Help me find a specific video about repairing a tear with Japanese paper

January 31, 2022 1:58 PM

Around the time I posted this question, I watched a video on Youtube where a woman at a Japanese music library demonstrated how to repair a torn page. I'm trying to find that same video again, but I can't find it for the life of me. Can you help me?

What I (think I) remember about the video:

• The video was probably posted to YouTube in 2017 or before, most likely before. That's when I first was trying to figure out how to do that kind of thing.
• The woman works at either at the library in a Japanese music university or the music library at a Japanese university. It was probably posted through some official account, though I'm not certain about that.
• In the video she's repairing a tear in a piece of sheet music. I'm pretty sure she did so by gently tearing out a piece of thin tissue paper using water, then gluing the piece over the tear.
• It was really easy for me to find circa 2017. I watched it several times over a few weeks, and never bookmarked it.
• It was either subtitled or in English, probably the latter. It was casually made (not a heavily produced how to), and I vaguely recall the person filming it might have been a visiting English speaker who might have said a few things from off camera.
• The camera was probably in front of the woman and a a little to the right (from the camera's perspective). There were some close ups of what the woman was doing.

I'm trying to collect together various videos that I've learned stuff from into an archive. I've spent hours looking for this video, with no success. If anyone can help me find it, it's probably Metafilter, due to all the library people here.

posted by cosmic.osmo to Education (3 answers total)

Sorry if this isn't quite helpful, but I find the Youtube history search function amazingly useful. If you watched these videos while logged into your account, you will be able to search your watch history and be able to filter by when you watched (for example, before 06/01/2017) and by keywords. You should be able to quickly find this video. If the video doesn't show up in this search, it has likely been removed from Youtube.

Within Youtube -> side panel (three horizontal lines icon) -> History -> MANAGE ALL HISTORY -> Watch and search history -> Filter by date
posted by blueberrypuffin at 2:30 PM on January 31, 2022

Your question sent me down a little rabbit hole of book repair videos, but I did not find one that exactly matched all the criteria (woman, sheet music, pre-2017, music library, English-speaking visitor or subtitles)...though there were some that covered a similar-sounding technique (e.g., here or here).

In hopes it would help you find it, here are some possibly relevant keywords you could copy/paste:
補修 or 修理 mending or repair
破れた torn; 破れ tear
和紙 Japanese paper
本 book(s)

Anecdotally: Recently, I've been finding it more difficult to find videos I've seen in the past. Dunno if it's because the algorithms have changed or the videos have simply been removed...So bluberrypuffin's recommendation to look in your Youtube history may be the surest way to find the exact video. Good luck!
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 11:15 PM on January 31, 2022

Response by poster:

Sorry if this isn't quite helpful, but I find the Youtube history search function amazingly useful. If you watched these videos while logged into your account...

I have all Google search history features disabled on my account, and almost always watch Youtube while logged out.

I did not find one that exactly matched all the criteria (woman, sheet music, pre-2017, music library, English-speaking visitor or subtitles)...though there were some that covered a similar-sounding technique (e.g., here yt or here yt ).

Thanks! Neither of those are the video I saw, but they look good. The National Diet one might actually be an easier technique to implement than what I pieced together.

Anecdotally: Recently, I've been finding it more difficult to find videos I've seen in the past. Dunno if it's because the algorithms have changed or the videos have simply been removed...

I've been operating under the hopeful assumption that I can't find it due to the algorithm. My speculation is if it was newish around 2017 but not especially popular, it might have shown up in my searches then but not now. I wish Youtube had a real-date restricted search, not just a few canned "in the last..." options.
posted by cosmic.osmo at 9:41 AM on February 1, 2022