Session 11 - Warrior Japan, 5/1

[Anonymous]

Yugen, or "spiritual symbolism" was the aesthetic of the poetry in this time. It seems that the traditional Japanese aesthetic revolved around the fascination of the mysterious, the vague, and indefiniteness. I agree that when pondering the mysteries of life, one is left with a spiritual feeling of sorts, whether it's a good or bad feeling. For example, having an existential crisis creates fear and anxiety within me, but it's a spiritual experience nonetheless.

[Anonymous]

It gives me some comfort that in the reading I find I am on the right track when it comes to drinking tea. I had not known that it was considered a gift of heaven. This understanding goes a long way to explaining why the tea ceremony itself is deemed so important. The ritual recognizes its influence on life and through the ritual one reconnects with health, thus extending life.

[Anonymous]

I noted how in writing the Kenmu Code for the city of Kyoto, the laws were listed, not as a series of rules and regulations that must be adhered to, but as a list of needs that would benefit the society as a whole. It appears to me that the code was written in this manner as a means of avoiding confrontation between bureaucrats and the nobility. When expressed as a social need and not a rule, it becomes easier to enforce, for the purpose would be implicit in the code. I may be completely wrong about this, but it appears to have been written by someone with a strong sense of diplomacy.
Though not an example of an early set of laws, I could, with relative ease, make comparisons between this and the Code of Hammurabi as part of an introductory lesson for next semester's World History class.
edited by jhayden on 5/22/2017

[Anonymous]

The most interesting part of this session is the incident of the 47 Ronin. I am a huge fan of warriors and learning about them has helped me understand more about the warrior culture. There is a politcal hierarchy: Emperor, shogun, lords, vassals, sub-vassals, and foot soldiers. The idea of the vendetta is also important to understand for the time period and fits into the warrior culture.

[Anonymous]

In teaching about warrior Japan, the idea of the master-less warriors like the 47 Ronin relates to the Norse and Celtic old English stories in which warriors would would be exiled if they were not loyal or honorable. They would have to journey away from home and never be able to come back. They would be ridiculed as lost warriors who no longer had masters. I would have my students read Japanese warrior texts and the Old English poems to compare and contrast the concept of exile.

[Anonymous]

I really enjoyed teaching about Japanese warriors to my 7th grade students this year. We study the code of chivalry that a person needed to follow in order to be considered a warrior. Students had the chance to compare Japanese samurais to American soldiers and found many similarities. We also had a discourse on why a number of women have joined this civil service. It was interesting to see many of my students say statements like "women are physically weak, 'they cry a lot,' they get lost, they just cant hang."

[Anonymous]

[font=Times, "Times New Roman", serif]Creating a lesson around rituals and ceremonies could prove to be very important and engaging in my World History and Ethnic studies classes. Towards the begining of the year, I like to incorporate non western religions and customs and I think bridging parallels between these ceremonies of past and present would be good for students to analyze. As mentioned before, my notion of Japanese history was very limited until these seminars and it has not been present in my lessons, but for the following school year I will be sure to include comparison lessons that will incorporate East Asian cultures, histories, etc. [/font]
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[Anonymous]

The text spends some time discussing the aesthetic principle of yugen: a word to describe something profound, remote, or mysterious-- something "that cannot be expressed in words. Its quality may be suggested by the sight of a thin cloud veiling the moon or by autumn mist swathing the scarlet leaves on a mountainside" (366). It also discuses the idea of sabi, or "to be desolate." It would be interesting to do a compare and contrast of these two ideals, perhaps a venn diagram. There are passages in the text that we can excerpt to analyze for yugen or sabi.

[Anonymous]

The idea of history as a mirror would be a good symbol for students to analyze. What does it mean? What can a mirror tell us about the past? About the future? Does it matter where the mirror is, or to whom it belongs to? There's a poem on page 244 that would be good for students to use to consider these questions.

