Assignment One: Due February 5 - Read Chapter 4 of Giving Up the Gun, by Noel Perrin. You’ll need to make yourself a copy of the chapter for this assignment. Look on the History bookshelf for copies of the book or a xerox you can xerox.
This chapter is a good example of how historians work. Perrin asks, “Why did Japan turn away from guns when Europe did not?” He comes up with five reasons (conveniently, he numbers them so readers can more easily follow his lines of thought). And then he uses factual evidence, things like statistics, quotes, historical events, and decrees, to support each of his theories.
Here’s your assignment. Along with reading the chapter,
a. Figure out two distinguishable methods of marking the text, for example two colors of highlighters; or 2 colors of pen; or underlining and boxing text; or underlining and marking with a vertical line in the margin, etc.
b. Using one method of marking the text, mark Perrin’s five reasons or theories as to why Japan turned away from firearms.
c. Using your other method of marking the text, mark the facts that he uses to support his theories. While you are at it, question whether Perrin has adequately supported his theories.
d. Optional — See if you can get into a mental dialogue with the text. Write little notes in the margins with your questions and reactions, like “Bosh!” or “What about . . .?” or “Well put.”
d. On the front of the handout, provide a key explaining your text-marking methods.
Alternative assignment: You may like to read the whole book. It is short, well written, and very interesting. If you borrow a copy from the history shelf, be sure there’s still a xerox of chapter 4 for others to use. Used copies are available through Amazon for $5.
Assignment Two: Due Feb. 12 We’re Going (on an internet trip) to Japan!
First, Spend at least an hour mooching around on the following websites:
We’ll visit some castles at http://www.jcastle.info/
Please click on “Structures” on the top bar menu and read all of the links off of that page. Then visit some of the castles. I recommend Matsue, Sakasai, and Hikone for starters. Make sure you click on all the pictures on the right for each castle entry.
Also look at the entry for Kakunodate Castle. The castle itself is gone; these are all pictures of the ordinary houses of samurai.
Now we’ll visit some gardens at http://learn.bowdoin.edu/japanesegardens/index.html
Thoroughly explore Konchi-in; Katsura; Kenroku-in
Also look at examples and explanations of aspects of Japanese gardens in the Elements section. I particularly enjoyed looking at examples under sand and pebbles, borrowed scenery, and bridges.
Time to eat! The restaurant we’re going to is probably very expensive. It’s at http://www.kinmata.com/english/cuisine.html Mmm, lots of see-eel. What will you order?
Now for the writing portion of this assignment:
You should always keep a journal when you go on a special trip like this. After a long day touring all over Japan, we will head back to our ryokan and share a hot bath. Then you will write a wonderful description of your day.
Assignment Three (or – My Students Went to Edo and All They Sent Me Were Some Postcards
Due February 19
Write me a postcard from Tokugawa era Japan. Here’s a example:
Dear Ann, We went to a kabuki play today. We had to sneak away from our samurai hosts, because kabuki is for commoners. We saw Chushingura, about the 47 ronin who avenged their lord’s death. This really happened a few years ago, and everyone is still talking about it. Since it’s illegal to have plays about current events, the story was set in the past, but everyone knew what it was really about. The play went on for hours. We were able to buy tea and lunch and eat while we watched. I bought this woodblock print in the lobby. People here collect have favorite actors and collect prints of them, kind of like teen idols now. This actor’s name is Otani Oniji II. Here he’s playing the part of a clever servant. You can tell he’s playing a servant because he is not wearing white makeup. Wish you were here!
First, find or create a good image for your postcard. It should be the size of a large postcard — say, 8 ½” x 5 ½ “ (that’s half of a regular sheet of paper). You can draw it yourself or you can download it from the internet, where you can find lots of great wood block prints – called ukiyo-e – from the Edo period.
Then, write me a letter about something you are doing while visiting Japan during the Tokugawa period (also known as the Edo period). Maybe you’d also like to explain the picture on your postcard.
The example I’ve made is lots smaller than 8 ½ by 5 ½, so you will be able to write lots more on your postcard. Write at least 250 words, not counting the address.
Basically, I’m asking you to do a little research paper, but more interesting. Pick something you’d like to write about, then do some research so you know what you are talking about. For example, you can tell me about the clothes you see people wearing or the food you’ve been eating. You can tell me about toys, toilets, the inn where you are staying, a temple or shrine you have visited, a festival, the jobs you see people working at, the farms, sumo wrestling, or anything else you would like to learn more about if you were visiting Edo.
Some places to look for ukiyo-e –
http://www.hiroshige.org.uk/hiroshige/100_views_edo/100_views_edo.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/36_Views_of_Mount_Fuji_%28Hokusai%29
or the look through the collection at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Here is a directory to sites with way more ukiyo-e than can be easily handled:
http://www.ukiyo-e.se/guide.html
I’d like you to take some time with this assignment – have some fun with it and do a nice job. If you have problems with printing out an image, please ask me for help.
