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Warazan - Data carrier made of straw

30.06.2000

We are very grateful to Professor Kurayoshi Takara of the Ryűkyű University in Japan for making possible the acquisition by the Arithmeum of extremely rare Japanese calculating aids, the “warazan“. In Japanese this means “reckoning with straw“. The Okinawa Islands in the Ryűkyű Island Group are one of the very few places in Japan where one used these straw reckoning aids up to the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Professor Dr. Josef Kreiner, Director of the Japanological Seminar of the University of Bonn, demonstrated this reckoning aid and discussed its cultural and historical background.