japon de Strasbourg une conférence sur la géométrie pendant la période d'Edo, avec en support le sangaku de Kashihara. Entre grande Histoire et petits calculs. Lien vers les détails 4月16日(火)、ストラスブール市の日仏大学会館に江戸時代の算額についてコンファレンスをします。楽しみにしています！ Looking forward to giving a conference on Edo-period geometry on 16 April at Strasbourg's French-Japanese Institute. Expect a few posts about Kashihara around then. Has it really been 6 years?...

C'est avec grand plaisir que je présenterai le mardi 16 avril à la Maison Universitaire France-Japon de Strasbourg une conférence sur la géométrie pendant la période d'Edo, avec en support le sangaku de Kashihara. Entre grande Histoire et petits calculs. Lien vers les détails 4月16日(火)、ストラスブール市の日仏大学会館に江戸時代の算額についてコンファレンスをします。楽しみにしています！ Looking forward to giving a conference on Edo-period geometry on 16 April at Strasbourg's French-Japanese Institute. Expect a few posts about Kashihara around then. Has it really been 6 years?...

Daylight Saving Time, Edo style

These Edo-period clocks are on display at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Ueno, Tokyo. They are unusual in two ways: the display looks kind of like a ruler, and you may notice on the left example that the marks are irregular. This would seem to suggest that hours in one half of the day are considerably shorter than in the other half.

The basic idea is that the Sun always rose at 6 in the morning and always set at 6 in the evening. In between, the same number of hours, no matter the season. This means that in the summer, an hour was quite a bit longer than an hour in winter, and vice-versa for the nights. It turns out the Romans were doing this too, on a more elementary scale as their clocks were sundials, and soon noticed that they weren't getting as much rest at some times of the year...

Today, most of Europe and the US have Daylight Saving Time, and we're going through the "ugh, clocks forward, less sleep" movement in Europe tonight. But let's take a moment to consider that the owners of these clocks would have owned a set of rulers and changed them each month!

Katsushika Hokusai, Edo (old Tokyo) 1760-1849

Demons and Ghosts

Seriously this OC is so underrated I need everyone else to love her as much as I do so I don’t seem like some weird stalker

Come on people. Get with the liking and such.

Kabuki no mono style

She sassy

What if…….. I made her immortal