[Kathryn Sutherland]

Let's not forget all the problems that faced the Meiji Restoration though! Too many leaders (132 in 1868); change from the old order to the new order left the question of what to do with the fuedal domains and the warrior stipens (turn them to prefectures and municipalities and create taxes, respectively); arguments over the meaning of restoration (the confucian rennovation, or the national learning return to antiquity?); resistance to the new government led by warriors in the south; political opposition from different political factions and the urban and rural disaffected; and the pressure to westernize leading to its own negative effects, like bankruptcy of farmers, immigration to the US and Hawaii by second sons and younger all had to be dealt with by the new government.  Dealing with thse problems was make or break for the new regime. 

[Kathryn Sutherland]

Having been closed off for over 200 years, it is truly incredible to me that we attribute the opening of Japan to the western world to one man, Commodore Perry.  Would history be entirely different if he hadn't made it to Japan? Or was the Meiji Restoration bound to happen one way or another? Being closed off from the majority of the world for so long, Japan realized how far behind they were in miliary power and industry, and took steps to open themselves up, eventually becoming an imperial and then a world power.  These days, factions and some leaders around the world are trying to close themselves off to the rest of the world; 150 years ago, the opposite case was true.  It seems pretty clear to me that opening borders, while creating new problems, leads to more political power, not less.  And after opening their ports, Japan rose to power quickly, defeating a western power for the first time by a non-western power when they defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese war.  Progress always comes with side effeccts, good and bad, but the progress made after being forced to trade with the US laid the foundations for Japan's emergence as a great power.  

[Kathryn Sutherland]

I am very excited to use the Botchan comic in my class.  As pre-readers, the kindergarteners love to create stories that go with the pictures of what they are reading.  The Botchan manga with empty speech bubbles will be a great way to introduce a couple of different topics to my students: for one, that not all languages read from left to right; and two, that people all over the world have been telling stories, writing stories, and drawing stories for hundreds of years (hard to believe that Botchan is from 1906!).  I think I would introduce the story by describing the characters, focusing on the rebellious nature but ultimately strong morality of Botchan, and then see what kinds of stories they come up with.

The great thing about this kind of assignment is that there is no wrong answer, and it might spark an interest in learning more about manga or other stories from Japan.  At this age, exposure to other people, places, and things is what inspires lifelong learning.  I hope that this lesson with Botchan will inspire them to learn more about Japan and East Asia!

[Kathryn Sutherland]

I found Deng Xiaoping's rise, fall, and rise again in the communist party to be an extremely interesting chapter in China's history and one that I didn't know a lot about.  Everyone knows about Mao and his vision of equality through land reform and development--that's what the chapter about China in the history book is all about, or at least that's what I remember from high school.  But Deng's reforms have been more influential in the long term than Mao's--I have a line in my notes that says "Deng is the most important person in 20th century China-> his pragmatism changes China."  I wonder why this narrative isn't more well-known.  Sure, Deng never held the highest position in the communist party, but his path to power and his legacy make him just as interesting as Mao.  China is a world leader because of the pragmatism and gradualism of Deng.

[Kathryn Sutherland]

Although we did not get to meet Kerim Yasar due to unfortunate circumstances, I really wanted to talk about Giants and Toys--did anyone else enjoy it as much as I did?  I had originally put it on thinking that I would maybe multi-task and do chores, but I could not take my eyes off of the screen.  It was such a funny, interesting, and engaging story--and I had the music stuck in my head for days.  I was looking forward to hearing an expert's analysis of the movie and how it related to Japanese business culture during that time.  In particular, I wanted to know more about the last scene, where the main character wears the space suit when the model won't.  Did it symbolize his undying devotion to his company, even at the expense of his dignity? I could tell the movie was a satire of the fast-paced and competitive business culture that was developing in Japan, but I'd be interested to hear more of what else the movie was poking fun at!

