Session 9 - Classical and Warrior Japan

[cgao]

Please watch Professor Sam Yamashita's previously recorded presentations on Classical and Warrior Japan. The readings are avaiable below. There will NOT be a Zoom discussion for this session. 

 

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[Jessica Ng]

Mythology has always been an interesting topic to me, so I took Professor Yamashita's assignment and found/read what I hope to be an adequate version of "The Heavenly Grandchild and the Sea God's Daughter." My first impression was that the story must have come from Northern Japan, based on a literal interpretation of "heavenly" referring to Hiko-hoho-demi and the existence of animals and creatures that can travel between different realms. Professor Yamashita did say, however, that the answer isn't so obvious. A lot of emphasis is placed on the sea: it is the setting of most of the action, and provides many key characters, including sea deities. To me, the gods living "beyond the horizon" doesn't necessarily mean they live beyond the sea; it means they are out of reach of humans. The humans in the story live firmly on land; even marrying a sea god's daughter did not grant Hiko-hoho-demi the privilege of living beyond his designated place because he proved unworthy by being dishonest. For these reasons, I am #teamhorizontal!

Here is a link to where I found the story (scroll to page 19).

[Chad Espinoza]

In college, my favorite classes were those on literary critical theory. Considering various perpspectives and understanding how biases, both conscious and unconscious, affect discourse was and is extremely fascinating to me. The beginning of this presentation gives the first historical account of the Japanese. The narrative persistently calls the Japanese the dwarves and seemingly speaks dismissively of the Japanese people. Prof. Yamashita asks the attendees of the presentation for their observations of the historical account. Many picked up on the use of the term dwarf to refer to the Japanese, and assumed the term reflected the racist perspective of a Western historian. To the surprise of the attendees, the account was written by a Chinese historian. This interaction made me think of reader-response theory, a form of discourse that analyzes how the reader's biases and perspectives infuence the interpretation of a text. I think doing this exact same exercise will be a great activity for my students. Asking them to make inferences about the account and then have them explain how they came to at least one of those inferences will force my students to think deeply and critically about their assumptions and prior knowledge of Japan. This activity can definitely be done with a variety of texts. 

[Meghann Seril]

I really enjoyed Prof. Yamashita's lectures and am disappointed we didn't get to have an in-person discussion for this topic. One point of interest for me was the discussion of horizontal and vertical cosmology. Having learned the origin stories of China, Korea, and Japan I think this would be another interesting lens through which students could analyze and categorize origin stories. It also prompted me to ask my parents about the Filipino origin story. Although there are different origin stories in different areas of the Philippines, the one my parents know is Malakas at Maganda. In short, there was the sea, sky, and a bird. One day the bird, tired of flying starts a fight between the sea and sky, during which boulders are thrown down, creating the islands of the Philippines. The bird lands on a piece of bamboo and pecks it open revealing Malakas (the first man) and Maganda (the first woman). The sea and the sky have a truce and the first Filipinos are born. Although the sea and sky gods are in the same physical realm as the humans they don't have direct interaction. The bird roams between the gods and humans. So, based on Prof. Yamashita's description I think this is a vertical cosmology. In third grade we discuss fairytales and fables, so I could add these origin stories from different cultures to our discussion. As an extention activity, I could ask my students (probably in groups) to create their own story using a vertical or horizontal cosmology format.

[Brigid Schmidt]

While we have focused much more on the origins of China, I enjoyed hearing Professor Yamashita talk about Japanese origins starting back to 250 million years ago. Last year I taught geography and archipelago, so this would be a perfect segway from that unit. It is fascinating to think about Japan being connected to the Asian mainland, reminding us that Japanese people were probably not that different than other people living on the Asian mainland at that time.

Professor Yamashita also discussed dualism, which I take to mean coming from two different origins or beginnings. (Correct me if I am wrong in this case!) He says that there are archeological references that reveal dualism from people's blood types and fingerprint. With all of the ancestry and 23 and me and other geology tests that have peaked curiosity as of late, this is extremely interesting to think about the origins of where you came from. It is even mentioned that whoever came to populate Japan came from two different ways, speaking two different languages. I think students would be curious to examine this further. Another area he discusses dualism is from myths. I teach myths in both my 6th and 8th grade English classes so I would love to examine the differences in the two styles of myths and talk more about the horizontal style versus the vertical style. 

[Samantha Auerbach]

I found Professor Yamashita's lecture very interesting on two different accounts. I really enjoy learning about all the origin stories from the different countries we've discussed in this seminar. It's great to compare them, finding similarities and differences. It would make for a great activity for students as well! 

I specifically enjoyed learning about all the dualism in the Japanese origin stories. Learning about the blood types and fingerprint patterns that determined which geographical area of Japan people are from. This paralleled nicely with his following discussion about cosmology. It seems that not only was vertical cosmology a part of Japan's founding mythological stories, but it also connected to the dualism between the vertical geography of Japan.

One of the reading literature standards in 4th grade is to determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including those that allude to significant characters found in mythology. This topic aligns so well with our standards and it would be nice to locate the myth Professor Yamashita talked about, "The Heavenly Grandchild and the Sea God's Daughter". Depending on the complexity of the text, it could be used for this 4th grade standard. At the very least, I think my 4th graders would enjoy comparing and contrasting the different origin stories we've discussed in China, Korea, and Japan and how they align to the idea of vertical or horizontal cosmology. 

