iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 27/09/2026

Weekend fun project: old tables. Extracted (using Opus 5.5) a few thousand statistical tables from a collection of English language year books related to East Asia. Link each table to (when possible) the relevant page of the scan of the original on Internet Archive. froginawell.net/reference/ol...

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 21/09/2026

Started a new resource page mostly for students on Frog in a Well: Primary Sources: Modern Japanese History The main event is a searchable database of over 3,000 books and pamphlets etc. in western languages from 1850-1955 open access online. froginawell.net/reference/mo...

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 15/09/2026

I still find it fun to browse this mega-timeline (1904-1945) put together from the listings of Japan Year Book, Japan Magazine, Nippon Times Weekly, and Contemporary Japan (Note: from Japanese perspective of time). Many events linked to the page on Internet Archive. froginawell.net/reference/em...

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 13/09/2026

2) Incorporated a little "book" icon for a new type of "thematic" map for special maps only available for specific places that can have their own infrastructure (and eventually "slides" of changing maps. First up: a 1931 census map of Burma showing "regular" "loosely" "special" and "unadministered"

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 13/09/2026

Sunday updates to the interactive map of the Japanese empire. 1) First batch of Manchurian railways from a timetable of July, 1942 has been integrated (more than half the lines and all major ones). Over 600 out of 900 stations, mostly by match from timetable to station today + location.

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 12/09/2026

Saturday night additions to interactive map of Japanese empire: Admin boundaries for Dutch East Indies (drawing from @robertcribb.bsky.social Historical Atlas of Indonesia) & Burma divisions/districts from 1931 census w/ pop. data on info cards. froginawell.net/reference/ja...

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 12/09/2026

Friday night additions to the Interactive Map of the Japanese Empire: 1) administrative units for French Indochina 2) Burma railway lines (no animation or stations yet) 3) Japanese railway lines and stations (1930 and 1942) thanks to the dataset from 国土数値情報ダウンロードサイト froginawell.net/reference/ja...

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 09/09/2026

New update to the Interactive Map of the Japanese Empire. Explore and animate 1938 colonial Korean railways, and also the 1935 lines for Karafuto. Or browse the raw timetables. froginawell.net/reference/ja...

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 07/09/2026

Weekend fun project: adding a feature to the restored Nagasaki Foreign Settlement website by Lane R. Earns and Brian Burke-Gaffney to allow direct browsing of the concession leaseholder lots over time thanks to the detailed leaseholder tables they created. froginawell.net/nagasaki/

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 02/09/2026

7) option click colors in legend to change it (shortcut to feature in in layer options) 8) option-click objects to highlight them in bright yellow (might be useful in lectures or teaching) 9) lots of keyboard shortcuts.

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 02/09/2026

2) Right click on things to get option to download geojson or copy lat/long 3) option-click legend year to get option to turn places off 4) Dark mode (auto detect + via layers panel) 5) more population stats and population tables for Japan, Korea, and Manchuria. 6) CSV exports for all tables.

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 02/09/2026

A few new features to the Interactive Map of Japanese empire. 1) commercial airlines with animation tools (see info "i" tab for limitations of this due to limited sources drawn from. Also still a bit buggy - working on it. froginawell.net/reference/ja...

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 30/08/2026

Another update to the Interactive Map of Japanese Empire. 1) populations stats added to 1930+1945 maps provinces+cities of Korea 2) population density map 3) occupations breakdown. 4) 1941 population stat tables for Taiwan added to 1942 map. 5) optional sugar railways froginawell.net/reference/ja...

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 30/08/2026

I found a dataset on Academia Sinica for some of those sugar lines (thcts.sinica.edu.tw/themes/rd15-...) but not 100% clear what they include (perhaps to 1918?). Have queued this up as an optional additional thinner layer with the railways (not in the animated version). Will release this by tmr.

