In his 14th-century work, ¡°Tsurezuregusa¡± (¡°Essays in Idleness¡°), Buddhist monk Yoshida Kenko observed that ¡°houses should be built with summer in mind.¡±
Japanese summers are as hot and humid now as they were then, and good ventilation was essential to comfort long before air conditioning.
A whole culture evolved around ryo ¡ª ways of mitigating the heat that are as much a frame of mind as an actual lowering of the ambient temperature.
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