Japanese history – Fireflies

The making of a bot

I made a twitter bot – an engine which tweets automatically generated lists, ideally in the style of the Makura no Soshi (the Pillow Book). https://twitter.com/ThePillowBot/status/1086262597576544257 I have a long informal history of programming, back to the days of BASIC, but I’ve not done any for probably a decade and much of the newer stylesContinueContinue reading “The making of a bot”

10 (more) books about Japan

I’m looking forward to reading Chris Harding’s new book on modern Japan, but in the meantime he’s been doing some promotion for it – including this piece in the Guardian on The Top 10 Books About Japan. I think I’d probably include maybe three of his list in my 10 favourites – I’m not sureContinueContinue reading “10 (more) books about Japan”

Threads

I went to the National Museum, Cardiff, a couple of weeks ago, to see their exhibition of Japanese design, Kizuna. There’s a lot of good stuff on display, but for me the highlight was this, a 12 panel screen that formed a map of Edo (Tokyo): It’s massive and yet full of detail, each placeContinueContinue reading “Threads”