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29 lines
1.9 KiB
Markdown
29 lines
1.9 KiB
Markdown
2 years ago
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title: Sumiyaki
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Sumiyaki Monogatari is a manga from Shigeyasu Takeno based on the book Sumiyaki Nikki, by Toshikatsu Ue.
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Sumiyaki Monogatari -> Tales of a Charcoal Burner (2005)
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Sumiyaki Nikki -> Diary of a Charcoal Burner (1988)
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It is a story about a young charchoal burner that works alone in the rural area of the Wakayama prefecture, Japan in the late fifties.
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The atmosphere of the story is really charming: it mixes the knowledge about a craft to the folklore of rural Japan.
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There are here two differents takes on daily life: one about the work and one about the world.
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Two different grips on reality.
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A firm hold on logs, branches and wood, and slippery dreams with yokai and spirits.
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The charchoal burner job is one of fatigue and extreme efforts, yet the story doesn't feel frustrated or miserable.
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(ok this is not to romanticize physical work, the good ol' times, Japan, or this lonely boy starring at the fire in the kiln almost burning his face off)
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The point is: it reminds me of the struggle of programming.
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And it makes me wonder: there would ever be this kind of poetry around software development?
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Every craft is surrounded by stories, narratives and myths.
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What narrations surround software?
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Matrix and the green source code floating around? OK, but that is fantasy.
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The series with the hacker jailbreaking crimes? E va be, again fantasy.
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Black Mirror? Horror and dystopia.
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What is wrong with software?
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Close to the Machine, by Ellen Ullman is a nice reference here: she writes about struggles of software and struggles of daily life.
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The book is exaclty like the tales of the charchoal burner: it mixes situated knowledge and days in the life of a (female!) software developer, with the folklore and myths haunting the Silicon Valley across the eighties / nineties. Probably this folklore called neoliberalism is to blame, when there are so few poetic accounts of software development. Probably is also not so easy.
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