"The Housekeeper and the Professor" by Yoko Ogawa The title sounds a bit like Harlequin romance, but it's not.
Not sure why it’s ended up with this English
title but the literal translation of the novel would be “The Professor's
Beloved Equation”. This novel is known to be the originator of recent math boom
in Japan. It’s a very beautiful novel.. great marriage between math and
literature. It describes the beauty of mathematics in such a delicate words… Even
you don’t like math or numbers, I bet you will enjoy this and discover how
romantic math subject can be. I’m not going to write the details of the book hoping you
will check this later. There’s a movie of this novel too (but not sure there’s
subtitle) and I found it’s also fantastic.
I enjoyed the novel and film “The
Housekeeper and the Professor” but to be honest, I wasn’t so convinced that
there’s an actual relation between math and romance. I believed
that author’s magic and skill made it so romantic… until I find this
documentary.
Fermat's Last Theorem (BBC, 1996)
Dear Sir Andrew Wiles,
Please write your memoir... Not just about Fermat, but I'd like to hear more about the time you went to library and flipping through books with problems...
It’s a documentary around Fermat’s last
theorem proven by Andrew Wiles. He explains the struggle and excitement of
proving this problem in a way that non-mathematicians can understand. Though I don’t understand the mathematical part, I could feel his
strong passion and persistence towards this problem and math… I thought “Oh my
gosh, so there’s a math professor like a novel for real…” and after discovering this, I started to
check some books and documentary around math...(but not math problems or textbook...)
I’ve always thought that mathematics are all
about remembering equation and solution method (and I needed a song to
remember a trig function, just like I remember multiplication tables by song.
well, it’s common in Japan), but as I dig, it seems like the real math is close to philosophy,
requiring so much imagination. And it’s also interesting that almost all the
books I’ve read around mathematics include the phrase of “god of mathematics”,
such as “I think I saw a light of the god of math”, “I felt the existence of
the god of math but I found I’m not able to go near it.” Hmm….
Throwing Natural logarithm table from Prime number stairways... / From NHK documentary
Other resources that I enjoyed are…Documentary
around Poincaré Conjecture and Riemann Hypothesis made by NHK. (Available at
NHK on demand, only in Japanese) They use many visual examples to explain how
grand and how miraculous those problems are. I recommend these especially for
someone who hated mathematics at school (like me).
And for math contest and math camp, there’s
a great British documentary around International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO). I
can’t compare this to what I’ve seen this summer (this is way too extreme, but I guess it's normal, because this is "Olympiad") but you can get the sense how the Mathematical
camp look like. Along the IMO selection process, the film features very
bright students’ struggles at school, family, autism and love (so sweet).
Very interesting.
I got some Tweet comments from Japanese
demosceners and people around the scene for “Moleman 2 : Demoscene - The Art of the Algorithms” J Seems like some are watching it many times… Yes!! Watch it! Replay
it! And show your love by LIKE-ing it J (Interview with Szilárd Matusik, the director of this film can be read here.)
In case if you’re wondering how active
Japanese demoscene is, there is “Tokyo Demo Fest” which has been held since
2011. (This is where Moleman2 was premiered in Japan. The party’s invitation intro
was ranked 1st at Hungarian party “Function” this year, a party which
you can see in the movie.) If you are interested in Japanese culture and
demoscene, probably it’s the best timing to visit… I’m no one to comment about
demoscene, but I can assure you: Our food is great and Tokyo is fun.
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Well, as I say, I’m not a demoscener or
programmer. I’m just a usual computer user who needs constant help from people
and manuals. Today, I’d like to explain why tech-idiot like me decided to
translate this movie into Japanese...
The first time I saw a thing called “demo”
was when I was around 10. There was a PC-9800 series computer for my father’s
business. (PC-9800 series was the most common machine in Japan back then. I remember
our model got 2 drives for 5-inch floppy) I guess my dad was trying to bring in
new technology, but somehow he started to avoid it after several weeks..:D And he gave me a permission to use it. Yippee!
Probably the right machine is the closest to what we have... Photo@Youtube
Around that time, PC company used to send
someone to teach how to use. Not sure it was a part of customer care, but an instructor
used to visit our house about twice a month. Since I got permission and I was
dying to try this ‘mature’ machine, I decided that I take this lesson on behalf
of my dad. (Also because my dad used to get extremely busy around the lesson
time…specifically around the lesson time :D) When the instructor found 10yr old girl
waiting at the desk, he looked confused (naturally) but he was kind enough to teach
me how to power on/off computer, how to handle floppy (like formatting) and 2
command lines; “run menu” and “run demo”.
I remember he explained to me that “run
demo” shows us what this PC can do (Probably it’s installed in PC). And the
first time I saw it.. I was just stunned. Until several seconds ago the screen
was black and white, and suddenly colorful line art like a laser beam show up
on the screen. It was so cool. Even after the instructor left I kept typing “run demo” wondering
how this can be possible. Then I started to draw lines and circles by reading the
telephone book like manuals to try making something similar to this demo. I
spent some weeks to draw a picture with only circle and lines to show the instructor
but he never show up after that… (I can understand) Then at some point I sensed
my limits and stop doing it.
But I remember I watched that demo every
time I used that computer.
It was about 1min demo like this with no
music. …but not sure, my computer didn’t have sound card. (This is a music video of Kenton Slash
Demon’s “Deamon”. They tried to reproduce computer effect with analog way. You
can see the hand to bend strings :D Swoooon…♥Their previous work “Matter” also looks like analog-demo. )
I found the existence of “demoscene” about
5-6 years ago. In the meeting I joined as an interpreter, there was a guy who
was referred to as “Legend” or “Genius”. I wondered what kind of “legend” he
has and the search(!) took me to ‘demoscene’. As I wrote before, I first thought
it’s a community with smell of danger :D but as I read on, I found that this “demo”
is a same kind as that “run-demo’s” demo. But...why it’s so different from what I’d seen? What was happening in overseas? What is Party? Why people are so
enthusiastic about this??? To figure out, I started to read old articles and
mail magazines (for articles in 90s, I liked this WIRED's article).
To me, existence of “Demoscene” has been
like an unidentifiable club at school… We know there’s a small room for this
club and we see people inside the room is having fun till late night, but for
outsiders it’s a full of mysteries. I try to dig more whenever I remember it,
but it didn’t go well… then I run into “Moleman 2” demoscene documentary. This
film instantly answered almost all the question I had for years. I felt that I
wish I could have seen this when I first heard about demoscene… and hoped that
more people discover this interesting world of demoscene with this movie. And
that was the motivation to do Japanese translation. (Also, coincidentally I had
occasions to meet quite a lot of computer-enthusiastic highschool students
right after I saw this film. I wanted to introduce this film but they all
claimed that they are not good at English.)
Among many other footage in the movie, I like one where the young boy from Transylvania saying “I’m really lucky to have the
demoscene”. Just like him, I’m sure there are many people who discover what
they can put their heart into through the demoscene… programming, graphics, music
or lamer stuff :D… whatever that is... I believe it is really fortunate to have
a hobby you can seriously put your time and effort into.
Since I don’t understand the technical part
at all, I enjoy demo/intro as a visual work. I’m now in early 30s, but feels like 10-year-old again when I see demo! :D
I hope this scene will continue and evolve
with the time, and.. looking forward to see some awesome demo in the future. :)