@gachimushi / gachimushi.tumblr.com
Put this comic together in less than 24 hours while spending 3 months doing field work in Ruidoso, New Mexico. Drew stuff, caught bugs and drank a lot of Gin and Tonics. I’m quite fond with how this turned out.
Reblogging an old comic I made. The feelings of uncertainty are still here. My fear of disappointing others is not as high as when I was a teenager, but the memories of worrying about dressing comfortably as myself and being loved are still real.
yes my favorite colors are the warm orange of the windows of a house u see on a walk at night and also the deep blue of the night around it
art by suzanne siegel
fruit-in-jars 101 by stacynguyen
“What is jam? What makes something authentically jam? Can bacon really be made into jam?
It was all very Existentialist.
The answer to those questions is a bit complicated and non-definitive. The U.S. FDA has defined jam and jelly in very specific and mathematical terms (such-and-such percentage of juice to fruit to water to sugar = jam/jelly); it also uses jam and preserve interchangeably, for the most part. While interesting, the FDA’s definitions did not matter much to me because the FDA wasn’t really using the terms in the way that we usually use the terms. Also, the FDA wasn’t comprehensive in its definitions. It didn’t tackle other fruit spreads like marmalades or curds, for instance.
The more I looked into, the more I thought, dude, this information would make a good infographic.”
I cannot fucking believe how much I'm losing my mind right now over soy sauce history. I'll tell all of you about it after I finish this essay because I need to un-distract myself enough to finish it but what the fuck? What the fuck is going on? I'm losing my fucking mind.
During World War 2 there was a push to industrialize the Japanese soy sauce industry to be better for mass-production. This innovated the chemical fermentation technique and the semichemical fermentation technique utilized by Kikkoman; rather than ferment for four years in gigantic cedar barrels, kioke, instead fermentation takes place for six months or a year in stainless steel barrels which utilize electrolysis to artificially speed up fermentation processes.
During Postwar occupation by Americans, Japan was experiencing massive shortages for the raw materials needed to make soy sauce nationwide, and was forced to rely on exported materials from America to make production. A single American woman named "Ms Appleton" was given total control of apportioning all American soy bean rations to companies, how much, and to who. She had no knowledge of soy sauce, allegedly.
She apparently had so much power over Japanese soy sauce production that she could singlehandedly shape its future by threatening to not give soy beans to any company, family, or factory which did not utilize her specific requirements of semichemical fermentation (reduced from chemical fermentation, since it was that abhorrent). These days, the term soy sauce is distinct from traditional shoyu, and requires distinguishment because of such a radical difference the two products are.
Here's the problem, folks:
I can find absolutely no evidence that Ms Appleton ever existed. There are no sources about this specific period in Japanese history that I'm able to definitively confirm. All of the sources which reference Ms Appleton are referencing in circles with each other; there is no listed source for any of them. Kikkoman's official English website is a veritable goldmine of information regarding this piece of history, with an entire 4 size 13 paragraphs. It not only gives me a first name, Blanche, but also tells me she worked for General Headquarters and that her policies and decisions shaped governmental policies heading into the future.
Except any variation of searching for Ms Appleton, Ms Blanche Appleton, and so on gives me absolutely no information about her ever existing. By appending keywords such as Ms Blanche Appleton+soy sauce, or Ms Blanche Appleton+GHQ, we can find the same couple of sources that are circling each other--or, in the case of the latter, only Kikkoman.
But there is NOTHING else. I'm getting pageantry from some minnesotan town; I'm getting world war 2 veteran records and obituaries when trying to follow that route; I'm getting k-12 teachers and a Titanic survivor named Charlotte. There is no fucking evidence of a Blanche Appleton to substantiate these claims.
And this is fucking massive. Because there should be way more information on her if this was the case; she was apparently powerful and influential enough during the occupation that she could singlehandedly enforce whatever arbitrary rules she wanted on the soy sauce industry and they had to comply or else have no product at all. That level of power is fucking insane. Imagine having so much raw influence over Japan that you could order them to completely renovate and change how they produce and make SOY SAUCE, literally one of if not THE most important thing in Japanese culinary history--and yet there's absolutely zero reference to this outside of like, three specific sites, and none of them have sources, or if they do, they source those sites.
What the fuck is happening here? There shouldn't be radio silence about this woman. There should be records of her policies, there should be legal documents in America which record how she apportioned out American exportation of soy beans to Japan, there should be sources talking about this woman's ability to transform Japan's soy sauce production so heavily that today only 1% of all soy sauce is made with pre-WW2 traditional techniques.
