Yes Steve, it is! It is one of those Japanese M-System keyboards, this one's by NEC. The split MuTron board is a spin off of that project, just as the one-piece Esrille keyboard.

The Japanese were not hold back by the Qwerty legacy, so for the Latin letters they also use Dvorak (these are '80s/'90s board, no Colemak back then). This looks like some strange "Engrish" take on Dvorak :-)  Input of Japanese characters goes by combinations of keystrokes, they have several systems for that, one of them being the "M-System".

Also, the Japanese language does not use the space like we do, so no need for a large space bar.

I am not sure what to think of the midde navigation keys, davkol (forumite here and on Deskthority) says they are comfortable.

I would buy this board in a heart beat (if it had a custom controller, so you could define your own keys).  It is ergonomical without being extreme. My mother could type on it (if in Qwerty).

But - no one makes or sells this anymore! My guess is that we have gotten too "stuck" in the Qwerty letter layout (fortunately this forum is working on that :- .  And too stuck in the "IBM AT / XT" keyboard layout which now is some standard....

I know of some "mainstream" split keyboards, like the Microsoft Ergo boards and the newer Matias split board. But no one sells a one-piece symmetrical board. I guess it is not commercially attractive? No supply= no demand = no supply, or something like that?

I would contest that you, Shena'Fu, are in fact the one overreacting here. I have "faith" in Colemak, true, but I have no particular gripes with other good layouts – just preferences (some of them personal).

I do stand by my strong reaction to the claim that same-finger is quite okay! And I do feel that neither Norman nor Workman are brilliant layouts; Workman being the better of them by far though. To a large extent they seem fueled by "middle-trench" worries that can now be resolved with Colemak (mod-DH) for a, in my opinion, superior result.

I have to disagree quite strongly with your claim that ring-finger or strong finger same-finger n-grams are in any way good. They're not. I do agree on pinky-ring and vice versa rolls being uncomfortable.

I agree that Colemak's right pinky same-finger frequency is a weak point. However, your figure of 60–100% fails with other syllabi than the pitifully inadequate 'Chapter 1 of Alice In Wonderland' (never test with that text alone; use something much longer!). Generally, Colemak is a little better off than Dvorak in this respect (using some syllabi I found) but not as good as one might wish for; Workman is a little better off and Norman not. That BEAKL Opted layout has a nice same-finger frequency I must say; I haven't checked it out so I don't know what else it has. ;-)

On a side note, I've actually typed through Alice Through The Looking Glass using Amphetype and standard Colemak(AngleWide), a text very much similar to Alice In Wonderland I should think. I think I know part of the reason why the right pinky gets such a same-finger overload in analysis: In that book there's a lot of quoting! Typing ' or " → Enter or period (or other combos) has to drive up that statistic. I skirted the Enter problem using Extend in which the Enter key is on Space, and for period I recommend alternative fingering if the problem is encountered frequently such as in that text. So the high same-finger frequency of the right pinky can be alleviated in some ways, at least. Of course, this doesn't touch on the differences between Workman and Colemak as they both have the standard positions for the quote and other symbol keys.

Unless my piano teacher lied to me (and I doubt that!), it's not just your personal view but reality for most people. Maybe the Workman creator has uncommonly strong and fit ring fingers? Who knows. I think that learning to play the piano has helped the strength and independence of both my ring and little fingers, but I still have no love for the ring finger positions when typing.

If O→'/'→O bigrams  are indeed a problem for Colemak typing, then it's very easily solvable with alternative fingering. That one's so obvious I do it without thinking. This is of course a weakness with analysis software – I've yet to see one that picks up on the subtler points of typing! :-)

Something must be afoot other than symbol placements, as mentioned, since Colemak does score consistently poorer than, say, Workman, on right pinky same-finger.

In actual Colemak typing, I can't say I've reacted to any right pinky awkwardness. But it's easy to get used to whatever you're doing so I don't put too much stock in that.

Just made an account to ask this, is there a non angle-mod DH layout that is recommended? I'm looking to swap from Qwerty for the first time and I want to give mod-DH a try but I think id rather learn standard Colemak than learn angle-mod as well.

I'm also completely willing to move around common short cut keys as long as they can still be used with the left hand only. (ZXCVASTW being the keys that I would like to remain on the left) Would there be any loss in general efficiency (excluding shortcut muscle memory) putting Z in the heinous Qwerty B key position? How would the rest of the bottom left best be shuffled around if one were to do that?

Well, yes there is. If you want to avoid applying the angle mod at all, but still want improvement to D and H, then you could do the DpgHm switch:

However...

...I agree with ckofy, if you are willing to switch to Colemak, I don't think you need fear the angle mod, it's a relatively minor change compared to switching to Colemak. Also since you said you are OK with switching around other keys on the left hand side, including Z X C, I don't understand your reticence about the the angle mod..?

If you have an ANSI keyboard, moving Z to the B position is probably your best bet. For ISO keyboard, obviously better to simply move the keys one to the left.

I agree with Steve, the Angle-Z mod still looks like your best option! I think it's better than Dpg mods. And as far as I can see, it's less of a change than your proposed one?

