miscellanea nipponica

Via Mutantfrog, I just discovered this beautiful collection of nostalgic photos from Meiji and Taishō era Tokyo on the National Diet Library’s homepage. The database is searchable by category, by keywords and even with a map of the greater Tokyo area. Nice.

(Pictured above, a canal in Koganei west of Tokyo, where I lived during my one-year student exchange. The picture is from 1901. No, it’s not very beautiful in its own right. Yes, it does make me want to to go back to Japan soon.)

Separated at birth?

To the left, the Edo-era emaki character now thought to be the inspiration for Nurikabe (ぬりかべ), the popular yōkai character from Gegege no Kitarō; to the right, the Mizuki version)

(via Blue Moa)

Edit: Speaking of yōkai, here’s a great post from Pink Tentacle on O-nyudo.

These are far scarier specimen than anything Akutagawa has ever described. Even more so because of the quasi-scientific nature of the description.

Check out more sketches by Ito Keisuke here.