To have a better and more helpful learning experience, please check out the recourses recommended by Prof. Noriko Aso. 

☞ Websites:  

1. Asia for Educators: This Columbia University site is largely composed of short essays, but the coverage in terms of both time span and region is broad.
2. Bodies and Structures (1.0) and (2.0): These are two Scalar sites that focus on spatiality in Asian history. The first (experimental) version centers on Japan; the second encompasses the first but adds modules to engage more broadly with East Asian history. This is the second volume’s list of modules, which includes my module (Japan) and my brother’s module (Vietnam). 
3. The National Diet Library, Japan Digital Exhibitions: This site has exhibitions in both Japanese and English, and range from what is basically a portrait gallery to more sophisticated examinations of, for example, Japan and the golden age of expositions. This site also has early modern materials. 
4. Visualizing Cultures: This MIT site was a pioneering digital project for Asian history that offers curated visual artifacts accompanied by scholarly essays by top figures in their fields. Most of the units are divided between China and Japan, but they continue to add content. 
5. Museums: For art – Japan Folk Craft Museum (Mingeikan); Ohara Museum of Art; Tokyo National e-Museum; For war– Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum; Himeyuri Peace Museum; Yasukuni Shrine Museum (Yushukan)

☞Books on Japanese Visual Culture–First Half of the Twentieth Century:

1. Brandt, Kim. Kingdom of Beauty: Mingei and the Politics of Folk Art in Imperial Japan.
2. Hori, Hikari. Japan’s Promiscuous Media: Film and Visual Culture in Imperial Japan, 1926-1945.
3. Loo, Tse May. Heritage Politics: Shuri Castle and Okinawa’s Incorporation into Modern Japan, 1879-2000.
4. Tansman, Alan, ed. The Culture of Japanese Fascism.
5. Tseng, Alice. Modern Kyoto: Building for Ceremony and Commemoration, 1868-1940.
6. Weisenfeld, Gennifer. Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923.

I really like the collection from the Visualizing Culture, the Image gallery attached with the "Throwing off Asia. It's a really good collection that shows Japanese imperialism after the Meiji restoration. In my AP World Class, we usually compare China and Japan around the turn of the 20th century and what made Japan more successful in the long run than China. The visual narrative is great too it is very succinct with its explanation and the accompanying visuals. The visuals, I think, do a good job of showing that honoring traditions but also needing to break away with the past during the Meiji era.

I’m also really glad to find that there is an online Tokyo National Museum.

My questions are:

1. How did they go about modernizing? What exactly was their plan?

2. Resistance to modernization?   

Surprisingly, I knew about the MIT website. I am a big fan of John Dower’s classic War Without Mercy – an engaging well-illustrated analysis of the Pacific War propaganda. I was able to successfully use this series of articles and images by John Dower in an online discussion in HIST 3293 Europe, 1815-1914. Here is what I did.

• Week 15: Reactions to Imperialism: The Rise of Asia
• Discussion 7
• How was the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905 portrayed in Russia? Were English and French observers more sympathetic to Japan or Russia? Why?
• In your response, cite relevant images from each selection. Then make two substantive comments on your classmates’ posts (3% of the grade).
  • John Dower, “Yellow Promise/Yellow Peril: Foreign Postcards of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905”
    • Part 1 “The Well-Watched War” http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/yellow_promise_yellow_peril/yp_essay01.html
    • Part 2 “Postcard Realism” http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/yellow_promise_yellow_peril/yp_essay02.html
    • Part 3 “Cartoon Adversaries”
    • http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/yellow_promise_yellow_peril/yp_essay03.html
    • Part 4 “The Yellow Peril”
    • http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/yellow_promise_yellow_peril/yp_essay04.html

On Fukazawa Ikichi's famous “Throwing Off Asia,” how widespread was the term “Asia” in late 19^th c. Japan? Was his target audience broad enough?

From my limited knowledge, even today most “Asians” are not strongly aware of it and identify with their countries first, right? 

I loved Noriko’s module on Mitsukoshi stores and especially the part on imperialism. I got a sense that their patriotic fare was just a reflection of the management’s genuine support for Japan’s victories and expansion. Still, I wonder how calculating the management was. Did they sell nationalist-themed stuff to meet or create consumer demand? Did they take cues from the government on how to promote Japan’s grandeur?  Since they were allowed to open stores in conquered lands (Dalian and Seoul), they must have had connections to the War Ministry, right?

https://bodiesandstructures.org/bodies-and-structures-2/mitsukoshis-expansion-before-1945?path=mitsukoshi-and-empire

I think that in his Throwing Off Asia essay, John Dower distinguished between inward-oriented isolationist Tokugawa Shogunate period and the post-1867 outward-looking Meiji westernization that followed. In over three hundred years of self-imposed seclusion, the seeds of modernization had been planted - political stability and centralization, commercial economy and national market, rising literacy rates.