session 2 & 3 (9/17 workshop) Japan - Meiji-WW II

[clay dube]

For sessions 2 and 3, we'll have Bruce Coats (Scripps College) and Noriko Aso (UC Santa Cruz) speaking on the rise of modern Japan. They'll be emphasizing visual representations of the rise, economic and social change, imperialist expansion and more.

These sessions do not have recorded lectures. We'll have live presentations 9 am - 12:30 pm Pacific time on Saturday, September 17.

If you are in the Los Angeles area, we'd love you to come to campus. We'll provide you with free parking, refreshments and lunch. People outside the area will join via Zoom.

There are readings below for you to read ahead of time. After each of the two presentations, you'll have a chance to raise questions with the speakers. We'll also brainstorm together on how you might use these ideas and materials with your own students.

Prior to the discussion session, please post your observations and any questions below.

 

[Crystal Hsia]

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.

[Crystal Hsia]

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

☞MIT Visualizing Cultures website about Asia in the 18-20th centuries.

☞Essays and prints about Yokohama and Yokohama-e

☞Essays and prints about Kobayashi Kiyoshika's Tokyo:

1. https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/kiyochika_tokyo/index.html
2. https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/kiyochika_tokyo_02/index.html
3. https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/kiyochika_tokyo_03/index.html

​☞Essays and prints about the "Westernization" of Japan:

1. https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/throwing_off_asia_01/index.html
2. https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/throwing_off_asia_02/index.html
3. https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/throwing_off_asia_03/index.html ​

​☞Reviews of "CHIKANOBU: Modernity and Nostalgia in Japanese Prints"​​​​​​​​​

1. http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/1006#.Yw2cSuzMKi4
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/22artswe.html​

☞Catalogs:

1. "Yokohama: Prints from 19th c. Japan" ed. Ann Yonemura, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990
2. "Kiyochika: Artist of Meiji Japan" by Henry D. Smith, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1988
3. "CHIKANOBU: Modernity and Nostalgia in Japanese Prints" ed. Bruce Coats, Brill, 2006

[Molly Cowan Johnson]

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?   

[Denis Vovchenko]

Hi, Molly,

Huge questions! I found this video helpful (and I assign it in my Asian history class). 

“The Meiji Revolution” Episode 2 in The Pacific Century (Annenberg, PBS)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gURiHVTJX4A

 

[Denis Vovchenko]

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

 

 

 

[Ramabadran Sudarshan]

I am intrigued to understand how exactly did Japan westernize/industrialize by turning inward??!! in her own right. The visualizing culture exhibit essay does throw light on how it escaped colonisation. Is there a primer on what were the policy orientations that enabled its industrialization. I guess my question is in alignment with Molly's question.

[Denis Vovchenko]

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? 

 

[Denis Vovchenko]

A question for both Noriko and Bruce. Since Chikanobu and Kiyoshika both fought for the Shogunate, are nostalgia and melancholy in their art political in nature?

[Denis Vovchenko]

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

 

[Denis Vovchenko]

Another note on Mitsukoshi – the Wikipedia entry mentioned that after WWII the Seoul branch was taken over by Samsung and renamed “Shinsegae”, which means “New World.” It seems that the Korean owners picked up the fallen torch to highlight their version of Western modernity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsukoshi#Former_stores

 

[Denis Vovchenko]

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. 

[Denis Vovchenko]

Crystal asked me to post the questions I asked in the Zoom chat last Saturday, October 15.

"Denis Vovchenko (You) 12:08 PM

How does Japan's commitment to free trade square with its long-standing protection of its agriculture (rice) and draconian immigration policies?

USC U.S. - China Institute would like to answer this question live.

Denis Vovchenko (You) 12:26 PM

Great talk! Does Japan's special relationship with the USA discourage Tokyo from developing closer relations with its neighbors? I am referring to the territorial disputes with S.Korea, China, and Russia as well as the issues of WWII memory.

This question has been answered live.

Denis Vovchenko (You) 01:59 PM

I enjoyed “Shogun” – both the mini-series and the novel by Clavell. It reminds of a more recent film “Silence” (2016) with Liam Neeson set in the same time period. In both “Shogun” and “Silence,” there are white protagonists that help the US audience identify with the exotic setting. It seems to be a common thread, right? As in the US release of the original Godzilla where there was a US journalist inserted into the Japanese film. “Sayonara” with Marlon Brando, “The Last Samurai” with Tom Cruise, and “Lost in Translation” with Scarlett Johansson. What do you think?

This question has been answered live."

 

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