More Views Of Schonach

Japan's first Concorso d'Eleganza

A Concorso d'Eleganza is basically a beauty pageant for historic cars. Based on similar contests for horse-drawn carriages, called Concours d'Élégance, the Italian name references the fact that the most famous competition in the genre for cars has taken place in Italy since 1929.

The Japanese version was launched in 2016, with the amusingly-named "Artistic Cars at the World Heritage, since 2016" exhibit at Nijô-jô, Kyôto. I say amusing, because they were using the "since 2016" tag in 2016, and... it hasn't used that name since! Nonetheless, the sight of these immaculately preserved cars in the lovely palace gardens was impressive.

Among the cars built between the 1950s and 1990s, there was an exhibit with rare Zagato specials. Particularly obscure is the Autech Zagato Stelvio, shown above and below. Of the three names, Zagato is the best known: they are an Italian coachbuilder, who make unique bodywork. Autech is a Japanese tuner, working most closely with Nissan. And the Stelvio is a late-80s mix of all that: a modified Nissan Leopard with very unique design choices, such as the wing mirrors in the fenders.

The Concorso d'Eleganza Kyoto is set to resume this year, having been put off due to the pandemic and the restrictions surrounding it since 2020. The principle hasn't changed: they're going to show some remarkable historic cars in a historic Japanese setting - at Nara this time.

Three churches in Le Havre

This building very much stands out in Le Havre's rebuilt city centre, as it is far more ornate than its surroundings. It's the oldest building in Le Havre, completed in 1638, just 120 years after the founding of the town. Damage by Allied bombings but not completely destroyed, the old church was kept and restored, and, with Le Havre becoming a major town again, it got its own diocese in 1974. The church then became Notre-Dame Cathedral of Le Havre, and is now approaching 50 years in the role (anniversary in December).

As it had been decided to keep the old church, Auguste Perret, the architect in charge of the reconstruction, would build a church of his own elsewhere: the new Church of Saint Joseph, a blocky concrete structure, perfectly in sync with the rest of the urban project. Where the cathedral sticks out as its rounded, classic facade contrasts with the angular buildings around it, Saint Joseph's stands out with its tall central spire. Culminating at 107 m, the tower is inspired by lighthouses, a symbol of Le Havre's maritime nature.

Somewhere in between, other churches further away from the port also survived the war - not without damage, but restoration was chosen over replacement. In the foreground, Saint Vincent de Paul's Church was built in the 19th century in a neo-Romanesque style, its central tower reminiscent of the abbey on Mont Saint Michel.

Walking in on the Nagoya Basho

While I saw Tokyo's sumo arena out of sumo season, I stumbled on an active sumo tournament last summer. July is the month of the Nagoya Basho, and the flags of the various participating sekitori (officially ranked wrestlers, all the names on the flags ending with the character zeki, 関) welcomed not only the spectators, but also the visitors to Nagoya Castle. That's quite the entrance!

I did see one or two sumo wrestlers out and about, and made nothing of it until I noticed the flags. That's when I put everything together regarding what a man at the subway had asked. "Sumô? Sumô?" That's literally all he said, no other attempt to clarify. Yes, I know what sumo is, but it seemed unlikely to me that was what he was talking about - we were, after all, just standing in the subway tunnels waiting for a heavy shower to pass, the topic didn't fit the context and what I knew, I was just going to the castle. So I just stuck to looking a bit dim, like I didn't understand (which, to be fair, I was, and didn't).

As a footnote, the Nagoya Basho will no longer be held inside the castle walls from 2025. It moves to a brand new arena just to the North.

Can't read my, can't read my, No you can't read my 岡 face!

Steep stuff: climbing the Hohentwiel

The altitude difference between Singen town centre and Hohentwiel fortress is only around 200 m... but a view of the mountain shows that it's going to be covered in a rather short distance.

To be clear, 18% is the steepest incline on the road, if you're driving a car, and even then, you'll only get to the Hohentwiel Domäne intermediate stop. The footpath starts climbing further around the mountain, and it's more of an 18% average!