 

 

[Chad Espinoza]

I really like this idea of students analyzing their own cultures' origin stories. I think in America, we are always focused on where we are going and our discussions of the pass only matter when we speak of the future we desire. Understanding the past is valuable in and of itself. For Mexicans, origins stories are varied, because Mexicans don't always identify with simply the Aztecs or Spanish. Many have strong feelings about their German, French, and even Jewish heritages. And each of these heritages have their own origin stories. Origin stories are a rich vein of texts and I think students will be very excited to discuss them. Simply identifying one's heritage is quite a task. Learning and analyzing the origin stories of one's heritage will quite substantial and, I think, extremely rewarding. 

[Betsy Ures]

A pattern that I observed from the lecture and the documents is a struggle for archeologists and historians to find documentation of early Japanese life. For example, the original Shinto belief system was largely undocumented until Chinese writing was introduced. I appreciate the text (classical Japan part 1) explaining the influence of Chinese conceptions on the evidence that does exist. The idea that Japanese history is full of unknowns is intriguing. I would like to now more about how the geography of Japan has impacted their self-isiolation. 

The origin story of the sun goddess and the moon goddess for the Nihongi would be interesting to read, act out, and use in comparision study with other religious origin stories. 

[Meghann Seril]

I know that there have been so many times in my teaching that students have wonderings or questions that I don't feel there is always time to address. I've definitely been using this distance learning time to "go down the rabbit hole" with my kids so to speak and encourage them to research those questions and report back to the class. I think any opportunity we can take to authentically celebrate students' ideas and culture always leads to way more interesting conversation and better student engagement. I hope I can remember this whenever we are back in the classroom.

[Meghann Seril]

A text I've used in third grade is "First Day Jitters" by Julie Danneberg. It's great for the first week of school and has a good surprise ending. We talk about how our own experiences influence the way we interpret the text. The second day we ususally reread the text with fresh eyes and consider any "clues" the author provides to help us understand the text in a new way. Could be a good warm up before tackling a more complex text.

[Sandra Flores]

I am intrigued to learn more about the story of the Great Mirror.  Usually when we think of a mirror we think of our reflection.  We use a mirror everyday before leaving the house.  We use mirrors at malls when trying on clothes.  We use mirrors when we drive to avoid accidents.  Mirros are used by everyone on a daily basis.  Mirrors have become part of our dailylives and can be considered unnoticed.  As I was reading the "Great Mirror" I learned that Japanese believed that mirrors represent our past, our present and also our future.  I understand how they represent our past, our present but not our future.  

I can see this story applied in my identity unit.  Students can discuss what their reflection in the mirror says about their ancestors, what it says about them and how they invision themselves in the future.  Today, we have phones and a mirror is not necessary, although I like the idea of having students staring at themselves in the mirror while they jot down what they see.  

[Jessica Ng]

Wow, I really like your idea for students to use mirrors to help "reflect" on their past, present, and future. A great hook might be a clip of the song "Reflection" from Disney's "Mulan." At a preschool where I used to teach, we would put a full-length mirror horizontally on a table so students could sit side by side, look at themselves/each other, and draw what they saw. It was mainly meant to be a basic exploration of our body parts. I can see your activity being part of a take-home project, where students have to interview family members for information and maybe create a poster, diorama, video, or another artifact that represents what they learned.

[Hilda Dixon]

Undoubtedly what made a difference in the development of the Eurasia ancient cultures was agriculture and a kind of metallurgic knowledge. Then, labor division became more obvious and necessary. Therefore, a political and a social organization needed to be established. Professor Samuel Yamashita said that Japan had many interchanges of all sort such as trading, relocation of settlements and interbreeding. I think that at the beginning there were more amicable opportunities between all these communities because we see that there were a lot of cultural, knowledge, and utensils-tools sharing and trading. Then, as Japan became more social and economically stratified, so do conflicts and disagreements arose. We see this with the Samirai and Japanese lords that they were having more antagonisms with the Ainu and Emishi people.  The Ainu people did not subjugate, so they moved further north. Some of the Emish people moved with the Ainu, while others subjugated to the new establishment. I am wondering that perhaps the Ainu people might nowadays be less biologically diverse than typical Japanese people.

[Hilda Dixon]

Professor Samuel Yamashita mentioned vendettas in Japan. I think this idea is a little bit tricky because although taking your own human life was not allowed in Japan, getting back at people who killed ones’ older brother or father was somehow justified according to Confucianism because this was seen as blood-revenge. Japanese people needed to apply and get permission for their officials to leave in order to go on their quest. If I would be in a forum where I could ask a question, I would have liked to ask Professor Samuel Yamashita two questions. First question, the fact that samurais followed stricter codes of conduct than people who belonged to lower social status, this could have been a valid reason why vendettas were more likely to occur among higher social classes. My second question is that vendettas were prolonged over the years because somehow Japanese literature and puppet plays have romanticized and celebrated these actions.

[Hilda Dixon]

Through our China, Korea and Japan learning we have discussed about the benefits to be an open or closed economy. Through 1603-1868, Japan chose to be an isolated society from outsiders for the most part. It is not hard to believe that acceptance of a foreign religion such as Catholicism or Christianism was not easy for the majority of people because missionaries could have seemed like propagators of ideas that might be perceived as they were against Japanese nationalism. Nationalistic pride is a core value that is definitely part of the idiosyncrasy of China, Japan and Korea. Professor Samuel Yamashita mentioned crucifixion and torture as a way to warn people who wanted to convert, interact with outsiders or engage in other types of offences.

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