1.9 KiB
| title |
|---|
| Sumiyaki |
Sumiyaki Monogatari is a manga from Shigeyasu Takeno based on the book Sumiyaki Nikki, by Toshikatsu Ue. Sumiyaki Monogatari -> Tales of a Charcoal Burner (2005) Sumiyaki Nikki -> Diary of a Charcoal Burner (1988)
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. The atmosphere of the story is really charming: it mixes the knowledge about a craft to the folklore of rural Japan. There are here two differents takes on daily life: one about the work and one about the world. Two different grips on reality. A firm hold on logs, branches and wood, and slippery dreams with yokai and spirits. The charchoal burner job is one of fatigue and extreme efforts, yet the story doesn't feel frustrated or miserable.
(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)
The point is: it reminds me of the struggle of programming. And it makes me wonder: there would ever be this kind of poetry around software development? Every craft is surrounded by stories, narratives and myths. What narrations surround software? Matrix and the green source code floating around? OK, but that is fantasy. The series with the hacker jailbreaking crimes? E va be, again fantasy. Black Mirror? Horror and dystopia. What is wrong with software?
Close to the Machine, by Ellen Ullman is a nice reference here: she writes about struggles of software and struggles of daily life. 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.