What you write looks confusing. You say you use the traditional fingers for each key? Well, that's exactly what you're supposed to do with the Angle mod! But with a better wrist angle, hence the name of the mod. Apart from Z which may move on the non-ISO mods, the ring finger hits X and the middle finger C etc, which is the traditional fingering. What did you mean?

Your suggested bottom row has no D, which is a major point of DH-modding. Instead, it moves V and X around for no apparent reason I can think of. Please explain?

Also, remember that there are several options in DH-modding. You can choose Hk or Hm on the right hand (or if you need it, mods involving L too), and on the left there's at least Dbg and Dvbg in addition to the IMO less efficient Dpg one that SteveP mentioned.

I'd recommend XCVDZ|HM (Wide, Curl-DbgHk and Angle-Z mods) as your bottom row, but that's me. ;-)

 q  w  F  P  B  J  L  U  Y  ; 
  a  R  S  T  g  K  N  E  I  O     The Colemak-Curl(DbgHk)-Angle(Z) layout
    x  c  v  D  Z  H  m 

 q  w  F  P  B  [  J  L  U  Y  ;  '
  a  R  S  T  g  ]  K  N  E  I  O     The Colemak-Curl(DbgHk)-Angle(Z)-Wide(') layout
    x  c  v  D  Z  /  H  m 

Very nice! If I were buying a board right now, something like this would be high on my list indeed. Best of luck!

Best of luck with that ToB (Thing of Beauty)!!!

What's "Raise"? Same as "Extend", or what? (If so, not a good name as Extend extends your reach to arrow keys etc etc but doesn't raise anything so it's something else I guess.)

I've wondered where the name Extend came from but I found it in some older references from before we used it in PortableKeyboardLayout so it has some tradition. It's not mentioned on Wikipedia (yet) though. Its closest equivalent is the laptop Fn key which I think is a horrible name as it doesn't really tell us anything and we already have 12–24 F## function keys. Granted, the Fn key often changes the F## keys to multimedia keys and back. And at least, 'Fn' is a compact key label... ;-)

I'd be happy and honored if you want to bring parts of the Big Bag to your Katana60! Please make a new topic for the keyboard (we don't want this brilliant keyboard to be stuck in the anti-Workman thread, now, do we?) and we can mull it over together if you wish.

The simplest way is TMK support I guess [edit: I see you have both that and QMK?]; then everyone with a bit of TMK code including myself would have it their way. I suppose you've browsed my TMK repo. But you may want something more direct?

Not sure how you should write the Katana up, but I'm sure you'll do great. And I'm looking forward to discussing the possibilities! ;-)

So, Raise/Lower mapping layers then. Yeah, kinda makes sense I guess, similar to TMK/QMK lingo. But I can't help feeling it's still a somewhat counterintuitive term for the end user who doesn't necessarily think like a programmer. For the particular "raised" layer that has extended keyboard keys jumping to your fingertips, I really like the term Extend and around here it's very much standard. To the extent that it's kind of overused: We have users talking about "Extend" layers with character remappings in them which doesn't make as much sense to me. "Raised" layers would be a more generic term in that case, but I'm still okay with "Extend" as I think of such a layer extending/expanding the key map – again, allowing you to reach further!

You'll find what you're looking for here.

ISO is strongly recommended as it requires fewer trade-offs, like putting "z" in the center or moving the single quote key higher up. The Wide mod is not fundamentally all that different when it comes to the alphanumerics, only the middle column is altered very much. If you implement ISO with the Angle mod at least, you would not be unfaithful to what Colemak-DH is trying to achieve, though I would still say that the Wide mod is an essential piece of it.

It should be noted that, while there are great extensions to Colemak-DH courtesy of DreymaR and others, a layout can be called Colemak-DH if it simply moves the alphanumerics as shown at the top of this page. This leaves a lot of room for creativity and further improvement. When you see terms like "Colemak-CAW" and others thrown around, remember that they are making changes (sometimes far) beyond what you see on the "Mod-DH" page while keeping the alphanumeric shift. If you think the situation is confusing as it is, imagine if "Colemak-DH" referred to every conceivable user change! What we have here on the forums is not a monolithic immutable standard, but several useful modifications that can be applied or revised as you see fit for your own use case.

Is that a bit more clear?

Pardon my ignorance then. I haven't been around long enough to know the chronology first-hand. The source of the confusion for me was that the Colemak Mod-DH page does not feature anything more than the alphanumeric changes, angle mod, and wide mod, with possiblities for different kinds of keyboard. Seeing how basic that is and knowing that Extend and other pieces can go well beyond those changes, I was under the impression that that page showed the absolute "bare minimum".

So yes, do pardon my mistake. But it does serve as further evidence that we have a confusing situation on our hands. :P

Looking to that discussion and to the way virtual keyboards are implemented by wmcmeans, I would say that will be quite hard to come to consensus of how to introduce the Colemak-DH there. There is no one layout as for anything else, keys position in angle and wide mods depend of the keyboard type and if both mods are used or not.   
Not trying to belittle anybody contribution and chronology of innovations, my opinion that the only way to come with one Colemak-DH similar to one Colemak is to stick to ANSI keyboard and call letters moving without applying Angle-Wide "THE" main mod, and anything else "extensions". Exactly the thing that DreymaR is arguing against.
Do not beat me, I do not see other way to make it simple and understandable for newcomers.