Education About Asia

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

Education About Asia (EAA) is a journal published three times a year by the Association for Asian Studies in Ann Arbor, Michigan. At our last meeting on Saturday, 9 June, Clay told us all current seminar members have been given a one-year subscription to EAA. (Thanks, Clay!) This is a remarkable resource, aimed at Social Studies teachers but equally useful for teachers of other disciplines at all levels of instruction. EAA contains articles written by leading scholars in Asian studies, a thematic focus for each issue, an NCTA (National Consortium for Teaching About Asia) lesson plan written by a highschool teacher, a column reviewing websites, and a large media section with reviews of all types of films, in addition to articles on using films (inclding anime) to teach Asian history and culture. This immensely useful journal certainly deserves its own thread, where teachers can share lessons and ideas from EAA that they have found effective in their classrooms and discuss the enlightening viewpoints and concepts presented in articles and reviews. By the way, one seminar member had not yet received her copy when we talked about EAA on 9 June. If any of you still have not received your copy, please let Kami or Clay know. I think you will be delighted with EAA.

Leigh Clark
Monroe High School

[Anonymous]

"Web Gleanings" is a regular EAA column by Judith S. Ames. It reviews a number of websites, including those devoted to specific lesson plans and DBQs. One website immediately caught my eye: "The Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Historical Documents." (I will discuss this in greater detail in a post on the Web Resources thread.) Many of the websites reviewed in this Spring 2007 issue are historical archives. The others are lesson plans with detailed comments by Ames on what kind of and how many lessons are included. (One website offers sixty-six lesson plans!) Useful for immediate assistance and long-range research. Definitely worth checking out.

Leigh Clark
Monroe High School

[Anonymous]

When I opened my Spring 2007 issue of EAA I was surprised and delighted to note that the first article is a long and detailed interview with the eminent American expatriate film critic, film historian and writer on Japan Donald Richie. I first read Richie when I was a high school student and discovered his article about one of my favorite directors ("Kurosawa on Kurosawa" in the Autumn 1964 issue of the British Film Institute's Sight and Sound). Richie is the co-author (actually sole author of the written text, as the "Authors' Foreward" makes clear) along with Joseph Anderson (who did most of the historical research) of what was the first and is still the best history of the Japanese cinema, The Japanese Film: Art and Industry. Richie is also the author of The Films of Akira Kurosawa, now in its third edition, probably the most comprehensive and brilliant study of a film director written in any language. Richie has written over fifty books on Japan, where he has lived since 1947. An anthology of his writings published by Stone Bridge Press of Berkeley in 2001 is The Donald Richie Reader: Fifty Years of Writing on Japan. Richie also wrote The Inland Sea, a renowned piece of travel writing that is more a type of travel meditation, a philosophical journal of a journey that is both physical and metaphysical in the tradition of Matsuo Basho's The Narrow Road of Oku, which also leads us, through haiku mixed with medtative musing, to the shores of Japan's Inland Sea.

Richie as a writer is witty and profound, exact yet concise, able to sugges through a short, well-turned phrase what lesser writers cannot evoke with pages of prose. Many writers, including myself, have written at length about Kurosawa's Seven Samurai in an attempt to convey some sense of that extraordinary film's uniqueness and power. Richie, in a short fragment as a caption to a still in The Japanese Film showing Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura and Minoru Chiaki in a restrained but heroic pose, writes simply, "The period film as it should be done," and says it all. Richie is the kind of writer whose works inspire other writers to be more creative and write better.

Apparently he is also a brilliant, thoughtful conversationalist, judging by his EAA interview with another American long-term resident of Japan, Peter Grilli, a former Richie student, now a friend and colleague and the president of the Japan Society of Boston. In the interview Richie comments primarily on the changes in Japanese temperament and society that he has observed over sixty years in the country, especially the Japanese attitude toward nature as one of acceptance rather than dominance or the "mastery" of nature so integral to American history (and the American present). Richie tells about walking down a Tokyo street in 1947 and seeing workmen building a garden wall around a house cut a hole in the wall so that a large tree branch could grow through it rather than cutting off the branch to make room for the wall. But Richie notes that this respect for nature is rare in contemporary Japan, which paves over its natural resources with the relentless vigor of Southern California real-estate developers. Richie regarrds the 1964 Tokyo Olympics as the critical point at which the Japanese began to see themselves as major commercial competitors among Western nations, like the US, and to focus on becoming richer and faster and in the process lose much of what they had preserved for so long. He notes that young Japanese, like young Americans, live in a world of perpetual digital "multi-tasking," and that such frenetic, fragmented concentration, from a Zen perspective, is really no concentration at all. But Richie also notes that the technology that has transformed and, in his view, diminished Japan is the product of Japanese industry, that "now they invent so much of the stuff that it can hardly be called 'Western' anymore." Richie recalls his meeting with the great Zen philosopher D. T. Suzuki in Kamakura and how he learned from Suzuki that there is a third way between the strict black-and-white polarities of Western thinking, a gray middle way where the truth might lie between the antitheses of right and wrong, good and evil. "I realized in him," Richie recalls, "that there is a way of thinking about the world that had never occurred to me before. I'd certainly never discovered anything like it in Lima, Ohio!"

