On a more fun note
Feb. 15th, 2012 09:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leanneAdded to my slowly-growing (but probably quickly-growing once we move) SCA library are two Osprey books: _The Samurai_, by Anthony J. Bryant (also known as Duke Edward of Effingham), and _Japanese Castles: AD 250-1540_, by Stephen Turnbull.
Both are spiffy. I particularly like the castles one as it's got more day-to-day living stuff in it, and includes the tidbit that the Japanese had flush toilets as early as 700 AD ... at least if you lived near a moat. Otherwise, the cesspits got mucked out by prisoners, which I think is a perfectly reasonable thing to have prisoners do.
Really wacky: they did not use toilet paper. They used small wooden slips called chugi.
Both are spiffy. I particularly like the castles one as it's got more day-to-day living stuff in it, and includes the tidbit that the Japanese had flush toilets as early as 700 AD ... at least if you lived near a moat. Otherwise, the cesspits got mucked out by prisoners, which I think is a perfectly reasonable thing to have prisoners do.
Really wacky: they did not use toilet paper. They used small wooden slips called chugi.