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 30/08/2026

Frog in a Well now hosts a restored Brian Burke-Gaffney and Lane R. Earns website "Nagasaki Foreign Settlement: A History of the Foreign Settlement at Nagasaki, Japan" together with its 1993-1998 journal "Crossroads: A Journal of Nagasaki History and Culture" froginawell.net/nagasaki/

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 30/08/2026

Also custom colors now possible for anyone who hates the color scheme. Lot of data fixing, checking of OCRed data, adding romanizations and checking automatically generated ones, etc. in coming months, but still building out the basic infrastructure and datasets for this platform.

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 30/08/2026

Interactive map updates: Added train lines and stations for 1930 vs 1942 for Korea and Taiwan (근대 철도 DB & 日治時期鐵路分布圖 as foundation) + "Train Tools" feature, currently only for Taiwan, lets you animate the rail network (according to a 1936 列車時刻表. froginawell.net/reference/ja...

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 27/08/2026

A few new features on the interactive map of Japanese empire. 1) Optional topography layer. 2) Added 1930 admin boundaries for Taiwan (thanks to Academia Sinica GIS datasets and some tweaking) 3) Added two alternative options to the default Mercator projection. froginawell.net/reference/ja...

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 19/08/2026

The Points and Lines of Japan's North China occupation, 1942: froginawell.net/frog/2026/08... New Frog in a Well post, and link to an interactive website to explore a useful Japanese military map from 1942.

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 19/06/2026

In the same article series, March 19, this little humorous (but rather dreadfully composed) ode to "Tu quoque" of empire.

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 19/06/2026

Manchuria Daily News March 14, 1932: Pu Yi? How dare you call him a puppet, "a mere doll to dance at the bidding of Japan....He is the last man to consider delivering his countrymen into the hands of an exploiting neighbor." Hero of the masses! 😆

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 16/06/2026

TIL: I didn't know that housing shortages used to be called (at least by the Manchuria Daily News) "house famines"

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 28/05/2026

Trump on wars longer than the current Iran mess, we have an 8 year Korean War…has he been reading Bruce Cumings and co. and is going for 1945-1953? 🤔😜

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 21/05/2026

Stumbled on H.G.W. Woodhead mention of Sun Yat-sen's December 1912 plan for invading Russia and sparking a revolution there (or failing that, march on Moscow) in response to its November treaty with the Bogd Khan gov in outer Mongolia. More in the final two pages of his 倡议钱币革命对抗沙俄侵略通电 (1912.12)

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 26/04/2026

Quaker Oats ad in the 1928 雙十 supplement to the China Weekly Review. archive.org/details/per_...

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 23/04/2026

Created a timeline comprised of events found in various english language publications from pre-1945 Japan. It is not a neutral timeline: it captures the perspectives of sources that served or were censored by the Japanese state, but hopefully interesting to explore: froginawell.net/reference/em...

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 16/04/2026

Added a searchable transcription of the 1917-1929 events diary to the Japan Magazine index: froginawell.net/indexes/japa...

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 14/04/2026

I created a deep linked and searchable table of contents index for issues of the prewar "Japan Magazine" found on Internet Archive, with over 200 issues and several thousand articles. Useful for history students working only with English sources: froginawell.net/indexes/japa... #japan

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 08/04/2026

Favorite part of the Claude Mythos system card has to be the “hi-topia” behavior in response to the repeated-“hi” test www-cdn.anthropic.com/53566bf5440a...

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 24/02/2026

I created a deep linked table of contents (titles searchable) for the over 50 issues of "Tokyo Gazette" (1937-1942) that can be found on @archive.org - great source for students to critique: froginawell.net/tokyo-gazette/ Done with major LLM help and OCR, main titles checked over manually. #japan

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 18/02/2026

Meanwhile, "Manchoukuo Goes Yo Yo" (from Manchuria Daily News March 22, 1933). "Anything to keep the cyclist occupied is regarded as a good sign."