[Anonymous]

I always enjoy Dr. Yamashita’s presentations because he always includes food, which is dear to most of us. I would definitely use his sushi mold idea in the classroom because it’s really inexpensive and food is always a hit with the kids. When I taught my middle school students about slavery and the middle passage we made hoecakes in my class using as authentic ingredients as possible: salt, water, and untreated cornmeal—flattened into round “cakes” and fried in a little fat to make them crispy. Some students were surprised that the cakes weren’t sweet, like pancakes. However, most of the students really liked them, saying they tasted like fresh tortillas—only with a grittier texture. This led to a discussion about why they were made with these ingredients. I explained that White Americans didn’t use cornmeal, they used wheat flour because it made the kind of bread that we are all used to. Corn was cheap because it was used mainly for silage to feed livestock. Simply put, the hoecake and other staples of early African-American culture were a result of the only ingredients available to them at the time. By learning about the food that slaves ate, my students hopefully gained a deeper understanding of the hardships that these people faced in their day-to-day lives.

[Anonymous]

I really enjoyed this documentary. I learned that sushi rice should be served at “body temperature” and not cold as some people might think. This makes sense because cold rice is hard and loses much flavor. I wonder if this is because so much sushi is not fresh, but bought on-the-go, having been made in the morning or the previous day and put in a refrigerator. Jiro would be appalled! One of my favorite scenes is when he serves a small group of patrons one piece at a time, in what he calls movements, accompanied by Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21. He is truly an artist.

[Anonymous]

I was really impressed by the different castles that Professor Yamashita showed us. The “mountain” castles are truly amazing because of their remoteness and how difficult construction must have been, while the later period “flatland” castles impress with their size and grandeur. Himeji Castle, which is over 400 years old, covers more than 576 acres. I remember becoming more aware of these architectural gems a couple of years ago when I saw Kumamoto Castle on the news. It had been damaged by an earthquake in May of 2016. Upon further reading, I learned that the castle will take decades to repair because of the difficulty of reforming the unreinforced stone walls (mushagaeshi). Artisans, working from photographs, will put each stone back in its proper place and buildings that sit atop damaged walls will have to be moved or dismantled and reassembled.

[Anonymous]

Warrior Japan
Although there was a great of focus on the 47 Ronin, what I would like to maybe concentrate on is the differnt types of castles. The students have read stories about castles, so maybe I can have them compare the different types of castles that were built in Japan and as a culminating project have them built their own castle.
edited by ahuynh on 6/18/2017

[Anonymous]

Professor Yamashita’s lectures are always filled with fascinating topics! I really enjoyed his talk here focusing on the military history of Japan from he 1100's to the 1800's. This seemed to be a really important period in Japanese history and defined, and I think continues to define, a lot of what is considered Japanese culture. The title of Shogun and the relation to the Samurai and the Warrior Code of Ethics is a big part of what is seen in the west at least as defining Japan. It was really great to hear about the actual history of this time period and where those terms come from.

I think an interesting thing to do as a class assignment would be to have students compare and contrast European feudalism with that of Japan and see the similarities there. Also, I'd like to introduce the idea that the professor touched upon, that feudalism plus a commercial revolution was the foundational elements that the great nations of the 20th century were built upon, and see where my students would take that idea.

[Anonymous]

The pictures that were shared of the Japanese castles were really impressive. That so many of the mountain castles were built was remarkable, and the history of the flatland castles was really great. There's a computer game I used to play called Age of Empires, it's a game where you can be different cultures and you build up an army and fight other players, either AI computers or other human players, and in that game you can build a castle as one of the buildings. It's neat to see the different styles, and now knowing about the history of Japanese castles, the next time I play I'll have to look to see how historically accurate the game makers were.

Something I'd like to do here as well is to have students draw and compare the castles from different places. It would be a really good study about architecture and where different influences come from, and how style choices get made from history, often times. I would love to visit these places myself one day as well! Maybe if I get to visit my friend who lives in Japan now...

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