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Harold Stannett Williams (1898–1987), OBE, was an Australian who spent most of his adult life in Japan. Born in Hawthorn, Victoria, he studied medicine at the University of Melbourne. At his father's urging he also received Japanese language lessons from a Mr Inagaki, who ran a local laundry business. In 1919 Harold Williams visited Japan on holiday to improve his Japanese, but deferred his return to Australia, as he found an interesting position with a foreign business firm, Findlay Richardson & Co., Ltd.,. From this beginning he went on to pursue a highly successful commercial career in Japan. While on leave in 1935 he visited New Zealand, where he met and married Gertrude Fortune MacDonald, better known as Jean. Together they returned to live in Japan. He died on 15 January 1987, shortly after midnight at his home in Kobe, Japan.

Military career
During the Second World War Harold Williams had a distinguished military career. Jean and their young daughter had returned to Melbourne in December 1940, and with hostilities imminent he followed in August 1941 in a Dutch ship that sailed via Java. He immediately enlisted and served with distinction in Australia, Africa, the Pacific and Burma, attaining the rank of Major. In 1945 he returned to Japan with the Occupation Forces, and was attached to General Douglas MacArthur's headquarters in Tokyo, where his knowledge of the country and its language proved invaluable. In 1949 he resumed his business career, first as Managing Director of A. Cameron and Company, later as Proprietor.

Library of foreigners' contributions to Japanese life
During his more than 60 years in the country Harold Williams built up an extensive library of books, manuscripts, pictures, serials and other materials dealing particularly with foreign settlement in Japan since its opening to the West in the mid-19th century. As he wrote to the National Librarian, Sir Harold White, in 1969: "my purpose has been to gather together as much information as possible bearing upon the contributions made by foreigners to Japanese life and culture, the manner in which they have impinged upon Japanese history, and all matters relating to the Foreign Settlements".

Writings
Williams was also a prolific author of books and articles on Japan. His published monographs include Tales of the Foreign Settlements in Japan (1958), Shades of the Past, or Indiscreet Tales of Japan (1959), and Foreigners in Mikadoland (1963). His wife Jean, an artist, illustrated these titles with appropriate drawings at the ends of chapters. Among his many journal and newspaper articles he contributed a long-running series entitled "Shades of the Past" to the Mainichi Daily News. The first article in this series appeared in 1953 and the final piece was published posthumously on 16 February 1987. In it Williams explains his commitment to careful documentation of the past: "The need for accurate accounts of the happenings in pre-war Japan and especially of the early foreign settlement days had become evident from the amazingly superficial accounts which were then appearing."

One of his 'Shades of the Past' articles concerned the grave of Frank Toovey Lake who was buried on Sanuki Hiroshima in the Seto Inland Sea. Williams made the trip in 1967 and his extensive notes about the grave and life on the island are part of his archive held at the National Library of Australia.

Harold S. Williams Collection at the National Library of Australia
During the late 1960s Williams decided that his growing collection should be placed in a library in Australia for safekeeping and to benefit future research. The then Professor of Japanese at the Australian National University, Sydney Crawcour, who had known Williams for many years, approached the National Librarian, Sir Harold White. The latter wrote to Williams in April 1969 expressing his strong desire for the collection to be associated with "the collections the National Library of Australia is developing so rapidly in relation to Japan and indeed to the greater part of Asia". The following month White visited Harold and Jean Williams at their home at Shioya, Kobe. In June Williams wrote that he had decided to present "his library of books, photographs and associated items as a gift" to the National Library of Australia. He also established a trust in perpetuity for the development and maintenance of the collection.

Harold and Jean Williams maintained close links with the National Library of Australia from then on. In March 1972 Ken Myer visited them in Japan on behalf of the National Library Council. Myer reported back to the Council that Harold Williams was "a most interesting and dynamic man completely dedicated to his research work on the activities of foreigners in Japan". This work was honoured when in the Queen's Birthday List of June 1972 Harold Williams was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to historical research. In December the same year Harold and Jean Williams made their first visit to the National Library. A second visit was made in March 1981.