Assignments Four and Five
Due March 5
Learn more about something you’d like to learn more about that is relevant to the Tokugawa Period and share it with the class.
Do you know how many of you said your favorite assignment last semester was the Cavalcade of Canadians? Obviously I need to let you all do more, um, . . .there has to be a better word than oral reports . . .
Okay, it doesn’t have to be an oral report. You can make a poster or a you tube video, write a report, demonstrate something you’ve learned to do, show off something you’ve made, and so on.
This is a two week long assignment, so spend some time learning and some time on the presentation. Use several sources of information and no matter what form your presentation takes, hand in a written bibliography.
Do a little research in an area that interests you before you define the subject of your research. Think in terms of questions you would like to answer. For example, if you are interested in ceramics, you could ask yourself “What techniques did they use in making raku pottery to get it to look that way?” or “Why did they think raku pottery was beautiful?” These questions would lead to two very different inquiries, both of them potentially more interesting than just researching “raku pottery.”
Here are some ideas to get you started:
architecture (too big a topic in itself)
– teahouses, temples (or a specific temple or shrine), peasant houses, middle class houses, palaces, plumbing, toilets, earthquake resistance
delve into an aspect of Shinto – the creation myth, the pantheon of major gods, exorcisms, relevance today
delve into an aspect of Buddhism – what’s involved in being a monk, zen koans, use of mandalas, warrior monks
poetry role of women ceramics
gardens dry gardens tea ceremony
kabuki bunraku Noh
education ukiyo-e bushido
sword making toys calligraphy
wabi mons (crests) armor
guns festivals Christianity during this era
food music dance
Assignment Six: I do haiku. Do you do haiku too?
Due March 12
First, read this short biography of the poet Basho.
Second, Read all 30 different translations of one haiku by Basho
Third, choose three of the translations to look at more closely and write an analysis of them. Describe the differences among the 3 translations. Why, do you think, did the translators make the choices they did? Which of the poems is the most successful (or are they successful in different way?)
Fourth, write some haiku of your own.
Here are the rules for haiku:
- Three lines – 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second, and 5 in the third. (Okay to fudge if poetically necessary)
- It describes succinctly and evocatively a single moment, hopefully a universal kind of moment, so that the reader is reminded of experiencing it himself or herself, with all the evocativeness of the season or the mood.
- It relies on one at least one of the senses – sight, sound, smell, touch, taste
- It does not use metaphors – that is, it doesn’t say something is like something else. It is saying something is.
[One haiku is plenty, but I sometimes find that it is easier to write or make several things because then there’s less pressure to have any one of them be any good. And then I am sometimes surprised to find that one of them is good – or at least okay. And it is hardly ever the first one.]
Here – just to show you I’m willing to do it too – are two examples:
Example One - A bad haiku because it is a metaphor – comparing rain and tears:
Dripping of the rain
Clouds shroud the Catalinas
Endless tears of grief
Example Two: A bad haiku, certainly, but it describes a specific evocative situation
Dripping of the rain
Clouds shroud the Catalinas
No monitor today
Assignment Seven: Stories by Saikaku
Due March 19
Choose a story from Five Women Who Loved Love or a selection from This Scheming World, both written in the late 1600s by Ihara Saikaku. Both books are on the History shelf near the writing computers.
If you read a story from Five Women Who Loved Love, be sure you are reading the whole story; they are long, broken into chapters, and the plots ramble so it’s not really clear when they end. If you read some of the short selections from This Scheming World, be sure you read at least twenty pages.
If you don’t want to choose for yourself, I have copied three selections from This Scheming World: “Life and Doorposts: Both Are Borrowed,” “The Opening Performance by the New Players,” and “How Lovely the Sight of Rice Cake Flowers at New Year’s.” You can find a copy in the 3-ring binder on the History shelf. Please make a xerox for yourself when you are ready to read it.
After reading, you have a choice of writing assignments. Either (1) write some of your reflections about what these stories reveal about the chonin class during the Tokugawa era, or (2) list all of the food eaten in the selection you read.
If you ever find yourself just noodling around on the internet, why not check out these ukiyo-e flash animations ?
Assignment Eight: Tokugawa endtimes
Due March 26
1. Read pages 101 through 111 of The Cartoon History of the Modern World, Part Two. I’ll leave the book on the history shelf and a xerox of those pages in the history notebook.
2. Pretend you are a trusted adviser to Tokugawa Iemitsu – Ieyasu’s grandson and the shogun who issued the Closed Country Edict or 1635. Pretend also that you are prescient [that is, you can see the future] and can see what happens at the end of the Tokugawa shogunate. What advice do you give him? Please think about this, weighing the pros and cons of Japan’s two centuries of isolation, and considering both Iemitsu’s long-term and short-term goals and interests. I think a thoughtful answer would have at least three paragraphs.