So if she's that big a deal then why does she not exist?
I feel like I'm losing it. I can't think about this too hard because it gives me a headache trying to comprehend any possible answer. There is so many levels to how this shouldn't be happening that I can't settle on just one. I don't understand how some foreigner American could have an iron fist over soy beans so hard that she could apparently influence national policy heading into 2022 but I can only find a first name on the Kikkoman website.
I literally just sent in a Freedom of Information Act request to the national archives asking for any records of a Ms Blanche Appleton, her reports, census information, anything. I can't believe that I'm having to use FOIA to try and ask the government to prove a woman existed because she was that big of a deal in SCAP/GHQ.
This is a translated page of Kikkoman's .co.jp website, with an apparent picture of Ms Appleton.
But this says that she has an apparent good knowledge of soy sauce brewing--directly contradictory to the Kikkoman.com claim that she had "no experience". And it also claims she was in charge of GHQ, which I'm going to assume is a mistranslation, but still.
Major General Murcutt doesn't exist. Douglas MacArthur was appointed head of GHQ/SCAP during the occupation of Japan. This now just has more questions. How did this woman become so important to GHQ that she could directly speak with a Major General? Any level of power or public view she SHOULD have isn't here. You don't just get to be colleagues of a Major Damn General in Post World War 2 Japan. That isn't given to any random housewife.
I just emailed a shoyu brewer family, Yamaroku, about this. The Yamaroku brewery was established 400 years ago; if the company/family were affected during the 1950 import rations and under the thumb of the Supreme Command of the Allied Powers, they'd have records and memory of Blanche Appleton or what it was like during that period as a brewery.
I am at the point where I am genuinely considering the possibility of Blanche Appleton never having existed. There is the chance that Kikkoman invented an 'ambassador'-type person with high influence in the General Headquarters during the occupation to grant itself apparent influence/validity/power above the rest of the competition. "The woman who controls all soy materials coming into Japan visited our main factory and said she liked us :)".
It's incredibly fitting that my first act of serious investigative journalism is about soy sauce. Like, I'm a little annoyed at how on brand this is for me. Of course I'm overly invested in this weird little nitpick about soy sauce. Of course I'm making this the government's problem.
Of course.
If you find your answers to this and make a 90 minute youtube video about it it will get one million views.
Hey OP, I just found an article called "Kikkoman, USA" by Meredith Oda when I searched for anything related to WWII and soy sauce. It was published in the Journal of Asian American Studies, vol 23, no. 2, June 2020.
Take a look at Jōzō Sugihara. He massively expanded Kikkoman's soy sauce distribution after WWII, getting it into US supermarkets and such. I would not be surprised to learn that Ms. Appleton is a myth meant to explain Kikkoman's expansion when it was actually Sugihara who made those changes to make it easier to manufacture and distribute larger volumes of soy sauce.
I am getting steadily more and more seriously concerned about Kikkoman involvement with yakuza clans.
this is amazing but I feel like you’re going to get a knock on your door in the morning and this is going to be the last thing you ever see
The long awaited digital edition of The Bowuigi Zine is finally available for purchase!
Bowser and Luigi fall in love, across several universes. What more is there to say?
Grab it here: https://gum.co/LSNuX
The second trailer of the new movie reminded me of these very cute bowuigi comics.
thought i’d share another thing i made here :’)
i started working on this thing back in january, as russian troops were gathering around our borders, and i got around to finishing it a couple months later, after they retreated from kyiv and my lucky family and i were able to get back home.
for half of the process i was asking myself, “is making this even worth it if it’s going to be bombed to ashes in a couple of weeks?” (the answer was yes); for the other half, i was asking myself how and why do you even make a house now that there are dead and gutted houses all around (the answer was “well, what else is there to do anyway”).
was aiming for the “small ukrainian granny’s apartment” vibe with soviet era “ugly 70s brown” color furniture and a bit of a witchy/magical realism touch :’) details + a bit of ukrainian folk trivia below!
Worst part of living with animals is the night time sloppy licking cleaning noises I'm sorry but I cannot sleep . Please fhcking stop please please olease
Several projects arose from the #paleostream but non was maybe so satisfying as #MonkeyCruise, a still ongoing series in which we take pieces from art history and transform them into plausible compositions featuring extinct primates. Some of these you might recognize.
if possible these might be turned into a little book one day
The noble pursuit of cheese
Actual sound of Baragon on set. That’s the voice of suit actress Rie Ôta.
Posted on August 13th, 2015
Wish I could be in the baragon suit…