[Kathryn Sutherland]

I have thoroughly enjoyed learning about East Asia since 1800 and am excited to share my knowledge with my students.  Although a lot of the material was a little heavy for kindergarten, I know that whenever I feel more knowledgeable about a subject, I’m more likely to teach about it, spark conversation about it, and plan lessons around it.  Also, it was inspiring and eye-opening to be a student again--I’ve spent so long being a teacher, I forgot what it was like to be a student! I think it was particularly helpful for me to get outside of my loop and use my brain in ways that I haven’t in a while.  I was surprised at how much I didn’t know about East Asia--I was a history major, but this is a whole block of history that I hadn’t learned! It made me motivated to ensure that my students don’t end up with holes in their education. East Asia is such an important part to our globalized world--my students need to be exposed to its history early and often.  

I am looking forward to implementing my lesson plans to introduce my students to China, South Korea, and Japan, and I hope that my introduction to East Asia for them will spark their curiosity to learn more about it when they get older.  In particular, I think my students will be really interested in the “When My Name Was Keoko” and the history of the Japanese occupation of South Korea. I think this will lead to more interest in books, music, television, and culture from South Korea, China, and Japan.  But if nothing else, I hope that my students learn that although it is a big and complicated world out there, kids halfway across the world share a lot in common with them.

 

[Kathryn Sutherland]

Another resource given to us by the Japan Society was the kid friendly magazine, "Hello! Japan." In it are short, lower-elementary appropriate pictures, drawings, and informational captions following two kids, Sakura and Yuta, through a wide array of topics about life in Japan.  Ranging from nature and geography to government and international relations, this would make a great resource for kindergarteners as a read aloud, or as an independent station to learn and explore. I particularly like the page about Japanese history--it breaks it up the time from pre-history to present into six main periods, "each one with a very different culture." Noticibly absent is any major discussion of the occupation of Korea or World War II, but for kindergarten, and for a very brief overview of Japanese history, it serves to explain the six main periods in an accessible and colorful way.  

[Kathryn Sutherland]

I also found Dr. Shaede's lecture to be illuminating!  I knew Japan was economically very prosperous, but I did not know how they got there.  The common misconception reiterated by the politicians in power today is that manufacturing + value added = economic dominance, so we should be manufacturing stuff--right? But the countries that are doing the manufacturing aren't reaping all the profit.  Sure, the iphone says "assembled in china" on the back, but that doesn't mean every payment you make on your iphone goes to China's economy.  So this equation of old economic prosperity doesn't work out so well in today's highly globalized economy.  Her lecture gave great insight on how much of a transformation Japan's economy has made in the past 75 years, from focus on growth, stability, and group membership to global competition, global and institutional investors, and profits and stock prices, and how Japan's market dominance today seems invisible to us since it has moved upstream, away from assembly.  What I think will be the most interesting bit of economic news to follow in the future will be how South Korea and Taiwan, who have been copying Japan's model, will adjust as they then try to "move upstream" as well.  Who will then fill in the manufacturing void? 

[Kathryn Sutherland]

Pollution (and the lack of awareness or general lack of social responsibility with regards to polluting) is what made the United States and European countries powerful.  For most of history beyond the industrial revolution, more pollution meant more power, and there were no consequences.  So why should developed countries get to reap the benefits, and then wag their fingers at countries who were late to the industrialization game? 

I don't have an answer for this. As someone who cares about the environment, I want for other countries to just be better than the US, but I get the argument against it: "Indeed, Britain, the United States and Japan polluted their way to prosperity and worried about environmental damage only after their economies mature and their urban middle classes demanded blue skies and safe drinking water." (New York Times article) So why can't China? Plus, most of the things being made that are causing all this pollution are for the west!  

