Session 5 - 10/21, Sam Yamashita

[Andrew Frank]

Liz, I believed it to be incredibly interesting to think about the relations Japan had to other worldwide figures at the time as well...The fact that in 1939, the U.S. abrogated their trade treaty with the country seems to be a "slap in the face" to a country who must greatly rely on steel & iron. The combination of the negativity from the U.S., along with Japan's relationship with other world powers, seems to create a perfect storm of embitterment and driving Japan to assert itself. If domestic terrorism also began to be a problem, along with a 1932 breakdown in national parties, it seems reasonable that the government would also hope to show its "strength" to its own people through an international attack. The question that has continued to stay with me is how effective Japan's decision to attack really was. Obviously, the country dealt with unnumberable deaths and malnutrition & hunger at home, but did the move actually help bring the country together patriotically and boost its economy post-war? I suppose that is an answer we will discover next session...

[Angela Chong]

During the lecture last night the most impactful thing that I realized is how perspective shapes what day event occurs. December 7th 1941 is a day that Americans remember the Pearl Harbor attacks, but in Japan it was December 8th. I have talked about this with 3 people since last night and continues to be on my mind since last night. It's made me contemplate what else I have never considered because of where I reside on the globe and the culture that I am part of. Wondered if others in our seminar have had similar "ah-ha" moments in the 5 sessions we've had so far?

[Angela Chong]

Fukuzawa Yukichi's "Leaving Asia," made it very clear that he felt Japan was superior to Korea and China. He mentions the ancient "old" ways that Korea and China held onto, instead of beinga advanced and scientific. Fukuzawa associated Japan with western countries and felt that "Leaving Asia" explained departing from the old ways. As explained in the intro above it, it is further justification for colonization. Viewing the people inhabiting land and resources that you want to take as your own is easier if you think of those people as lower than you. He describes them as cruel, uneducated, and ignorant. Prior to beginning this seminar I didn't fully understand the conflict and hierarchy that people in East Asian countries can currently have and previously had for one another. The more I learn, the more I can see why and that unfortunately race supremacy exhists in places other than the United States. 

[Kurt Hansen]

Its too easy to talk about WWII Japan. What I find interesting is how quickly Japan studied and implemented Western ways. For a country so steeped in tradion, it moved relatively quickly to take on wester wear, technology and ideas. I'm sure many Japanese found this transition distasteful, but it allowed Japan to move up the "Asian Food Chain" and become the technological, martial and modern leader of all it's asian neighbors. Once Japan realized how sophisticated western ways were, they did everything in their power to discover them and use them for their own benefit. We think of Japan as a country rising from the ashes of WWII, but in reality they had always been trying to compete with America and Europe. Once Japan became a world power pre-WWII, they felt the need to protect themselves in the worst way possible: The invasion of China and Korea. I try to think of what Japan would be today without the devistation of WWII or the missteps into Korea and China. What would the level of Japanese technology be today without the poor leadership that led them to WWII? What new innovation could have been created if their young men had remained in college instead of killing themselves in their Zeros? One huge fauxpaux that led to the devastation of a country. 

[Sara Newman]

Hi Kurt, I really appreciate your comment since I know that too often I think of Japan through a Western lens. Since most of what I'd learned about Japanese history in the past was in the context of World War II, my natural inclanation is to build on what I already know rather than to focus on ideas that I have little context for. But your point about how Japan was reinveting itself with the Meiji Transformation and what followed is interesting. In the readings, I was surprised that The Five Injunctions provided such a concrete set of reasons for why many Japanese people moved to Hawaii. I was also really interested in how a significant motivator in Japan's desire to reform itself was its desire to convince Western countries to revise unequal treaties from the past. Clearly Korean and China had many militaristic reasons to resent Japan, but I wonder how Korean and Chinese people felt about Japan's desire to model itself off Western countries. Did they find it insulting? Did they take note and become inspired/pressured by Japan's desire to Westernize? 

[Cynthia Stults]

Confession time (I feel like there are more and more of those with every course session and every reading): when I had learned about Japan's role in WWII and especially the kamikaze pilots, I had wrongfully assumed that these pilots were truly devoted to the Japanese cause for entering and continuing the war. I had in my mind, hate-filled, vengeful pilots just aching to cause casualties, proud and grateful to die for their country. Through the readings and the lecture, I now realize that is NOT the case. Many in Japan were against the war, and, worse, that these kamikaze pilots had not volunteered for this task, but were conscripted out of universities and were more than likely not wanting to participate. Reading the diary of the pilot and seeing how they were doing anything to take their minds off of what they had to do, as well as hearing about the fights these pilots would get into while waiting for their one and only flight, was incredibly enlightening, but also incredibly sad to me. I am also reminded that I need to view historical events and their players through multiple perspectives before I assign motives and even judgments about events and their players. Even more important is that I teach my students to view all events through multiple perspectives, not just through their own experiences. 

[Cynthia Stults]

One of many things that struck me during Dr. Yamashita's lecture was that the architects of the Pearl Harbor attacks had been educated and spent a great deal of time in the United States. This was incrediby surprising to me, as I would assume (you know what they say about assuming things...), that once you had spent time with a group of people, it would humanize them as a group, and to go back and design an attack meant to destroy and kill would be morally impossible. It is always easier to hate and demonize a group that you have never had personal contact with. This makes me wonder if this is just part of the compartmentalization that many military personnel do on a regular basis, or was their experience in the States so distasteful or negative that they had no problems attacking the country where they received a portion of their education?

