Fractals Are Big In Japan

Oohayo! (That’s good morning in Japanese.) Firstly, I must say I’m sorry for the horrible lack of updates. I was busy for a period of time, followed by another period of time in Japan. Then when I tried to update, I found out I couldn’t upload pictures (turns out,the pictures I had been trying to upload were too big) - that’s resolved now

I noticed something when I was in Japan. Fractals are a big thing. Of course, there is Hokusai, which I once featured here in Math-Art, but Japanese people seem to love fractals and the concept of self-similarity a lot. Of course, one of the few things you’ll realize in Japan is that everything is so orderly and perfect - there is almost a mathematical precision about the way they do things, from the way they individually wrap fruits (yeah, you buy individually wrapped oranges and apples). I think self-similarity ties in to their culture a lot - on how the self affects the society as a whole - I’ll talk about that a bit later.

But back to the self-similarity bit. Self-similarity and Japanese culture seem to go hand in hand. Today’s math-art has been featured before - it’s Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa. But where else do you see a huge reproduction of the painting for only 1890 yen? That’s AUD19.00. I saw this in art shop in a market in Kyoto, but too bad I didn’t have the time to go in.

In my next article, I’ll explore an ancient Japanese cultural practice that strongly exhibits the concept of self-similarity - the Noh performance.