I liken this problem (in a very basic, low-risk, elementary way) to one I see everyday in kindergarten.  "Please pick up that piece of trash by your feet," I'll say to a student.  "But it isn't mine! I threw mine away already, and why should I have to pick up someone elses mess and not even get to make a mess myself?" is what I imagine the kid is saying with the look that they give me as they reluctantly pick up the trash.  They know if they don't pick it up, they'll have to live with the trash.  And is that worth it?  

The US made a mess for many, many years, and didn't pick it up.  The only difference is now we have the technology and prosperity to not make so many messes, and we have the pressing need for everyone to help us not just clean it up, but to not add to the mess.  The longer we wait to clean up our manufacturing as a global community, the more dire the consequences for the global environment, for the animal kingdom, and for the human race. I hope that China and India can be global leaders in clean energy, like my students who pick up extra trash because they want their classroom to be a clean, comfortable environment (I'm not kidding, I really do have kids that like to clean up extra stuff even if it isn't theirs!  The future looks bright, guys!)  

[Kathryn Sutherland]

In today's polarized political system in the U.S., it was so interesting to learn that in post-1911 China, the communists and nationalists agreed on so many things.  "The solution was different, but the methodology was the same," Dr. Dube stated, which really got me thinking--is there anything like that today? Where two sides are working towards a very different goal by using the same process? Chinese nationalists and communists were unique in that they agreed on many things: foreigners are the problem; Lennenist principles, particularly the centralized, disciplined, and hierarchial structure of government are paramount to the development of a new political system; and that a united China is better than fractured warlord-led states.  The one thing that the nationalists and communists differed on was marxism--and clearly that's a big thing to disagree on, as it completely changes the shape of inter- and intra- national relations.  What did the shaky alliance between nationalists and communists really look like in those early 1920s years, where the communist party essentially "waited it out" by working with the nationalists to conquer the warlord states?  Would such an alliance between two political parties be possible now? Or is the deciding factor in this unlikely cooperation that both the nationalists and communists had a common enemy: chaos?  

[Kathryn Sutherland]

Looked on by thousands of adoring (tiny) proletariats, over a literal sea of red, a larger-than-life Mao smiles and encourages his people to look forward to the future.  But the message on the waves of red lifting Mao above his people reads like a guilt-trip: you should care about our revolution.  You should care about the literary revolution.  Read your book, Mao seems to say, like a nagging parent to a reluctant middle schooler.  The future we look to depends on it.  

What is most striking about this poster is how the red waves under Mao not only lift Mao above his people, who are just tiny dots at this point, but how these waves also seem like they are about to crash down on his tiny dot people.  Will they wash over the adoring onlookers gently, or are the waves meant to jolt the people to revolution, and create shock-waves that reverberate and change people forever? 

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[Kathryn Sutherland]

This Mao propoganda poster is very compelling.  It conveys an inarguable truth: the youth are our future! Armed with little red books, megaphones, faces contorted with passion, and--is that a newspaper under his arm?--the youth are looking towards the future with the vigor, enthusiasm, and intensity that only a young person can muster.  Educated and ready to spread the word to all about the lies capitalists have spun and the redemption the communist party provides, the youth are the intellectual and social warriors on the front line of a red wave of change.  Red flags billow behind the three main figures, looking like a cresting wave of party pride about to evelop all who dedicate themselves to the cause. 

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[Kathryn Sutherland]

For as long as all of us in this seminar have been alive, Korea has been divided--yet the war is not technically "over." There has been no final "solution," and the lingering tensions between the north and south and the rest of the interested world powers have largely defined what the average person knows about Korea, at least in the political context (nowadays I would argue that the average person knows more about Korean cultural exports than the roots of the tensions between the DPRK and ROK).  I am one of those people who wants to know how things end--so I am really interested to see what's ahead for relations between North and South Korea.  I was surprised to hear Dr. Jung-Kim say that neither country wants to absorb the other--I had always figured that reunification meant someone wins and someone loses.  But the world isn't black and white like that!  North Korea's regime would not be able to survive if its population suddenly ballooned to include all of South Korea; South Korea's resources would be stretched too thin if it suddenly had to take in and provide assistance to the population of North Korea.  It makes sense that in order to acheive each side's goal, a 2 state system or federation would be the best possible solution.  Am I naive to think that I may see this unfold and come to an "end" in my lifetime? It has been nearly 7 decades since the armistice...

