Japan

Daisugi Allows Log Harvesting without Killing the Tree

Eppu

Daisugi is a forestry management technique reminiscent of pollarding and bonsai that produces straight logs without killing the tree. Developed some 600-500 years ago in Japan, it’s still being used to harvest sustainable, durable logs.

Basically, some of the top shoots are pruned so that they’ll grow straight up, and the shoots only are collected when they reach the desired height. It’s not a fast method, as it takes decades to be able to produce logs, but reportedly they come out stronger, more flexible, and knot-free. And the tree stays alive.

Also, the daisugi-managed cedars make amazing shapes in the woods! They would be so interesting in a speculative or fantasy story—or any story, really. Below are a few examples.

Spoon Tamago Yusuke Narita Long Shot
Spoon Tamago Ai Hirakawa Daisugi in Fall
Wikipedia Bernard Gagnon Ryoan-ji Garden

Just another example of how ingenious we people are in manipulating our environment. 🙂

Found via Good Stuff Happened Today on Tumblr.

Images: Long shot by Yusuke Narita via Spoon & Tamago. In the fall by Ai Hirakawa via Spoon & Tamago. Ryoan-ji garden, Kyoto, Japan by Bernard Gagnon via Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0).

In Live and Active Cultures we talk about cultures and cultural differences.

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Miss Sherlock Is Now Available – Thoughts?

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I first heard about Miss Sherlock in the spring of 2018, but wasn’t able to track it down then. In December, I found a review by Kaisu Tervonen in Helsingin Sanomat, the largest Finnish daily. (NB. Finnish only.)

HS HBO Miss Sherlock Playing Cello

The Sherlock character is called Sara Shelly Futaba (played by Yūko Takeuchi). She’s a consultant specializing in criminal psychology. Our Sherlock / Futaba meets her Doctor Watson or Wato Tachibana (Shihori Kanjiya) at a murder scene of a good colleague of Wato’s after the doctor returned from Syria.

In a familiar manner, the two end up solving mysteries, one per episode. What the series is really about, apparently, is first building and then endangering their friendship.

Since I last wrote, also the IMDB entry for Miss Sherlock has been updated and the episode descriptions added.

With regard to U.S. viewing, I’ve found out that you can stream (for a fee) all of the season 1 (8 episodes) at Hulu with English subtitles, but I haven’t had the time to check that out.

The HS reviewer wasn’t very impressed, so I’m a little dubious. Have you seen any episodes at all? Please chime in!

Image: HBO Miss Sherlock / HBO via Helsingin Sanomat

P.S. Twitter users have uploaded some screencaps.

In the Seen on Screen occasional feature, we discuss movies and television shows of interest.

Call for Help: Where Is Miss Sherlock?

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I saw Bay Alden tweet-share a trailer for a gender-swapped version of Sherlock Holmes set in modern Japan. It looks fascinating, so I had to dig up more. Here are the trailers I found:

MISS SHERLOCK Official Promo Trailer (HD) HBO Asia Original Series via JoBlo TV Show Trailers

MISS SHERLOCK – Japanese TV Series Trailer #2 via Seven on YouTube

MISS SHERLOCK – Japanese TV Series Trailer #3 (Official Trailer from HBO Asia) via Seven on YouTube

The show is co-produced by HBO Asia and Hulu Japan. The official description reads:

“MISS SHERLOCK pays homage to the classic by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, with bold interpretations of the iconic characters, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. MISS SHERLOCK is set in modern day Tokyo and both lead characters are Japanese women – Dr. Wato Tachibana, a surgeon recently returned from a volunteer doctors’ mission in Syria and Sara Shelly Futaba, an investigation consultant to the police department who solves bizarre and difficult cases. Throughout the series, the pair solves mystery after mystery with Miss Sherlock’s extraordinary observation and reasoning skills.”

Miss Sherlock premiers on April 27, 2018.

Now for the part that I need help with. Does anyone know whether Miss Sherlock is available outside Japan? If so, are English subtitles available? I did find a mention (repeated elsewhere) that it can be viewed in the U.S. only via the HBO Go streaming app, but I haven’t found a confirmation by HBO or Hulu.

Anyone?

This post has been edited to correct a typo.

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

Labor

Erik

150810oxcartThe majority of the stuff that needs to get done in an agrarian society is basic manual labor: primarily farm work, but also things like construction, building and road maintenance, mining, carrying, housework, etc. Any functioning pre-industrial society needs lots of workers to do all that work, but there are many different kinds of workers, some of which are not so familiar to us today. Some of these kinds of workers had it much better than others.

Here’s a list of possibilities, by no means exhaustive, arranged roughly in order from worst to best conditions.

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