The bulk of the book component of the collection was sent to the National Library of Australia in 1978. Forty-four cartons containing some 2,000 books with a detailed index by Harold Williams were received. The works on Japan in this consignment were listed by subject on a microfiche catalogue entitled "Japan: Books in the Harold S. Williams Collection", issued by the National Library of Australia in 1981. A further 23 cartons containing some books, but consisting mainly of manuscripts, photographs, albums and research files arrived in Canberra in 1982. The books in this second consignment were listed in a printed supplement to the microfiche catalogue. More recently all publications in the collection have been catalogued on the Library's online catalogue, making them readily accessible to scholars and readers across Australia.

In line with the donor's wishes all the books in the Harold S.Williams Collection have been kept together in the Asian Collections area. The manuscripts, photographs and other items are housed in the Manuscripts Section. A Guide to the Papers of Harold S. Williams in the National Library of Australia, compiled by Corinne Collins, was published by the Library in 2000 and is available on request.

The maintenance and development of the collection was greatly assisted by Jean Williams. She donated her own considerable collection of Japanese and Chinese art books, and through her generosity the National Library was able to purchase further publications, in both English and Japanese, about western contact with and settlement in Japan for addition to the Harold S.Williams Collection. After her husband's death she also published a two-volume collection of their writings, West Meets East: The Foreign Experience of Japan (1992). With her support it has been possible to reproduce on colour microfiche the 35 albums of pictures from the collection. Harold Williams referred to these albums as "my superb collection of photographs (all unusual, many rare) of things Japanese". They range in subject matter from the killing of two British officers, about which Harold Williams wrote with Hiroshi Naito in The Kamakura Murders of 1864 (1971), to more peaceful scenes of the foreign communities in Kobe, Nagasaki and Yokohama.

In 1989 Jean Williams was interviewed on tape as part of the National Library's extensive oral history program for recording the lives of prominent Australians. In her later years she lived in Queensland, where she died in 1999.

References

"Westerners in Japan : the Harold S. Williams collection" https://www.nla.gov.au/selected-library-collections/harold-s-williams-collection Accessed September 2016.

External links
 Formed collection : Harold S. Williams
 National Library of Australia, 'Williams Collection', https://www.nla.gov.au/selected-library-collections/harold-s-williams-collection

1898 births
1987 deaths
Businesspeople from Melbourne
Melbourne Medical School alumni
Australian military personnel of World War II
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
Australian emigrants to Japan
Writers from Melbourne
People from Hawthorn, Victoria
Military personnel from Melbourne
Japanese-Australian culture


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How the Apple iOS store creates a murky path for software development
Medibang Paint is a robust drawing and painting app. Since 2015, Medibang has offered free versions of their software on Apple iOS, Android and desktop. The app's greatest strength has been its ease of use with a key emphasis on specialized tools for manga and comic art creation. As an added benefit, users who signed up for a free Medibang account had unlimited access to cloud storage and extra downloadable brushes, textures, and other design elements. If this sounds too good to be true, it was.
By April 2018, over 20 million users had downloaded Medibang Paint and many took advantage of the free and unlimited online management of all their work, creating numerous cloud-based collections.
When free comes at a cost
On September 2, 2021, many Medibang Paint users woke up to being locked out of their work. Apps that auto-updated or were manually updated by users who were curious about the new premium experience quickly discovered they could no longer access their cloud work if they exceeded a new 3GB cloud limit. These users got an error message stating they no longer had write permission to save a cloud-based file. Attempting to open a cloud-based file resulted in an image that was flattened to one layer. Users who have exceeded the 3GB limit also received messaging that their cloud files would be deleted if they not pay for an annual premium plan starting at around $22 USD/year.
Here's the new pricing structure from Medibang. The issue is less about the affordability of their new payment plan structure and more about the way users discovered the news.
Other limitations include disabling PSD file format exports for non-premium users and losing previous paid ad-ons. Even ads have returned for those of us who previously paid to remove them. Below is an image of the error message when attempting to export your work as a PSD file. Note that there is small text at the bottom saying that there is a two-month trail period that you can use your premium plan for free before you're charged. This is at least some good news for current users that want to access their work without being charged but it's the wrong approach for creating a good overall user experience. When you lock access to people's artwork, can they trust you to not charge them after selecting a premium plan?
This is warning now appears when users try to export a PSD file from Medibang.
Freeware becomes ransomware
Holding people's work hostage for payment is never a good look for a company. Many would agree that companies have the right to change the terms of service whenever they want. What's problematic about this switch from freeware to a paid service is that the users weren't given proper notice. Locking people out of their work and demanding payment for access isn't a positive way for building proper stewardship with your user base. This action does not build a sense of community or trust.
Could this all have been avoided?
The simple answer is YES; the damage could have been lessened for Medibang's reputation and they could have received a more positive response from users if there was more transparency and communication.
When a Medibang user logs on to their account through the app or the web, a confirmation email is sent. Medibang has access to our user emails and could have sent sent email notifications months in advance outlining changes to terms and services and what that means to end users. Not to put words in Medibang's mouth, but they could have plead their case for a need to start charging users since maintaining unlimited cloud storage isn't cost effective for them as a company. Also they could have discussed how this switch to a paid model would impact the growth and vision of the app. Paying for proper development is crucial to the growth of software and educating users builds awareness/support.
The weeks leading up to this premium debacle, Medibang hinted at a new offering called Medibang Paint Premium on their YouTube channel. What concerned me while watching the video was that the benefits listed for this paid premium version were all features currently available in the standard app. Like others that watch the software closely, I was worrisome as to what this mean for us as users. Many artists are not plugged into watching company announcements. This paid service soft launch caught many off guard.
Personally, I never understood Medibang Paint's business model of offering everything—including unlimited cloud storage—for free. Like other users, I didn't think twice about the future of the software and took advantage of having a great set of tools for my iPad. But a little part of me was concerned that everything being free would eventually affect Medibang's app's evolution. All software, even open source, has overhead and fees associated with their development.
I'm a firm believer in making sure developers have enough funding so they don't have to worry about revenue and can focus on making excellent software. If Medibang would have been more honest about needing funding to keep the software alive, I believe most users would have been glad to give money. After all, we are all part of a community and that requires lifting one another up at times for all of us to suceed.
Maybe it was Medibang's idea all along attract a number of dedicated users that they would eventually switch to paid subscribers. Even if that's the case, I don't fault them for that and I applaud the enourmous amount of downloads for their software. Building a user base also means building community—kind of like when people refer to the "cult of Apple." There's a reason why people become super users and evangelists; they believe in the product and the company. It's a truly symbiotic relationship.
Is about $20USD/year too much?
Many users find paying a little more than $2 USD/month for software and storage more than acceptable. The real issue with this switch from freeware to paid service is having the changes happening with no prior notice or explanation. Existing users who work exclusively in the Medibang cloud and are unable to access, back up or move their work without paying an annual fee up front are in a real bind. That makes artists feel like their work is being held for ransom. Sometimes it's less about paying the fee and more about the break in trust.
People have trusted this company with one of the most precious asset they own: their art. It would have been nice for Medibang to have offered existing registered users a grace period to access their work or back it up if needed instead of locking them out completely. Some of these users have multiple GBs of work on the cloud and need to purchase one of the larger annual plans just to gain access to all of their work.
Has the damage already been done?
This is going to be a lasting bruise for existing users, but I feel Medibang has an opportunity to reach out and make things right.
To start, send an email existing users explaining their switch to a paid system and the move away from being freeware.
Offer existing registered members a grace period to be able to access all of their work so that they can properly back it up.
