Japanese mathematicians discovered the same hexlet over one hundred years before Soddy did. They analysed the packing problems in which circles and polygons, balls and polyhedrons come into contact and often found the relevant theorems independently before their discovery by Western mathematicians. They often published these as sangaku. The sangaku about the hexlet was made by Irisawa Shintarō Hiroatsu in the school of Uchida Itsumi, and dedicated to the Samukawa Shrine in May 1822. The original sangaku has been lost but was recorded in Uchida's book of "Kokonsankan" in 1832. A replica of the sangaku was made from the record and dedicated to the Hōtoku museum in the Samukawa Shrine in August, 2009.