463 research outputs found
Designs on “Old Seto” Porcelain
No full textIt is widely known that the porcelain ware called Ko (Old) Seto, produced in the Seto area around the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, shows the influence of Sung China in its shapes and designs. It has not been studied thoroughly, however, how the Chinese inspiration was accepted. Believing that such studies will be valuable, the author has made some researches on the subject. The existing pieces of the Old Seto ware are numerous, and ornamental designs on them cover a wide variety. The author chose, as the basis of his researches, jars and vases which are believed to be genuine and typical, and studied designs which appear frequently on these.
As space does not allow discussions on all individual pieces, the author herein reports only the results of his researches. Designs on them include those imitating ornaments of Chinese Lung-ch‘üan celadon and Ching-tê-chên pale-white porcelain (ying-ching) of the Southern Sung period, and of the Korean Kōrai (Koryo) celadon ; Chinese- and Korean-style ones to which Japanese-style motifs are added, or which are modified into Japanese style, and those consisting of Japnese-style motifs only. Through these designs the author found that they attest to considerably creative, original ideas of Seto potters.
It is evident that the Old Seto pieces were made during the last part of the Kamakura Period, but the chronological order of individual specimens is hard to tell ; it is therefore impossible exactly to describe how these designs developed. Nevertheless they are very significant from the viewpoint of designs in Japanese ceramics, and in Japanese handicrafts in general.
Pre-historic and proto-historic earthenwares are left out here. There are a few examples of Heian Period pottery which have ornaments in line-engraving, but the Old Seto ware has no ornaments either similar to or apparently derived from them. Furthermore, pottery pieces with decorative patterns prior to the Kamakura Period are mostly in shapes imitating those of metal objects, and their patterns, also following metal examples, are hardly ones peculiar to pottery. Designs on the Old Seto ware, however, are desings characteristic of ceramics, and are diferent in character from earlier ones. It cannot be denied that the tradition of the Sué Type Pottery of the Heian Period carried on partly into the Old Seto, but in decorative designs the Old Seto potters, instead of following old tradition, chose imported continental-style ornaments which they improved with their original ideas and which were laden with the vigorous spirit of the Kamakura Period of the warriors' rule. It is notable, too, that designs on the Old Seto ware are the first examples of pottery designs in the true sense of the term in Japan.
Comparison of Old Seto ornaments with designs in other fields of decorative arts is interesting. In lacquer art, the Kamakura-bori imitated the effect of the Chinese carved lacquer just as the Old Seto copied continental designs, but it did not achieve notable development. Designs in maki-e lacquer and in metalwork were traditional cnes flavoured with the taste of the time. Those on mirror-backs also adhered to tradition, though only a very few of them imitated Chinese Han-style mirrors of the Sung Dynasty. The novel designs in Old Seto discussed above are remarkable achievements of the then newly-risen ceramic industry in the Seto area.journal articl
Utilizing Fractals for Modeling and 3D Printing of Porous Structures
No full textPorous structures exhibiting randomly sized and distributed pores are required in biomedical applications (producing implants), materials science (developing cermet-based materials with desired properties), engineering applications (objects having controlled mass and energy transfer properties), and smart agriculture (devices for soilless cultivation). In most cases, a scaffold-based method is used to design porous structures. This approach fails to produce randomly sized and distributed pores, which is a pressing need as far as the aforementioned application areas are concerned. Thus, more effective porous structure design methods are required. This article presents how to utilize fractal geometry to model porous structures and then print them using 3D printing technology. A mathematical procedure was developed to create stochastic point clouds using the affine maps of a predefined Iterative Function Systems (IFS)-based fractal. In addition, a method is developed to modify a given IFS fractal-generated point cloud. The modification process controls the self-similarity levels of the fractal and ultimately results in a model of porous structure exhibiting randomly sized and distributed pores. The model can be transformed into a 3D Computer-Aided Design (CAD) model using voxel-based modeling or other means for digitization and 3D printing. The efficacy of the proposed method is demonstrated by transforming the Sierpinski Carpet (an IFS-based fractal) into 3D-printed porous structures with randomly sized and distributed pores. Other IFS-based fractals than the Sierpinski Carpet can be used to model and fabricate porous structures effectively. This issue remains open for further research
Influence of depopulation on pollutant loads generated in the Seto inland sea basin
