Saturday, March 03, 2012

How to defeat a samurai warrior

Click any image to enlarge
While researching another topic, blogger Hashi of Tofugu discovered an old Japanese scroll called He-Gassen (“The Fart Battle”). As the scroll's name implies, it is filled with scenes of people farting at each other as they're locked in mortal combat.

Hashi tried to research the subject further, but he encountered an obstacle. As he explains:
I found some relevant articles on my old university’s academic databases, but the only way I could obtain them would be to request them printed out and go pick them up. Which, you know, isn’t something I really want to do.

I can only imagine what it would be like if I went back to school to pick up my fart literature:

“Hi, how can we help you?”

“I’m here to pick up some articles I put on hold.”

“Sure, what are they about?”

“Well, they’re, um, about farting.”

I can see that would be a problem. However, he did manage to find further information on farting in Japanese art. You can read it at his post Japanese Fart Scrolls, which also has more examples from the He-Gassen scroll, as well as a rather odd video he made discussing it.


No comments: