December 9 - Pitelka - The Rise of Modern Japan

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

Hello everyone,

Please share your thoughts about our December 9 session - "The Rise of Modern Japan" by Morgan Pitelka - by replying to this post.

-Miranda

[Anonymous]

Below is the link to the "Black Ships and Samurai" website from the MIT Visualizing Cultures series which Professor Pitelka recommended in class:

http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/black_ships_and_samurai/index.html

[Anonymous]

Another recommendation from Professor Pitelka is the Victoria and Albert Museum website, which is a good resource for images on Japan and East Asia. You can use the "Search the Collections" function for images on specific topics, genres, etc.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/asia/index.html

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Miranda, for the web site we saw last evening in class. I have a couple of teacher friends here who will enjoy looking at it. They teach history in their respective academies in general education classes. Thanks for sharing the information with us as I neglected to write down the web site information. You are a great asset to US-China Institute and I appreciate what you do for us. Thanks again.

[Anonymous]

Hi Morgan,
Well, you certainly did it again! You totally fulfilled yur promise of telling us exactly how Japan rose to the power that it now is. It is always a pleasure to listen to you because of your enthusiasm.
Anyhow, your topic was perfectly timed for me because my two reading classes (I teach high school in Van Nuys to Sp. Ed. students) are just starting a marvelous book published by Scholastic entitled, Fighters of Old Japan, by Mel Friedman. As the title implies, it is about the Samurai and their adventures/activities/history/goals. As you stated, the book also shows how the Samurai feel it is an honor to die in battle, and if this is n ot possible, then suicide is a good alternative and showed both honor and strength. Evidently, their philoophy was that they preferred to die than to be defeated. They even often committed hara-kiri. My students were not happy to read in our books that this meant they stuck the ir swords far into their own stomachs. Reading this short novella is an eye-opening experience for both my students and myself. I did not know anything about the Samurai before this class, despite the fact that I spent one month in Japan in 2004.

[Anonymous]

Thank you again for another informative session. As a student and teacher of European history, I appreciated the correlations that Professor Pitelka made to periods in Western history so that I could have some context for the information that he presented. I found the status system under the Tokugawa period fascinating. I also very much appreciated that Professor Pitelka took time to apply the information and resources to our own practice as K-12 educators, as well as time for questions and comments. This "processing" time is so important and so helpful when we are constantly trying to digest large amounts of information.

[Anonymous]

This has been my favorite session so far because I know I'll be able to use more of this in my own teaching. I will be able to take the literature Dr. Pitelka provided and use it with any of my classes. Sometimes I find the readings to be geared more to college level students, and I appreciate the more manageable texts in this section.

[Anonymous]

The MIT website was an excellent resource. Thank you for sharing it with us. The information about Perry and the opening of Japan is a subject we cover with our students. The picture stories from the two different points of view really will help them to understand the way that history is told. It is all dependant on who is doing the telling.
Susan Dubin

[Anonymous]

Although the information we have been getting in each session has been fascinating, I believe it would be more useful to us if the classes were organized as discussions or workshops rather than all lecture. Modeling how to teach the information to high school and middle school students would be even more valuable than just the information itself. Interaction between the students in the class would add immeasurably to our ability to share this information effectively.
Susan Dubin[Edit by="sdubin on Dec 22, 10:52:19 AM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

This is such a wonderful resource! Not onlyare the graphics of the highest quality, but the information is organized in a very user-friendly format. I especially loved the pictures the Japanes drew of the AMericans who visited them. They are a spectacular example of caricature. One can see the roots of manga in these archival prints!
Susan Dubin

[Anonymous]

For my seminar project I'm putting together a lesson plan using the Japanese novel Kokoro, and I found this week's seminar will serve as an invaluable resource for background information. The above mentioned web sites are perfect to have students do some in-class research. When we discuss revolutions, we can now include the Meiji Restoration in the discussion. It would make for an interesting compare and contrast assignment.

[Anonymous]

I find Morgan's lectures really interesting. I really want to get a hold of the map that he showed us. there are several different ideas I had to use in my classroom from this lecture. I love the MIT Visualizing cultures and how it tells both sides of the story. For me , even though it was a small part, I was really interested and want to learn more about the woman who gave modern japanese woman there equality in the treaty after WW II. Thanks again for a really interesting lecture.

Maggie BUrr

[Anonymous]

I am happily amazed at Prof. Pitelka's planning and organization. You can tell he cares about being all-encompassing and informative. It was great how he bridged references to his previous talk, tied it up with a bow, gave us great additional resources and we still had time for questions.
His students must love his classes.
He is a great source for this series.

[Anonymous]

This is a great site that I shared with my history colleagues.
Loved the explanations of the long noses on the white men.
Valuable link to keep!

[Anonymous]

This is a great sites for pictures, as Miranda noted.
I loved the display on living in china. The picture of a typical Chinese home with the welcome area, men's quarters and women's quarters and servants area off to the side of the enclosure explains so much to add to what we have heard in this class.

Some of the rooms in the museum are encased in one image and other have more. Take the time to browse and you will not be displeased.

[Author]

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