No full textAbstract The Seto Inland Sea comprises both oligotrophic and eutrophic areas, requiring area-specific water management. To manage the nutrient content of the sea area, it is necessary to accurately determine the pollutant load discharged from the basin, which is believed to be significantly affected by depopulation. However, the impact of depopulation on pollutant loads is not completely clear. This study, therefore, estimated the changes in nitrogen and phosphorus pollutant loads generated in the Seto Inland Sea Basin due to depopulation from 2020 to 2050. While the population of the entire Seto Inland Sea is expected to decrease by approximately 21.1%, the amount of nitrogen is expected to decrease by approximately 12.0% and phosphorus by approximately 14.2%. The rate of decrease in the pollutant load in each sea area varied greatly, ranging from approximately 5% to 21%. The insights gained from this study will contribute to the formulation of appropriate measures for managing the water quality of the Seto Inland Sea. Moreover, they offer valuable guidance for the management of the water environment in other sea areas and their associated basins where population changes are expected
FIGURE 5 in Four new dendrochirotid holothurians collected from the Seto Inland Sea and the western part of the Sea of Japan, western Japan
No full textFIGURE 5. Scanning electron microscope images of ossicles of Thyone liaoi sp. nov., (holotype, A–H, WMNH-INV-2014- 182). A, ossicles of the ventrolateral tentacle; B, the ventrolateral skin of peri-oral; C, the ventrolateral skin of pharynx; D, the ventrolateral introvert skin; E, the pedicel of the abdominal side; F and G, the middle part of the bodywall on the abdominal side, and on the dorsal side, respectively; H, the ventrolateral anal papilla.Published as part of Yamana, Yusuke, Nakaguchi, Kazumitsu, Yamaguchi, Shuhei, Katoh, Mikio, Ogawa, Akito & Ohtsuka, Susumu, 2021, Four new dendrochirotid holothurians collected from the Seto Inland Sea and the western part of the Sea of Japan, western Japan, pp. 1-43 in Zootaxa 5023 (1) on page 12, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5023.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/522537
Navigating Digital Borders: Seto Community in the Virtual Territory of the VK Social Network
No full textReceived 30 September 2024. Accepted 5 March 2025. Published online 30 April 2025.The paper examines the digital geography of the virtual Seto community in the VK social network (also known as VKontakte), focusing on how dispersed Seto people in Russia and Estonia use digital spaces to communicate, as well as express, preserve, and promote their cultural identity. By applying a multi-sited ethnographic methodology, the research involves both online explorations and offline semi-structured interviews, with fieldwork conducted in the Pechory District. Using the network and territory approaches to digital ethnography, the study highlights how the VK serves as a digital territory where Setos, divided by distances and physical borders, connect, share cultural practices, and foster a sense of community. Special attention is given to the Seto traditions of leelo polyphonic singing and festive costumes, both of which serve as vital markers of ethnic identity in this digital landscape. Through content analysis of Seto personal profiles and public pages, the research reveals how social networks help maintain connections and how digital geographies are constantly shaped and reshaped by cultural exchanges. This study underscores the adaptability of online spaces in sustaining fragmented ethnic communities across physical distances.This work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation under Grant 23-78-10079, https://rscf.ru/project/23-78-10079/The author is grateful to the assistance of the Museum Reserve Izborsk, Manor Museum of the Seto people in the village of Sigovo, Pechory Museum of History, and the “Flax Province” Museum. The author is also highly appreciative of the valuable consultations and recommendations provided by Elena Variksoo, Tatiana Ogareva, Mare Piho, Malle Bogacheva, and Vera Fest
The experimental realism of William Dean Howells
No full textThe “experimental” in my title refers to Howells’s self-conscious development of a literary form that could give the most complete, deepest account of a reality characterized by the ordinary and even the banal. For the middle class, Howells’s perennial subject, the norm is to aspire to transcend, and the ordinary can appear elusive, even nonexistent. Of course, in political terms, a middle class culture considers everyone basically the same, this resemblance defining the ordinary. It is assumed that everyone shares the same economic goals, and the same desire for familial and individual success. Being ordinary is therefore a moral quality. This means, paradoxically, that ordinariness can only prove itself in exceptional individuals. To strive is virtuous, to fail is shameful; either way one’s ordinariness is subsumed to a greater drama. The drama at the center of middle class art is the plight of the exceptional individual demonstrating a Platonic ordinariness. It is hard to think of characters in novels who are not exceptional financially or morally. In Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady and The Wings of the Dove finance and morality go together. The novels of Eliot, Dickens, even those of the French realists unfold stories in which ordinary characters, by some exceptional moral quality, try to transcend their economic and historical situations. Howells called this story romantic and insisted on writing about the most mundane aspects of ordinary life. His novels were not about the exceptional who rise above the crowd but about ordinary people who do not transcend but stay on the ground. Howells described this divide between moral ideals and actual economic circumstance as “the infernal juggle