Along with a new personal website for myself (an impressive temple of vanity if I do say so myself), this week I launched a website for my forthcoming book on the history of nuclear secrecy in the United States. Along with the standard page of blurbs (including one just added today from Daniel Ellsberg, hero of the Pentagon Papers) and a table of contents, I've also put together an album of relevant photographs and started a small collection of relevant documents that I will be adding to over the course of the next few months until the book is finally out.

Assuming the mods are cool with it I would love to do an AMA on the book sometime in the spring when it is out, too.

I feel like sharing an embarrassing personal story. So I'm going to tell you about one of my most surprisingly successful Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos research trips of 2020.

Buckle in, this gets a little weird.

So several years ago I was looking for Cthulhu Mythos adaptations in Japanese manga, and I ran across this internet article about amputee porn in the 1980s.

They gave the name of the artist (in English) and mentioned very casually that he had also done a Mythos adaptation of a Robert Bloch story, and gave the title (in English).

http://inhalemag.com/two-philiacs-a-limb-designer-and-sartre/

Artist: Takashi Itsuki

It was pretty trivial to track down where they had gotten that snippet of data: the guy had a very barebones entry in the Asian Horror Encyclopedia (which I also own a copy of), which basically gave his name (in English) and the title of the work (in English) and nothing else. The thing about the AHE is that it's not a great reference work. It's okay. Like, better than nothing, but not necessarily hugely better than nothing. The subject is too broad, the entries too sparse.

Everything else in English on the internet was about the guy's amputee porn. All of it. I searched up and down. Without his Japanese name or the title of the work in Japanese, I was flummoxed. Total brick wall.

So I saved the link to the Japanese amputee porn article (as one does with research dead ends) and moved on to other things. And every year or so I would come back and try to find it, run into the same brick wall, and try to forget.

So late Summer 2020 back, I'm ordering shit from Japan, and I find this manga that has a title which might be connected to this manga I've been on-and-off searching for for years.

I order it. It arrived. Absolutely not it. Wrong style, everything. I was looking really hard to see if it could in any way be a Robert Bloch adaptation, but it just wasn't even close to any story I'd ever read.

So I open up the article again, and this time I decide a different tactic. If you don't find anything using the usual places don't look in the usual places. I was trying different search engines, different data bases, anything with a search field. Finally I start looking through twitter. And I get a hit. Takashi Itsuki was named in connection with this other manga book. Nothing really connected to Bloch or the Mythos, but proof that this guy existed and drew something other than amputee fetish porn.

With that extra data point, I start to track that book down - which isn't hard, but I'm still trying to find some other scrap of information that will give me a lead on this guy. After several dead ends I find a defunct listing offering the book for sale - but it gives me the name of the publisher of the book.

So I start tracing through Japanese used book pages for this 1980s manga publisher, and I get a few hits, and low and behold, buried down inside there are a few of this guy's books. And finally, finally, I get his name in Japanese hiragana.

Takashi Itsuki = いつきたかし

So now that I've got that, I can look his shit up on http://amazon.co.jp and specialist manga dealers and I'm getting all sorts of hits. But I'm still not finding the Mythos book he supposedly wrote!

Eventually a combination of search strings brings me to a very barebones fanpage which gives a Japanese title which translates into something completely different than the title given in the Asian Horror Encyclopedia, but it is obviously the same story.

One more google after that leads me to the book that the story is published in...and it's a collection of Japanese manga adaptations of the Cthulhu Mythos that has been on my shelf for years. I'd even reviewed one of the stories from it on my blog last year, translated by a professor in Japan I'm friends with.

I just didn't realize it, but this thing I'd been searching for had been under my very nose this whole time. Because while I realized there was a Bloch adaptation in there, I thought I was looking for a standalone work.

Finished my first week as a professional historian for my local park service.

Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap

Friday, January 08 - Thursday, January 14

###Top 10 Posts

###Top 10 Comments

Does anyone know of a good sub or just general place on the internet to discuss current events and politics that isn’t a complete shitshow? Like somewhere well moderated with a well informed generally respectful and thoughtful user base where it’s possible to discuss current events and happenings with an idea of how they fit into history as well as long term and short term impacts. Basically somewhere kinda like AH but y’know obviously not AH and geared towards present happenings.. I have a feeling I’m asking the impossible here but figured I’d give it a shot.

EDIT: To further elaborate a bit: maybe something that's aimed a bit towards academics, historians or the general field of political science. Historians and other general members of this sub with an interest in politics, where do you guys generally go if/when you have the urge to read other peoples opinions and talk about politics?

I've been thinking about the QAnon phenomenon and the connection between authoritarian nationalists and conspiracy and magical thinking. Did Nazis have a propensity for conspiracy theories too?

Does anyone remember the name of an early European (Spanish?) settler/explorer (my memory is hazy) who was captured by a Native American tribe, but ended up staying with them because he had established a role in the tribe, had a family, moved up in hierarchy? He also helped drive out the colonists in different battles. My memory is hazy, but I cannot find anything about him on google or his name. I remember reading that a Spanish explorer met with him after he had been assimilated so he could help translate something, and mentioned that it was bad he had “abandoned his religion” or something like that.

I know this is isn't necessarily historical related, but where would I go to ask a prehistoric question (not necessarily about pre history humans either). I can't help but feel like it doesn't exactly fit here, but I don't see somewhere in the sidebar it would go.

I came across this today and i wanted to check here

Hello, I came across this video today and i was pretty shocked to hear what he was talking about. I thought i should come here and ask if this guys claims are real. Are people, politicians, and historians really trying to say that Scandinavian/Norse culture isn’t and wasn’t real? Here is the link to the video. This isn’t the first one he has done on this subject.

https://youtu.be/nHI5HIzBncQ

What style, time period or keywords should I use to search for Black or Indian slave/servant sculptures?

I've encountered quite a few of these on the internet. But I don't know what that style is called.

It's usually a lifesize sculpture of a slave or a servant. Usually waiting or holding something or doing something repetitive.

What's it like to study history in university?

I am thinking of returning to university in 2021. I had previously studied computer science, but dropped out. I am thinking about studying history because it is an area that u have an interest in. But I thought the same about computer science and the course was very different from expectations.