[Matthew Hurwitz]

This struck me as well. I was also trying to go back and think about how centering our own American perspective has impacted even the facts that we think of as irefutable. I was struck in one of our early lectures about the whole concept of "East" and "West", and how those terms only really make sense if you live in certain parts of the world, and yet have become so ingrained in our way of thinking about the world that it's now how many people in the world refer to areas, regadless of if the term makes sense to them based on where they live. I was also struck by the fact that even when learning about and processing Japanese history, the way we frame the story in many ways skewed. For example, we learn that Commodore Perry visited Japan in 1853. But I'm sure it wasn't 1853 on the Japanese calendar. Even our different calendar/year system changes the way we view history.

[Matthew Hurwitz]

I found the lecture interesting in that it presented a complete picture of Japan as it transformed and changed over the course of 100 years. I realized that I have only ever learned about Japanese as a series of "moments", short snippets of time when something "important" happened. Getting the chance to look beyond the "moments", the Rape of Nanking, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Russo-Japanese War, has been interesting. It's made me think about how our selective telling of only certain events throughout history colors our understanding of those events. It's made me think about what I skip, and what I don't skip in my own curiculum, what's "important" and what's not. Obviously, you can't teach all of world history in the course of 40 weeks, hence the eternal history teacher struggle of what the rush through/skip and what to spend more time on. But it's sobering to realize that our time constraints mean that something inevitably ends up getting the short straw, and that that lack of attention impacts the way that our students view the history of certain regions.

[Matthew Hurwitz]

I too was surprised to learn that the architects of the Japanese attack had spent a lot of time in the United States. I think because we (or at least I) tend to focus on one country or region at a time when I teach, it's sometimes easy to lose sight of the human connections that may not be as obvious in the textbook. For World War II, I tend to go over America in the 1930s, and then look at Japanese expansion in Asia during the 1930s another day, which unitentionally may serve to wall them off from each other in the eyes of some students. I guess I fell into that same trap! It was a good reminder that nothing happens in isolation, and that there was in fact a fair amount of movement in people and ideas between Japan and the United States.

[Matthew Hurwitz]

I was also quite struck by getting to read and learn about the different perspective on the war in Japan. I've used primary sources from Japan in my teaching of World War II, but I didn't realize until we talked about it in class that my sources almost all come from the generals and admirals at the top, and not from the ordinary people living and fighting through the war. I'm looking forward to going through some of the resources that were shared with us to find more texts from the period for students to read that convey the full array of perspectives from people at all levels of society during the war.

[Sara Newman]

I'm so glad that you brought this up! I was also both afraid of and somewhat impressed when I'd read about kamikaze pilots in the past. It was shocking to think that a nation of people would be more committed to winning than to living, but the forced conscription of these fighters really changed my view of things. Like you I'd thought that it was the will of the people to fight the war against the Americans to the bitter end, but learning that it was forced upon them really changed my perspective of this. This could be an interesting example to have students study when writing about or debating about issues of loyalty versus freedom or obedience versus rebellion. 

[Dennis O'Connell]

Hey Andrew!  Just as a clarification, I do not know enough about Japan in the 1920s to make any comment on my own.  I was drawing from the first paragraph on page 398 of our reading "Rise of Modern Japan".  The last sentence of that paragraph is where I got those thoughts almost verbatim.  I thought it was a powerful use of language and groupings of three.  The author starts the thought a line or two earlier speaking of eroticism, grotesqueness, and nonsense and then says that "materialism, individualism, and decadence HAD APPARENTLY replaced the beautiful Japanese virtues of diligence, decorum, and duty" (emphasis added).  Moral decay was the point.  I am guessing that the author would argue that any decay is not a building up, but quite the opposite, a tearing down.  I am in no position to speak as an expert of Japan in the 1920s, I just wanted you to know that I was not just "spit-balling" some negative thoughts about Japanese virtue!  

[Dennis O'Connell]

I appreciated hearing from Prof. Yamashita during this session.  The first "take-away" from this session is that much can be gleaned about history from the diaries of all kinds of citizens.  He has published books which translate the diaries of regular people during wartime situations.  In history classes, we often get to hear the voices of the powerful and the decision makers.  It was quite powerful to hear the voices of others who were deeply affected by war.  I would like to find diaries of various time periods in history to share with my students.  As a student at their age, a teacher had me keep a daily journal.  I would like to introduce this idea to my students and use real journal entries from kids their age to give the importance of journaling some credence.  

A second impact from Prof. Yamashita's session was something he mentioned in passing.  He mentioned pre-Civil War manufacturing along the Connecticut River Valley.  Growing up along the Connecticut River, which serves as the border between New Hampshire and Vermont, I have vivid images of old textile mills in my mind.  I thought this was the only significant industry using water power in the mills.  I was surprised to find, after a Google search, that the Connecticut River Valley was a significant player in the manufacturing of two other items: clocks and munitions!  While clocks might not be of major significance for the purposes of this course, the manufacturing of arms, guns, and other tools of war certainly is of significance when thinking about the world stage and US military history.  I appreciated gaining new insights into the land of my childhood, New Hampshire!

[Haena Shin]

The article regarding the Meiji Transformation was quite interesting to read. It was interesting to learn how Western foods were introduced to Japanese people and how they developed a much more varied diet than they had in the past. It's insightful how impact of the different types of foods they ate made most people stronger and healthier while increasing life expectancy and childbearing rates. I wonder what the comparison in statstics would be from befor and after the introduction of Western foods. 

 

The Rise of Modern Japan article brought to light how benefial the World War was for Japan both economically and diplomatically. The lecture also shed light on how many corporations came about with the union of Western powers and influence. The concept of an Imperial Democracy was also quite interesting as the Japanese people strived for a more open government and society. I enjoyed learning that educated women promoted democracy through their organizations and deeds. Teachers, many of them Christian or influenced by missionaries, hoped to improve and reform society. 

 

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