of the mind. ” This contradiction at the heart of everyday life was what he wanted to depict. His design of characters and plots, even his sentences, develop continuously into further complexity as they discover the tensions and self-betrayal inherent in middle class optimism. “Discover” is the key term: Howells wrote in order to find out the truth about ordinary life, and the more he discovered the more his novels tended toward disjunction. In resisting the urge to reaffirm middle class morals, he was having not only a political argument with the dominant ideology of late-nineteenth century America but a formal argument with the conventional novel. Down the critical years, Howells’s trust in the novel form to do its own work has been difficult to see because his way of demonstrating it was so unusual. To the extent that his form was un-transcendent, descriptive rather than theoretical, it has been unapparent. My dissertation is an attempt to make evident and describe the working of Howells’s unapparent form. I have used a method of analysis congruent with his practice. I proceed as he wrote, historically, by following the unfolding events of his style and form.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Brian Seto McGrat
Chemical composition of pond waters on the ilands located in the Seto Inland Sea
No full textFreshwater ponds are found on a number of islands located in the Seto Inland Sea. The author made observation of the chemical properties of pond water at some of the ponds located on the islands in the western part of the Seto Inland Sea. The primary purpose of this survey was to know the effect of the "sea breeze" from the chlorine contents of pond water. Some of the surveyed ponds were utilized for irrigation. Almost all the surveyed ponds were relatively shallow, and dissolved oxygen was poor in the bottom layer. Chlorine contents were considerably lower than expected. Other chemical compositions and their contents in each pond were not extraordinary; they were of the same order as the average values reported by Dr. S. YOSHIMURA for the lake waters of Japan. The results of the observation and water analysis are shown in Table I.
It seemed that all the surveyed ponds could be utilized for the culture of freshwater fishes
Influences of the Kuroshio on the salinity budget of the Seto Inland Sea, Japan
No full textThe Seto Inland Sea (SIS) harbors abundant aquatic biological diversity, while its ecosystem has been affected by climate change in recent years. Previous studies have shown that the residual current in the SIS varies significantly under the influence of the Kuroshio. To isolate the open ocean influences, salinity transport and the associated salinity budget in the SIS were investigated, as a conservative variable characterizing the estuarine hydrodynamics, using a high-resolution, long-term 3D circulation model. Our findings indicate that the fluctuations of salinity fluxes were influenced by the position of the Kuroshio axis and were highly correlated with the associated volume fluxes. The clockwise eastward transport from Bungo to Kii varies seasonally with an increase in winter and a decrease or counterclockwise increase in summer. The total salinity in each of the eight sub-basins of the SIS was also correlated with the salinity fluxes at the straits connecting the sub-basins. The total salinity in the western sub-basins increased with the eastward clockwise transport and decreased with the westward counterclockwise transport, whereas the eastern sub-basins showed less correlations, resulting in a zonal difference of salinity response to the open ocean
Dynamics of social trust and human capital in the learning process: The case of the Japan garment cluster in the period 1968-2005
No full textThis paper examined how and the extent to which human capital and social trust are associated with the learning process of a manager in making operations decisions through experience. To this end, using a data set originally and purposively constructed by the author, I investigate the development and transformation of the garment industry cluster region of Kojima, Japan. The major findings through statistical estimations are as follows. (1) In the cluster development stage, the social trust of an enterprise and its manager’s experiences in firm operations could be regarded as forming a complimentary association. (2) In the stage following cluster development, however, a manager’s human capital as accumulated through schooling and personal experience becomes complimentary instead of social trust.Social trust, Human capital, Bayesian learning
General pattern of the turbid water in the Seto-inland sea extracted from multispectral imageries by the LANDSAT-1 and 2
No full textThe author has identified the following significant results. Each distribution pattern of turbid water changes with the time in accordance with daily tides, seasonal variation of tides, and occasional rainfall. Two cases of successfully repeated LANDSAT observations for the same sea regions suggested a general pattern of turbid water could be extracted for each region. Photographic and digital processes were used to extract patterns of turbid water separately from the cloud and smog-layer in MSS 4, 5, and 7 imageries. A mosaic of image-masked imageries displays a general pattern of turbid water for almost the entire Seto Inland Sea. No such pattern was extracted for the Aki-Nada south of Hiroshima City where the water is fairly polluted, nor for the Iyo-Nada where the water is generally clearer than in other regions of the Seto Inland Sea
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