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 18/02/2026

Nice before and after between this 12 Jan 1933 Trans-Pacific weekly article "Japanese Army Loves Piece" a few weeks before the conquest of Rehe (Jehol), and 9 Mar piece, the month it will be annexed as part of Japanese occupied Manchukuo.

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 17/02/2026

Thanks to @fearandsequins.bsky.social for passing on this interesting post from January 2024. Particularly interested in its findings around Green OA. blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoci...

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 25/01/2026

Not sure why, I was able to download the pdf yesterday from here: hdl.handle.net/10023/33500

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 13/11/2025

Lots of updates to this page dedicated to the old “Chinese Literature” journal thousands of English translations. Over 200 issues online 1950s-80s. Added “Search”, “Explore” and table with pinyin/hanzi versions of some the authors. froginawell.net/chinese-lite... #china #literature

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 08/11/2025

Afternoon walk by Deil's Caldron near Comrie. #scotland

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 01/11/2025

With some LLM and OCR help, I've extracted the tables of contents for over 200 issues of the old PRC journal "Chinese Literature" and put together a website to search and explore them (still proof-reading and formatting it): froginawell.net/chinese-lite... #china #literature

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 01/11/2025

Afternoon walk along Cramond Beach #scotland

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 31/10/2025

I added a section to our Frog in a Well Primary Source guide to Korean History with some links to open access copies of volumes with Japanese statistics from colonial Korea - froginawell.net/frog/sources...

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 26/10/2025

From William Sewell's Wheelbarrow Lane on wartime air raid warning system in Chengdu, Sichaun:

"The great distance they had come and the excellent warning system the Chinese managed to maintain meant that there was ample time in which to prepare. A first alarm, accompanied by waving yellow flags, indicated that the planes had left Hankou, heading west towards Yichang. The second, some hours later, with red flags, meant that they had passed Chongqing, and about twenty minutes after that the black flag urgently warned that they were upon us."

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 25/10/2025

Four issues of China Pictorial found on eBay just arrived with 34 more issues on their way (misc issues ‘57-60,’65-69,’76-80). Almost all are issues not already in this digital collection but can’t promise when I’ll find time to scan and post to archive.org: www.bannedthought.net/China/Magazi...

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 23/10/2025

A UFO 🛸 spotting in Trondheim, Norway 1934. Among the treasures of A Shoebox of Norwegian Letters: huginn.net/shoebox/new/...

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 13/09/2025

Some (out of copyright?) downloadable Japanese dictionaries of (very) different sorts from postwar at NDL: 最新時事新語辞典 1949 dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1126434/... 最新国際問題辞典 1948 dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1444664 ポケットスケッチ事典 dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1338675 図解新事典 1949 dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1169556 新聞雑誌語辞典 1948 dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1126422

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 06/09/2025

Reporting back on this: did a test with a set of (hastily taken, in poor light) photographs of book pages, then ran them on both the ndlkotenocr-lite vs Google Document AI. Example result attached here, plus check of the first three lines. Also: had to modify the ndl code to respect exif rotation.

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 06/09/2025

Nice! 龙飞莫遏 apparently! :)

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 31/08/2025

Sunday afternoon walk in Chatelherault Country Park. #scotland

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 27/08/2025

There are now three modes to timeline review tool (mostly for students new to modern China/Japan history): Flashcards (flip through until all correct); Test mode (asks 10 questions, but also records time taken); Sort game, sort the order of events and time recorded. froginawell.net/games/flash/

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 24/08/2025

Sunday afternoon walk around Doune via the castle, Kilmadock burial ground, and Moray Estates. #scotland

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 16/08/2025

Nice afternoon walk near Abbey St Bathans #scotland

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 29/07/2025

Though it doesn’t include the word, can’t resist sharing my favorite poster in this category. The original just says use less [toilet] paper but someone reached much further down the list of dictionary entries to pick this one out.

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