look how much craftsmanship we've lost in clothing in just a hundred years

Two of the most useful sources for Taiwanese colonial history are the Japanese periodicals 台湾時報 & 台湾日日新報. Many issues of both can be read/downloaded from Internet Archive. 台湾時報 1919-1928, 1935-1939 (138 issues) archive.org/search?query... 台湾日日新報 1932-1944 (3,772 issues) archive.org/details/twnn...

Utter lack of clouds yesterday in Kyoto. Ninnaji's gardens and I were both getting a bit parched.

CFP: Forecasting the weather, between divination and science, 9 October 2026, Oxford University. Just a few more days — feel free to send us your proposals. Submission deadline: 31 may 2026 More info here: www.torch.ox.ac.uk/event/call-f...

1 week left to apply! Postdoc on history of educational experiences linked to migration of Asian immigrants within East and Southeast #Asia over longue durée + contemporary knowledge dynamics of Asian diasporas in Europe. #migration #DisasterSTS #EconomicMobility #gender www.mpg.de/26445995/one...

h/t Max Bouttell for apprising me of Shell's (never-realized) plans, apparently hatched in the late '60s, to build an enormous airship to shuttle natural gas between the Middle East and the UK. kudos for the Hindenburg comparison, guys! more info here: airshipsonline.com/airships/air...

Imagining trans-Pacific telecommunications, August 1946.

My author copy has arrived. Happy to be part of this great and brilliant collective of #envhist authors…. And to write about animal navigation skills.

Must say that I quite simply love the poster for this

New in Arcadia: new research on old data reveals how Gloucester, Massachusetts, emerged as one of the most significant fishing ports of the United States in the late 1800s. Read the article by Rafael Sousa Santos to learn more! #EnvHist #envhum

5 days left to apply for PhD and Postdoc positions in a cool project about herbaria, plants and digitization!🌿😎 Postdoc: jobs.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/jobposting/9... PhD: jobs.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/jobposting/c... More info: cordis.europa.eu/project/id/1... #Jobs #HPBio #HistSci #DigitalHumanities #PhilSci

Hi all, looking for a detailed map of Great Britain (c. 1800–1803), esp. London but ideally all of England, Ireland & Scotland, to geolocate letter addresses for a digital edition. Freely usable would be great. Any tips or leads much appreciated! #earlymodern #history #digitalhumanities #geolocation

Jeremy Greene et al wrote a eulogy for structural competence (social medicine) in US medical schools in @nejm.org The victory of those who want 'to restore a narrow biomedical vision of disease pathogenesis that eschews recognition of how injustice makes people sick'? www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

Latest piece from me — on rumours and imaginings of the bottom of the sea

The stories & photos from today’s voting rights marches in Alabama deserve to be seen by people who weren’t able to stand there in person. If this piece moves you, please share it widely & help make sure these voices aren’t lost in the noise of a crowded news cycle. open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...

Thrilled that my article on postal horses in ancient China has been published in the latest #AnimalHistory! 🐎 What do excavated administrative texts from 1st C. BCE-CE tell us about equine life and labour on the edge of empire? A lot, it turns out! (1/4) #Xuanquan #postalhorses ✉️🛞🐴

TWO great jobs in History and Philosophy of Science at Sydney! Rank from Lecturer (Assistant Prof) to Assoc Prof. Particularly interested in candidates working in the areas of early modern science, or science or medicine in Asia, or Indigenous knowledge systems... #HPS #STS #histstm #histsci

Fascinated by this photo of a late Daqing bycicle shop in Peking (1900-1912) 🤩

CfA! The wonderful Dr. Anna Antonova is looking for two PhD researchers to join her “Convivial Waterfronts: Reimagining Urban Coastal Conservation for Just Sustainability Transformations” project. Full call: www.sts.sot.tum.de/sts/sts-depa... #envhum #CfA #PhD #research #career

Weather Replay - your time machine to revisit past weather Exciting new application launched today by @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social Check out the comparison between the 'infamous' 1976 heatwave and the 40 degrees in the UK in 2022 🌡️🧪⚒️ Check it out: weather-replay.climate.copernicus.eu

Two possibly interesting PhD positions on "submerged" and "extractive dependencies" in the context of project titled "Power, Knowledge, and Servitude at Sea" in Bonn: www.idos-research.de/en/stellen-p... and www.idos-research.de/en/about-us/...

