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Nature 454, 1050 (28 August 2008) | doi:10.1038/4541050a; Published online 27 August 2008

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The blossoming of Japanese mathematics

Peter J. Lu1

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A new compilation of the illustrated geometry problems that decorated shrines in seventeenth-century Japan provides puzzles that are still intriguing today, finds Peter J. Lu.

BOOK REVIEWEDSacred Mathematics: Japanese Temple Geometry

by Fukagawa Hidetoshi & Tony Rothman

Princeton University Press: 2008. 392 pp. $35.00, £19.95

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Tokugawa Ieyasu completed the unification of Japan. His shogunate ruled for more than 250 years and oversaw a period of peace, but with restricted foreign contact.