The Swiss wanderer who found the soul of 1950s Japan

I make so many pics and videos that I really hope it will be something like this: "Hey locally run AI that guards my data and privacy, please show me about 100 pictures and videos of holidays when the kids were in the age of 5-10, project them on the wall.", "Yes, that one in the mountains is nice, where is that? Can you show me some more of that holiday?", "How about some videos taken around that era in and around the house?" "Did we have a dog back then?" "Ah yes, there is Bello, what a nice dog that was, when did he die?" [Star Trek computer voice: "last picture of Bello was may 5 2014".]

No way I'm ever going to sort this mess manually. TBH, a simple import in Shotwell already works wonders, and I absolutely love the "For You" section in "Photos" on my iPhone, I can get lost in there for a long time, but that's just a bit too much tied to Apple for my taste though, I'll be archiving all those files at some point (to 2 local hdds and then rsync them off-site (aka "my parent's house")).

Edit: Maybe, at some point, you can construct an interactive narrative about your life like done in The Orville in "Lasting Impressions" [0]. Why are you all so negative about the future people, you need more Star Trek (or The Orville) in your life ;) Nobody is going to get overwhelmed, we're creating a rich source of information about ourselves and the time we live in, which we will probably never really consume as a series of Photographs, that sounds pretty boring indeed, we can do better, show some creativity!

[0]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7826096/

Not to be too nitpicky but depth of field is a function of focal length and aperture size, the film itself is irrelevant. It's just as easy to achieve on digital, not as common on crop sensor sizes (because those introduce a focal length multiplier, thus you need a very light and wide open lens, like f/1.8) but a full frame sensor has the same depth of field as a 35mm film frame.

Oldest photo are studio photos (oldest being a tintype, others ... collodion?). Except for the tintype the quality is generally quite nice. Studio lit, static subjects.

Then come the 1920's and a decade of non-studio, candid photos that appear to have been shot on a Brownie-style box camera. These are fairly poor quality. In some cases though they are poorly framed (subjects too far from the camera) and so it is as much the fault of the operator as the poor camera. Photos are exclusively outdoors.

A handful of studio photos are peppered in these decades, now with school graduation photos, maybe a wedding photo shot professionally. These are quite nice. Maybe the nicest of the first 100 years of photos?

Somewhere in the 30's though B&W photos taken on consumer gear begin to appear that are much better in quality. I suspect we've moved past the box-camera and to something more like the folding-style Kodak with better optics. I like this period of candid photos the best — right up until the 40's and 50's.

Suddenly though, mid-Century, the photo collection goes to color, some of them Polaroids. Oh wow the quality falls right off again. We're back to the Brownie box-camera in terms of image sharpness, clarity. I think we, as consumers, traded quality for color and instant processing.

By the time I am old enough to take pictures (70's) I remember using a Kodak Instamatic (135 film?). Also poor. We had flash of course by then so many more photos go indoors.

My mother sometime in the 70's got a Canon AE-1 so 35mm and decent lens (no doubt the kit "nifty 50") make for some of the best amateur photos of the century for our family photos.

It is curious that the pattern would sort of repeat in the 21st Century as I switched to digital. I had access early on to digital cameras (part of my job) so I was an early adopter. When they became affordable I began buying and upgrading through a few lines of nice Canon point-and-shoot cameras. This was the beginning of the "megapixel wars". The quality of the images began to get quite nice — Canon optics, aperture-priority, ability to adjust exposure bias...

And then sadly, the quality regressed since we lazily turned to relaying on the iPhone camera and early on it was worse than that of the nice Canon cameras. (My wife though had graduated to a Canon Rebel around this time and held on to using it for a while so that many of our vacation photos started to surpass those taken with my mother's 35mm.)

As generations of iPhones improved their camera quality, eventually all the Canon gear got left at home since the photo quality of the modern iPhone was "good enough" at last. Playing with lenses, depth of field (no, not the fakey "portrait" kind of computational depth of field) are gone however — I suspect not likely to return. The thinness of the phone means we're not likely ever to see larger apertures where depth of field becomes meaningful.

I started to get into Micro-4/3 for a bit, recently picked up a Sony mirrorless, but I suspect the days of automatically strapping on a dedicated camera when we head out to hike, vacation, are now a thing of the past.

We'll see.

I'm always fascinated by the insights a thoughtful and serious outside observer can bring to a locale or subject.

I believe that is part of it, honestly. But I wouldn't present it exactly that way. I think instead that there are many American males that feel threatened by the assertive, independent American woman. Perhaps beginning with "women's lib" in the 1970's?

Asian culture appears to paint a picture of a submissive female role that is non-threatening, in fact deferential to the male. Even in terms of appearances the stereotypical Asian female has long hair "befitting a woman" and wears traditional feminine clothing.

But I think there of course is another kind of interest in Japanese culture that is not defined by sex roles, a fascination I have myself about Japan.

I think it is other-worldly to this Westerner. Food is foreign but delicious. Society is structured in a way that keeps order. Strict social rules but flexibility toward foreigners who are unused to these rules (and apparently allowances for the behavior of drunks as well?).

I think too many of us see modern Japan as a foil to our own failing societies as we head into an unknown future. Tokyo with public transportation and, as I said, strict social rules, has kept a mostly sane and functioning metropolis together. As we look to our own cities in the U.S. growing to Tokyo-like proportions we can hope that there is a way forward ... if we can only be more like Japan.

Anyway, that is my take on it.

I'd say there's several centuries worth of precedent on Western interest on Japanese art, history and culture. The US sent gunboats to force them to show the goods at one point, when they were unwilling to share them.

Japan and China has their own stories, histories and empires dating back thousands of years, but they just aren’t a part of western culture and education. It’s a novelty for some and a passion for others because of the aspect of discovery. I know very little about Chinese history, but if you grabbed 100 of my not-Chinese peers, I probably know more than 90 of them.

Among many things represented there are: intense stoicism, quiet suffering, sacrifice, and discipline; intense devotion and high craft; and individuals trying to contain and balance their personal issues within a high pressure society expecting obedience and conformity. In many exported stories, there is also a strong hint that in spite of all this, Japanese culture somehow allows for very eccentric (geeky?) characters to carve out a pocket world where their obsessions become almost respected in the same way as traditional disciplines. A sort of meta-discipline focused on the process of refinement itself...

> By that I don't mean Cosplayers or Manga fans, but rather the "tech" version of nerddom - people who don't follow Manga, Anime, or Idols, but are fascinated with anything if it's related to Japan.

For some reason, you are putting up a strong separation here that I am not sure actually exists in real life. People don't compartmentalize their hobbies and remaining interests into two separate buckets that have nothing to do with each other.

I find it reasonable both that:

- People who watch anime or read manga all day are more likely to notice, upvote, and share a story about Japan just due to the proximity of language.

- "Nerds" as you put it are more likely to be into anime or manga in the first place.

Given these two, it follows that nerds are more likely to share general stories about Japan without any of the much darker reasons you seem to posit.

Similarly, I would also find it reasonable that someone listening to and practicing Euro-centric music all day is more likely to share stories that have a mainly Euro-centric context.