Рет қаралды 3,407
In Edo-period Japan, shinto shrines were often decorated with small wooden plaques called sangaku which contained challenging geometric puzzles. Whether the purpose was for the gods, or for other congregants is unclear but the math they used was based on Japanese techniques called wasan.
At the time, Japan was closed-off from the rest of the world under an isolationist foreign policy called "Sakoku." While Newton and Leibniz were creating calculus in Europe, Japanese mathematicians were developing their own parallel mathematics which made many of the same discoveries as their Western counterparts.