u/poiyurt

Hint 1: >!It is a sequel.!<
Hint 2: >!Not first-person.!<

What I mean specifically is that 'Asia' or 'Asian' as a term seems to do a poor job of delineating a real difference in cultures, especially when the existing area has such a great population and landmass. It seems to me like there's roughly regions around South Asia (India, Bangladesh, etc.), East Asia (China, Korea, Japan), Indochina (Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam), and the Malay regions.

Given this grand area, how did the term come to be used in this way, and why haven't we replaced it? (I'm interested also in the context behind America using Asian & Pacific Islander as a category - isn't this so broad as to mean nothing?)

This might be trickier than others, but I'm looking forward to suggestions.

I think there are winter tones to the story of Hayashi Tadataka, a samurai who surrendered in a battle during the Boshin War of 1868. He would go on to live a relatively mundane life. As he was nearing his death, he was asked for a jisei, or samurai death poem. He said: "I had one in 1868. Not now."

To be clear, I'm not asking what science was like in the medieval period by our understanding of the term, but how they would have understood the term at that time.

My vote is for Srinivasa Ramanujan, the man who knew infinity, a mathematical genius so far ahead of his time no one else could even keep up.

And if I may say so, his frail constitution was very appropriate for lantern theming, since his brilliance was all in the mind.