
Japan's washi paper torn by modern life - Ultramanoid
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2019/06/25/lifestyle/skin-deep-japans-washi-paper-torn-modern-life/
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Causality1
Many culturally significant products and practices go down this path. I
believe washi particularly shoji will eventually settle into the category of
"isn't produced on an industrial scale but never stops being made" with other
products such as chainmail, non-electric typewriters, swords, powder horns,
quill pens, parchment, monocle, coonskin caps, cathode ray tubes, hand drills,
etc.

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rwmj
Is anyone making CRTs? As I understand it, original broadcast CRT monitors
(so-called PVMs and BVMs) are becoming rare and expensive. They are sought
after by retro gamers in particular.

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speeder
Sadly, no.

I use CRT on my main computer, in my country all flat panels I seen so far are
too expensive OR useless for my purposes.

1\. CRT can use arbitrary resolutions, I love that, not only for retro gaming,
but some modern games can reach "ultra" settings when lowering resolution a
little, on a "mid-range" GPU (I own a Radeon 380X, sadly the last GPU to have
analog video, I dunno what I will do when purchasing my next one)

2\. My CRT contrast never bothered me, differently from the flat panels I
owned, for example trying to play "superhot" and then "dark souls" same day
required lots and lots of fiddling with flat panels, the settings that let me
see anything at all on dark souls, made the screen flat white on superhot,
fixing the settings for superhot made the screen flat black on dark souls...
CRT I never felt the need to readjust contrast and brigthness after I found
the setting I wanted.

3\. Input lag... for most games this is not obvious, specially since lots of
recent games have input lag anyway (for example I noticed a couple games check
the controller status in a certain order that make all input always 1 frame
late, sometimes 2 frames late if there is vsync and whatnot in the mix) but
for example playing "Necrodancer" on CRT is much, MUCH easier for me.

4\. This one is more theoretical, since the CRTs I own are cheap, but for a
long time some CRTs could reach crazy high refresh rates.

5\. "HDR", well, to be honest I never seen this either in person, but I know
that some manufacturers did made some cool CRTs that supported HDR, most
notably for SGI workstations that could create images with some ridiculous
amounts of bits per pixel.

6\. Retro gaming without expensive hardware: many, MANY games relied on CRT
pixel "bleed" and fuzzyness of analog systems to create special effects, a
notorious one is the waterfalls in sonic, on a system that has the intended
hardware instead of seeing alternating columns of pixels, you would see a
transparent waterfall, there are lots of emulators with plugins to simulate
those, but to make the art work REALLY right on a modern screen you need a 4k
screen, expensive powerful GPU and whatnot... as weird it sounds... it is
cheaper to buy an actual CRT and even an actual old console to play some
games.

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mrob
>MANY games relied on CRT pixel "bleed" and fuzzyness of analog systems to
create special effects, a notorious one is the waterfalls in sonic

But handheld systems with sharp pixels used the same art techniques, and many
pieces of official artwork showed game art drawn with sharp pixels (think
early NES game cover art). The Sonic waterfalls even use distinct vertical
lines to represent falling water, instead of a checkerboard dither pattern,
which would be the natural choice if you assumed it would be blurred. Arcade
games used the same art techniques too, and they used high quality monitors
and RGB connections, so pixels were clearly visible.

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0815test
The thing about CRT pixel "bleed" is that it is a pure Gaussian blur, which is
practically the best way of upscaling a raster image _within a purely analog
system_. Strictly speaking, you can of course do much better with a digital-
upscaling step, using e.g. Lanczos filtering (which is far better at
preserving sharpness while smoothing out "blocky" appearances), or even with
special "pixel-art scaling" algorithms that work strictly within the original
palette. But still, even a CRT is much better than what can be shown on a
fixed-resolution handheld screen!