And in good faith, offer already registered members a discount for their annual plan. If you watch the Medibang video to the end, you'll see there already is a 20% discount offer available. Sending out a better offer to existing members would be a great gesture.
These are people who have support the Medibang brand and it would be a gracious way of saying thanks. I think this would help people out significantly and aid in building back the trust we had in Medibang as a company.
Why feeding a developer matters
IOS apps typically have one-time purchases, subscription models or in-app bundle purchases. One-time purchases are great for users but don't help developers. Once the app reaches a saturation level for user acquisition, there's no new revenue coming in for further development. I rely greatly on one-time purchase apps like Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo for my work, but what happens when they reach their full market potential and revenue slows? Giving the developers the ability to have paid upgrades for major releases in the iOS store is essential for investing in the app's longevity. What's the point in having such a powerful device like an iPad Pro if the software is neglected; it's like having a Rolls Royce on cinder blocks.
Many find subscriptions the new normal. One of the issues that I and many other artists have regarding subscriptions is having to pay to access any of our past work. As a result, I have stopped giving Adobe my money once Adobe Creative Suite became Adobe Creative Cloud. The thought of needing to perpetually pay for software just to be able to access my own artwork seems too ridiculous to comprehend.
In-app bundle purchases are ways for developers to create "upgrades" within the software so they can get continue a revenue stream to support development. These can be messy and confusing at times.
Apps like Procreate have been inventive and have offered in-app purchases for new tools that are currently in beta. All in all, having a more straight forward approach to offering upgrades and supporting developers in the iOS eco system would benefit everyone including Apple.
What Apple has done to help developers
In November 2020, Apple announced an App Store Small Business Program, slicing their steep 30% fee of app revenue/in-app purchases to 15% for any developers making under one million in sales annually. This sounds great in theory because this new lower fee percentage affects 98% of iOS app developers, but they only account for less than 5% of the iOS store's annual revenue. The gesture seems grander than it is but it's a start. Since most of Apple's store revue only comes from about 2% of all app developers, this means they're in no hurry to make changes to their current payment formats. Having an upgrade button I know would make my day and it would most certainly help feed our developers.
Rarely do people ask to pay for something but paying for upgrades helps support software and the usability of your iPad as a professional product.
Open source in a closed system
Having a store with clearer pathways for upgrading and supporting developers would be excellent but we're also missing out on powerful open-source software. Apps like Krita have been blocked from the iOS eco system because GPL (General Public License) software is not owned by their creator. It's free code that's open to everyone therefore apps like Krita do not adhere to the closed terms of Apple's app store. developer agreement. This ultimately means that since iPad users can only download apps via the store, we're limited to only options that conform with their closed business model. This is a major oversight and I wish that Apple could find a way to work with the open source community to come up with a solution.
The future of Medibang
It will be interesting to see what happens in the coming months with Medibang but I'm guessing not much. What would be ideal for everyone is acknowledgment that Medibang Paint Premium's launch was not ideal, outline what the future looks like as a paid app and institute a grace period to help existing user access and back up their files. Ultimately, Medibang needs to make money to keep the app alive and users should be thankful for the time that they had to use the software for free, but the abruptness of this switch has left a lot of users with serious trust issues and tough decisions to make in the short term.
How this impacts me
I have been a big evangelist for Medibang over the past six years. I've created three coloring books exclusively using the software . Medibang has been my main drawing tool, using it both on Android and Apple tablets. I tried apps like Procreate but I have always gone back to Medibang because I just love the endless layers I can create and web storage option. Over the summer, I started using Comic Draw and really love the app. There's a high probability that I'll be upgrading to Medibang Paint Premium. It's just a shame that such an amazing app has alienated their entire user base with a sloppy premium debut.
This is fabric design I created using Medibang for the illustration of Louise Brooks. Medibang has been sn essential tool I have been using in all aspects of my desgin work.
Tags: app Apple digital art digital paint drawing iOS medibang Medibang Paint
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Brandon Trejo says:
I hope this spread more awareness about the situation. It's actually pretty surprising that Medibangs handling of the premium subscription hasn't been more widespread, considering how popular the app itself is. Any means to get the message out there that people aren't happy about it is a good thing!
I agree! I hope that more people say something. At least this can help moving forward with better communication between Medibang and their users. And it would be nice for Apple to help developers support development.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have vowed to help cut suicide rates across Britain after meeting a mental health campaigner and the man who saved him from taking his own life as they champion efforts to prevent suicide.
Jonny Benjamin started the #FindMike search in 2014 to find the unknown passer-by who stopped him leaping to his death from Waterloo Bridge in central London six years earlier.
Mr Benjamin, then 20, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and said he felt his life had hit "rock bottom" before the kindly intervention of a stranger, later identified as Neil Laybourn when the search went viral.
Prince William and Kate have been promoting mental health issues for some time and have carried out private and public engagements to highlight the help available for those who threaten to take their own lives.
The royal couple will chat to the two men at London's St Thomas' Hospital where Mr Benjamin was treated after he threatened to take his own life.
A documentary has been made about his experiences and the #FindMike campaign and he regularly attends screenings of the film with young people as a way to encourage open discussions about mental health issues.
Later at Kensington Palace, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will join 20 young people to watch the documentary, and the campaigner and his saviour will lead a discussion.
Following the session, Prince William and Kate will join a private meeting with a group bereaved in various ways by suicide, to discuss their experiences and the support they have received since.