The Domäne has a hotel-restaurant, at which I had lunch, providing shelter during a heavy shower! This made me hesitate to push further, and the previous post showed that there were more hovering around. I took a chance, the rain stayed away. Pick up a ticket to the castle and go through the little museum, and it's back to the climb, for pedestrians and cyclists only... still with over 20% in places!

Sangaku Saturday #12

Having mentioned previously how mathematical schools were organised during the Edo period in Japan, we can briefly talk about how mathematicians of the time worked. This was a time of near-perfect isolation, but some information from the outside did reach Japanese scholars via the Dutch outpost near Nagasaki. In fact, a whole field of work became known as "Dutch studies" or rangaku.

One such example was Fujioka Yûichi (藤岡雄市, a.k.a. Arisada), a surveyor from Matsue. I have only been able to find extra information on him on Kotobank: lived 1820-1850, described first as a wasanka (practitioner of Japanese mathematics), who also worked in astronomy, geography and "Dutch studies". The Matsue City History Museum displays some of the tools he would have used in his day: ruler, compass and chain, and counting sticks to perform calculations on the fly.

No doubt that those who had access to European knowledge would have seen the calculus revolution that was going on at the time. Some instances of differential and integral calculus can be found in Japan, but the theory was never formalised, owing to the secretive and clannish culture of the day.

That said, let's have a look at where our "three circles in a triangle" problem stands.

The crucial step is to solve this equation,

and I suggested that we start with a test case, setting the sizes of the triangle SON as SO = h = 4 and ON = k = 3. Therefore, simply, the square root of h is 2, and h²+k² = 16+9 = 25 = 5², and our equation is

x = 1 is an obvious solution, because 32+64 = 96 = 48+48. This means we can deduce a solution to our problem:

Hooray! We did it!

What do you mean, "six"? The triangle is 4x3, that last radius makes the third circle way larger...

Okay, looking back at how the problem was formulated, one has to admit that this is a solution: the third circle is tangent to the first two, and to two sides of the triangle SNN' - you just need to extend the side NN' to see it.

But evidently, we're not done.

Ichibata Dentetsu

The only train to Izumo Taisha is operated by private company Ichibata Dentetsu, or Bataden. Twas not always thus, as the JNR had a short 7 km branch line from Izumo-shi to Taisha until 1990. It was served by direct expresses from Nagoya and Kanazawa (11-hour day express Taisha) and night expresses from Ôsaka (Daisen).

But Bataden is no upstart, they've been around for a long time. They've been connecting Matsue Shinjiko-Onsen, Dentetsu Izumo-shi (neighbour to JR Izumo-shi) to Izumo Taisha-mae since the 1920s. On of their trains of the time was the DeHaNi 50, left in its refurbished DeHa 50 form. On the right is the 7000 Series, the company's newest model... and their first new train since the DeHaNi 50!

In the 90-year interim, Ichibata has relied on second-hand trains (yes, that's a thing in Japan), mostly from Tokyo-based Keiô. A rather nice retreat for these vehicles, from the crowded suburban lines around the capital, to scenic moseys around Lake Shinji... There are some special liveries and trains, such as Shimane-no-ki below, with some nice wooden decking inside, and single-seat semi-compartments! "Wait, is this First class?", I remember thinking to myself.

Fort National, Saint Malo

Work is starting to pile up on my end, so I have to make this a quick one.

This is Fort National, a building we saw in the post on MV Bretagne. It was built in the late 17th century by Vauban - one of many, many, many projects he designed for Louis XIV's grand plan to fortify the French border. It was called Fort Royal, a name which would stick for little more than a century, before the Revolution banished any mention of royalty. It became Fort Républicain, then Fort Impérial under Napoleon, and finally Fort National after Napoleon III's Empire was defeated by Prussia in 1870. This regular name changing was derided by a local nickname, "Fort Caméléon", but it also give a glimpse into France's political history.