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mrob
That's assuming that the pixels are point samples, which isn't true of pixel
art. Consider the typewriter on Crono's desk at the start of Chrono Trigger,
where a single pixel checkerboard pattern is used to represent the keys. The
best way to scale this is nearest-neighbor. The same technique is used in many
games to represent chainmail armor.

~~~
0815test
It's assuming that "a pixel is a point sample" is a better model, even of
pixel art, than "a pixel is literally a small square". Checkerboard patterns
are also used quite often for simple dithering (in pixel art with smaller-
palettes) which is perhaps the polar opposite of your example! (And if you
really don't want blurring, most pixel-art-specific scaling algorithms will
nicely match nearest neighbor on that particular pattern, while still doing
their best to smooth out "jaggies" elsewhere.)

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mrob
How can the scaling algorithm distinguish between "checkerboard representing
high spatial frequency detail" and "checkerboard representing intermediate
color"? There are games that use both. The only scaling technique I know that
can do this with acceptable accuracy (in real time!) is "human brain scaling".

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ThePadawan
If that rang a bell for you, it might be via Baumgartner Restoration [0], the
excellent painting restoration YouTube channel. He refers to it as "Japanese
mulberry paper" and IIRC relies on it for its light weight but reliability.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvZe6ZCbF9xgbbbdkiodPKQ/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvZe6ZCbF9xgbbbdkiodPKQ/videos)

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cr0sh
When I see articles on these kinds of materials - handmade and fairly unique,
but not in wide demand any longer - I tend to wonder:

Are there any applications for the techniques used in the making of the
materials that could be applied to other modern materials that could
potentially create new uses for those materials.

For instance - just spitballing - but what if a different fiber and "glue"
were substituted; could a very thin "mat" of such material be made, and what
could it be used for?

I'm sure I'm not the first to think about this, though...

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derefr
I think, in this case, the pertinent question is the reverse. Could you make
paper out of kouzo fiber using regular mass-produced paper making techniques?
(It’d likely be smoother, and so wouldn’t have the “feel” of washi paper; but
it’d probably still have the properties being discussed in the article—longer
lifespan/durability than regular paper.)

As well, there might be other things kouzo fiber could be used for besides the
uses it’s been put to (panels in shouji screen doors, and origami paper,
mostly), that haven’t been tried because they don’t occur to the artisans who
grow the kouzo. Maybe, due to its length, kouzo fiber has better wicking
properties than regular paper fiber, and so washi paper would make a better
substrate for pH test strips, for example. Or maybe the raw fibers would make
a good base for a spray insulation product (presumably in combination with
fire retardants.) Or maybe they’re durable enough that you could work them
into a cloth, as is done with hemp.

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shaboi
This is bit nit-picky of me, but it's a thread I've been noticing lately in
some international news, so I'd like to know if anyone has observations or
thoughts.

In South Korea, China, and Japan (to the extent of my observations), it seems
when some culturally significant norm, craft, or product begins to lose said
status, partit chalked up to a result of (what tone usually conveys as
destructive) "Westernization". But a significant amount of the advances (i.e.,
emergent products or norms that have supplanted the ones in question)
themselves tend to be celebrated and attributed to the progressive trajectory
of their culture & state. It's just an odd bit of nationalistic hypocrisy that
gives me an itch.

Of course, I do not think for a moment this is the case for everything, or
that their peoples even embrace this view (as I believe to have been conveyed
by the media). And I'm sure the West has behaved or.continues to behave in a
similar manner, either now or (surely) in the past.

Perhaps I'm completely amiss, which, in that case, all the better.

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benj111
From a western (uk) perspective I would say theres Americanisation going on,
where in the past there would have been a diversity of opinions.

In the 80/90s we seemed to look to Japan for Business/technology and culture,
to Europe for food, and culture as well as America. I suppose China has
somewhat filled part of the gap, but it seems to be a near US monopoly at the
moment.

It seems to me that being exposed to the diversity of the world is a good
thing, becoming a copy of one other place not so much. This is of course
highly subjective.

So to answer your question, being exposed to, and picking the best bits of
western culture seems a net positive, becoming a generic western country not
so much.

I have absolutely no idea where the balance is between 'progress' and
'tradition', and I don't even think I'd recognise the balance if I saw it. I'm
not even sure if there is a balance. Perhaps we'll forever be bemoaning the
loss of washi, whilst celebrating the things that replace it.

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SSton
Japanese Washi Paper making video. John Daub interviewed Washi paper master,
Rogier Uitenboogaart living in Kochi Japan.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwu1t3d6kU4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwu1t3d6kU4)

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TazeTSchnitzel
One of the many victims of plastic perhaps?

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19870213
Dave Bull of Mokuhankan has occasional blog posts about problems sourcing
washi paper:
[https://mokuhankan.com/conversations/archives/2016/04/how_ar...](https://mokuhankan.com/conversations/archives/2016/04/how_are_we_doing_part_three.html)
[https://mokuhankan.com/conversations/archives/2016/07/paper_...](https://mokuhankan.com/conversations/archives/2016/07/paper_breakthrough.html)

Though I seem to recall one other earlier post, but I can't find it at the
moment, it was about debris/bark being mixed into the paper IIRC.

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jacobush
There is even a photographic "film" made from washi paper:

[http://filmwashi.com/en/products/handcrafted_films/](http://filmwashi.com/en/products/handcrafted_films/)

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davidcollantes
Does anyone knows if washi paper notebooks are available somewhere? Search
queries led me to no where.

~~~
bookofjoe
[https://awagami.com/collections/stationery-decor-
gifts](https://awagami.com/collections/stationery-decor-gifts)

