
A short animated gif purportedly highlighting the much vaunted efficacy of the katana in comparison to a mere broadsword has surfaced, inciting a storm of controversy.
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The ancient Chinese execution method known as “death by a thousand cuts,” or in Chinese as Ling Chi or Leng T’che, which as the name suggests involves slicing apart a live criminal, is documented in the grotesque yet fascinating photographic record reproduced below:
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A passage describing Nazi guillotine sex action has won the unprestigious 2009 Bad Sex In Fiction Award, thanks to such memorable phrases as “I came suddenly, a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg,” and “This sex was watching at me, spying on me, like a Gorgon’s head, like a motionless Cyclops whose single eye never blinks.”
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One of 2ch’s relentless researchers recently collected these images of ancient baseball Taisho Yakyuu Musume ( 大正野球娘 / Taisho Baseball Girls), comparing a pair of the source 3D images of early 20th Century Japanese schoolgirls used for the show’s OP and ED sequences to the somewhat idealized 2D end result.
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- Author: Artefact
- Categories: Japan, News
- Date: Jul 23, 2009 03:29 JST
- Tags: Bizarre, China, Gaikokujin, History, Inu, Politics, Shopping, Tourism, Yunnan

A Chinese shop caused controversy by posting a “No Dogs or Japanese Allowed” sign, barring entry to unfortunate canines or Yamato, but far from being condemned its flagrant racism is widely supported: 70% of Chinese survey respondents supported the establishment.
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The Japanese government’s attempts to revise history textbooks to suggest Okinawan civilians were not butchered or forced into committing suicide by the Imperial Army to keep them out of American hands has run up against near unanimous opposition from Okinawans, surveys reveal.
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The thousand year old Chinese practice of foot binding may be long since abolished, but its grotesque legacy lives on in the few surviving ladies who were subjected to this crippling treatment.
Some of the last victims still live on, and the nature of the practice can be readily ascertained from the graphic photos below:
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The convoluted politics, distinctive personalities and bloody warfare of Japan’s Sengoku Jidai period, the centuries long period of civil war only ending in the 1600s, has long been a staple of Japanese fiction.
Naturally, this includes games, which have seen a variety of depictions of the top personalities of the age emerge, a generous selection of which you can see compared above.
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A survey of Chinese men, asking them which foreigners they would most like to wed, has overwhelmingly revealed an almost paradoxical popularity, with Japanese women by far the most popular.
Some respondents reported wanting Japanese women as a way of gaining revenge on the ancient enemy, though doubtless there are some who would consider this just another loss for China…
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- Author: Artefact
- Categories: Galleries, H
- Date: Apr 18, 2009 16:58 JST
- Tags: Bathing, Fine Art, Gravure, History, Idol, Image Gallery, Mizugi, Oppai, Photography

A gallery of the idols, or their rough equivalent, of 100 years prior to the present, whilst Japan was still in the Meiji period and freshly pirating all the technology it could lay its hands on.
Their swimwear is at times surprisingly risqué, although we should of course remember that certain concepts of modesty have swung in and out of fashion in both East and West repeatedly.
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A Lego otaku indulged his twin passions gigantic battleships and plastic bricks, and six years later this is the result: the WWII super-battleship Yamato, rendered in Lego.
It is in total 6.6m long, a metre in girth at its widest, and weighs 150kg. 200,000 Lego parts went into its construction.
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A unit of Nazi cosplayers has incited international consternation by goose-stepping about the centre of Seoul in a marketing action in support of WWII MMOFPS Karma II.
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