Either way, what's happening now with North Korea, South Korea, and the United States is something that my kindergarten students will likely be learning about in their high school International Relations elective class.  Which is why giving them a base understanding of what is going on in other parts of the world is so essential, even if it is very watered-down (I'm not sure I want to get into the details of denuclearization with 5 year olds, since then I would have to explain what nuclear weapons are and...that is not something they are developmentally ready for).  So I love the idea of asking questions to Korean students about what their daily life is like, and I hope as a seminar we can work with Dr. Jung-Kim to put this together!! 

[Kathryn Sutherland]

"But for Koreans, the fateful decisions of hundreds of thousands to support or not support the Northern troops remains woven into the fabric of postwar memory."  (Robinson, p. 117) 

What struck me most about the readings, both fiction and non-fiction, about the Korean war and its legacy was just how deep psychological scars of confusion and distrust went.  Nothing about the Korean war was simple; the start of the war is contested, the role of the U.S. and UN is confusing to those outside Korea, the sheer violence on both sides, but particularly by the US, is dumbfounding and seemingly pointless.  These scars clearly have an effect on the populace of North and South Korea today--with North Korea's "bunker mentality" and political unrest and mistrust in South Korea for many years after.  What I never realized, though, is that the arbitrary line drawn at the 38th parallel was just that--arbitrary.  And for people who were not among the politically active and motivated, the choice of which government to support during the throes of the Korean War must have been upsetting, confusing, and life-changing.  

Since MASH was a bit before my time, and the Korean War a bit before my parent's time, I've only really heard things about the Korean war tangentially in pop-culture: the characters of Red Foreman on "That 70's Show" and Don Draper on "Mad Men" were both Korean War vets, and mention it from time to time.  But in my history classes in high school and college, the Korean War was presented in the context of the Cold War, and only briefly touched on.  What a disservice to such a complex war with global implications!  Especially since relations with North Korea have been strained ever since.  

What I am looking forward to in Dr. Jung-Kim's lecture tomorrow is how these formative scars and memories have shaped the pop culture of South Korea that we see today.  I had no idea just how destroyed both South and North (particularly North) Korea were after the war, and it will be interesting to hear how both countries have dealt with the physical and psychological aftermath of the Korean war. As an educator, I am particularly interested to hear how Korea has a 98% literacy rate!

[Kathryn Sutherland]

I am a (more conservative) friend of Liang Qichao, mentee of Kang Youwei!  However, as a reformer, I do agree with Zhang Zhidong when he proposes to combine the Chinese and Western learning--look to the future, but remember the past. Do not throw everything away simply because some things are not working!  We must keep Confucianism as the foundation for our political and cultural identity.  We can fit Western advances in technology into our existing Confucian ways! Look to Japan!  

Foreigners are pushing for China to become a republic.  They wish to weaken China.  However, we do not need to give in to this Western way of life! To become a veritable republic will be pure chaos and fraught with corruption.  Just look at France! Look at America!  These are not models of Confucian values. Capitalism infects them.  These are defective and corrupt.  We should look to Japan instead!  Kang Youwei would agree that we can fit the constitutional monarchy modeled off of Japan into our Confucian values. We can advance with western technology without being seduced by western corruption.  My friend Liang Qichao would agree with me when I say we need to get rid of the corruption that exists in our government!  Just look at Li Hongzhang! Too much power for one man!  He does not embody the Confucian values that I espouse!

 

(side note: I feel very out of my comfort zone pretending to be someone else--and I imagine that some of our students would feel the same as me!  Does anyone have any ideas for how they would scaffold this task for nervous students?)

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