Still a favorite shot, taken a while back during a hike through the Rokkō mountains.

an embarrassment of riches in the latest issue of Environmental History www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/eh/current

Cherry blossom dates, wine harvests, lake freezes, river breakups — records kept for harvests, gods, festivals, and trade, never meant as climate science. Together, they now show how much the climate has shifted within a single lifetime. ➡️ reckoningscience.org/accidental-c...

An article touching on oceanic knowledge and archival traces. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The stages of rice cultivation in Japan, "today" (ca. 1983, left column) vs. "in the past" (ca. 1952, middle column).

Unreal stuff, here. One of the best and most harrowing magazine stories I've read. Strongest possible recommendation with all the obvious caveats re: you wanting to read something like this.

The scheduled air routes of the Japan Air Transport Co. (Oct. 1938 – Mar. 1939), which doubles as a fascinating diagram of the civil aviation infrastructure then collapsing the distance of the Japanese empire

In the late 19th century, the newly established Pomology division of the USDA brought mango saplings from India to Florida. The mangos from Mexico disdained in this piece are likely cultivars descended from those Florida mangos (Tommy Atkins and Kent).

Tōji by night.

So excited to talk with Tessa Morris-Suzuki about my new book! Monday 4th May at 8pm EST mjha.org/event-6433046

A few jellyfish encounters today

A really useful set of materials for people working on the Occupation period.

Here's my review of a deeply insightful reflection on the human and environmental history of Japan's most iconic mountain, published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. doi:10.1017/S1356186326101539

Congratulations to @mwarsh.bsky.social for winning the Leopold-Hidy Award for the article "Seasonal Harvests: Migration, Reproduction, and Religion in the Early Modern Spanish Tuna Fisheries." @uchicagopress.bsky.social has taken down the paywall to the article:

Kyoto University has been threatening to demolish Yoshida dorm—Japan’s oldest—since the 1970s, and it looks like it has finally succeeded. Run as a self-governing co-op, Yoshida was a hotbed of leftist activism, with its own brood of chickens and at one time, a goat. End of an era. Photos here:

Kyoto University's Yoshida dormitory is slated to be torn down. Built in 1913, it is one of the oldest buildings on campus. Over the years I've talked with a number of graduate students who relied on the dormitory's very reasonable rates to make ends meet. www.asahi.com/sp/articles/...

It’s happening!

Wonderful to hear that a PhD student in one of my seminars was able to publish a revised version of their final paper from that course. What nice news! Not much that puts me in a better mood than getting unsolicited updates like that.

Two CFPs for workshops focused on women in natural history collections: Women, Marine Science and Algae Collections: Framing Nineteenth-Century Marine Herbaria, 8 Oct, Paris Female Networks of Knowledge: Natural History between Private and Public Spaces, 19-20 Nov, Vienna womnh.hypotheses.org/cfp

Call for Papers: "Technologies of Making and Knowing" Hosted jointly at Getty, LACMA, and UCLA Los Angeles, California, March 4 - 6, 2027 www.historiansofislamicart.org/events-and-s...

Huge quake off the Sanriku coast in Northeastern Japan. Tsunami reports up and down the coast, including my fieldwork site in Ishinomaki. weathernews.jp/news/202604/...

Got my hands on a paper copy of the recent "Animal Mobilities" issue of Osiris (volume 40). Very interesting stuff in here! www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/osiris/c...

This is lovely: www.theguardian.com/environment/... #science #biology

Came across a 1932 ad in the Sendai-based Kahoku Shinpō geared toward would-be rabbit breeders: "With 100 yen of capital, 500 yen of yearly profits are assured!" Rabbit raising was a popular agricultural sideline in 1930s Japan, buoyed by growing military demand for warm fur-lined gear.

Vol. 1, no. 6 of the CO2 Newsletter, Aug-Sep 1980, is now downloadable. Founded by American geologist William Barbat, each issue was 8 pages of excerpts from recent reports, editorials and deeply researched articles. Pls comment on/share this thread! 1/9

My old university NTNU in Trondheim is finally! recruiting a fully tenured associate professor in modern environmental history. This is a great opportunity for the right person. #envhist

I created a deep linked and searchable table of contents index for issues of the prewar "Japan Magazine" found on Internet Archive, with over 200 issues and several thousand articles. Useful for history students working only with English sources: froginawell.net/indexes/japa... #japan

From a 1960s-era hamachi yellowtail ranching handbook, an illustration of how many yellowtails of various sizes can be raised in a cubic meter of water