The Richie interview is probably too complex to use directly with students below the AP level. But projects could be extrapolated from Richie's comments on society and nature and focus (or Zen mindfulness) versus multi-tasking that would appeal to students of all levels and abilities and get them thinking about things they have not considered before, which is the great gift of Richie to American readers, whether he's writing about film or philosophy or his meditative travels on the Inland Sea.

Leigh Clark
Monroe High School

[Anonymous]

I just received my first issue of Education About ASIA. The first article that caught my attention was “They Chose China.” It is a review of a documentary that recounts the lives of several American POWs who were captured during the Korean War. These former POWs chose to live in China rather than return to America. The piece begins with a question that could be posed to our students: “Why would an American prisoner of war switch sides in wartime?” The documentary could be a very useful medium to explore race relations in America through Clarence Adam’s story, socio-political turmoil in America via David Hawkins story, or American relations with China through the profile on James Vereris. The article even includes tested teaching strategies on how one teacher used the video in the classroom!

[Anonymous]

I also enjoyed the article “Dialogue on Japan: Conversations with Donald Richie.” I agree that physical changes in Japan could not be accurately described as “westernizing,’ but as modernizing. Japan is an economic and technological powerhouse. It is a driving force in many sectors. It appears that Japan, just as many countries, is struggling with ways to stay in harmony with nature as it continues to modernize.

I was struck by Richie’s observation on the cultural shifts in Japan. He describes the Japanese in a “state of constant distraction.” Japan mirrors any modernized country in this area. Americans can very much commiserate on this cultural commonality.
I was disappointed to learn that Japan’s film industry was also focused on “wish-fullfillment cinema.” (Richie is so clever in his observations.) I agree with the author that some similarities among nations can be “hideous notion.” Diversity truly allows for greater empathy, depth in thinking, and spurs modernization.

[clay dube]

Here's an announcement about Education about Asia:

EDUCATION ABOUT ASIA (EAA): Enhanced Web Site and New URL

EAA, published by the Association for Asian Studies, has new-look Web site and a more user-friendly URL—http://www.asian-studies.org/EAA

New Web site features include the ability to cross search the Table of Contents for all issues by article title, author, country, or keyword. Copies of articles are not available online, but this new feature will help readers find out which back issues include articles of most interest. In addition, the “Web Gleanings” column featuring useful Web site links is now available online beginning with the most recent issue, Volume 13:3 (Winter 2008).

The EAA Web site also contains sample articles, supplemental content for some print articles, author guidelines, and other special section announcements.

EDUCATION ABOUT ASIA (EAA) is a unique and innovative magazine—a practical teaching resource for secondary school, college, and university instructors, as well as an invaluable source of information for students, scholars, libraries, and those who have an interest in Asia. Teachers and students from a wide range of disciplines—anthropology, Asian studies, business and economics, education, geography, government, history, language and literature, political science, religion, and sociology, the arts, among others—subscribe to Education About Asia.

Published three times each year (January, May, and October) since 1996, EAA will greatly enhance your understanding and knowledge of this important region of the world.

EAA brings you stimulating articles on all areas of Asia, with subjects ranging from ancient cultures and literatures to current affairs; essays describing classroom-tested educational programs and strategies; a comprehensive guide to Asia-related print and digital resources, including movies, documentaries, books, curriculum guides, and web resources. Thematic issues include Islam in Asia, marriage and family, youth culture, religion, economics and business, visual and performing arts, and a special series on Asia in world history.

[Anonymous]

I love the magazine; it has been so helpful. The first issue I recieved was about Asia in World History: 1750 - 1914. There were some great articles and very relevent to what I was going to begin teaching in class... Imperialism. I noticed that some of the images were ones that I had never seen before and all from a website hosted by MIT, titled, Visualizing Cultures.

I have included an attachment that may be helpful for fellow 10th grade Wolrd History Teachers. It is a webquest I made to help students learn about the Meiji Restoration and its effects. It is not perfect but the students loved it. If anyone uses it and makes some changes let me know so I can improve my version!

[Author]

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