The rock on which the fort sits, known as Îlette (the small island), has quite a sorry history. Before Vauban, it was apparently used as an execution ground by local lords, and during World War II, the occupying Nazis used it as a prison during Allied bombings - fully expecting the fort to be bombed.

Today, the fort is privately owned, but visits are allowed on occasions.

Sangaku Saturday #8

Having established that sangaku were, in part, a form of advertisement for the local mathematicians, we can look at the target demographic. Who were the mathematicians of the Edo period? What did they work on and how?

The obvious answer is that the people in the Edo period who used mathematics were the ones who needed mathematics. As far back as the time when the capital was in Kashihara, in the early 8th century, evidence of mathematical references has been uncovered (link to a Mainichi Shinbun article, with thanks to @todayintokyo for the hat tip). All kinds of government jobs - accounting, such as determining taxes, customs, or engineering... - needed some form of mathematics. Examples above: 8th-century luggage labels and coins at the Heijô-kyô Museum in Nara, and an Edo-period ruler used for surveying shown at Matsue's local history museum.

As such, reference books for practical mathematics have existed for a long time, and continued to be published to pass on knowledge to the next generation. But sangaku are different: they are problems, not handbooks.

More on that soon. Below the cut is the solution to our latest puzzle.

Recall that SON is a right triangle with SO = 1 and ON = b. These are set values, and our unknowns are the radii p, q and r of the circles with centres A, B and C. While these are unknown, we assume that this configuration is possible to get equations, which we can then solve.

1: The two circles with centres B and C are tangent to a same line, so we can just re-use the very first result from this series, so

2: Also recalling what we said in that first problem about tangent circles, we know that

Moreover, PA = AO - OP = AO - CQ = (p+2*q) - r. Thus, using Pythagoras's theorem in the right triangle APC, we get a new expression for PC:

since 2(p+q)=1 (the first relation). Equating the two expressions we now have of PC², we solve the equation for r:

again using the first relation to write 2q-1 = -2p.

It only remains to find a third equation for p to solve the problem.

Tilting Diesels!

In June, we said さようなら to Japan's first tilting electric multiple unit (see that post also for why you'd want tilt in the first place), launched in 1973. For some reason, adding tilt to Diesel multiple units needed a bit more time - my guess is engine vibrations play a part. Nonetheless, in 1989, JR Shikoku did it, launching the 2000 series tilting DMU. The company has continued with the technology, and the latest generation, the 2700 series shown above, is 5 years old this month.

The 2000 series is still in service, but I haven't yet seen any. However I have seen and ridden two derivatives of the 2000: the JR West KiHa 187 above, which reminds me of trains in England with its yellow front, and the streamlined Chizu Kyûkô HOT7000 below.

These trains run intercity services along the picturesque San'in coast - the Super Matsukaze and Super Oki in Yamaguchi, Shimane and Tottori prefectures -, and between the San'in and San'yô coasts - the Super Hakuto and Super Inaba in Hyôgo, Okayama and Tottori prefectures, which is how the HOT7000 got its name.

With these trains, Tottori to Himeji is done in under two hours, a similar time frame to what electric tilting trains can do between Okayama and Yonago. The mountains are also quite scenic, and the HOT7000 has a feature that I don't think I've seen anywhere else: a live cab cam.

Another country worked to develop tilting DMUs: Germany. This culminated with the high-speed ICE T, which I'm yet to encounter, but in the late 1990s, at a similar time to the Japanese examples above, Adtranz built the RegioSwinger, officially Baureihe 612. These yellow and white examples work in the South-West corner of Germany, along the Rhine between the Bodensee and Basel, with a couple of incursions into Switzerland.

Riding a tilting train is peculiar. 8° of tilt doesn't sound like much, but it adds up with the camber of the tracks to produce a visually impressive experience. The tilt is really noticeable, and it does what it's supposed to do, compensating the G-forces so you don't feel the pull to the side through corners. The downside of DMUs is that they tend to be quite noisy - the engines sound like they're giving 110% all the time! On the whole, I really like them.