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| JAPAN:
HISTORY-ARCHAEOLOGY |
| Muromachi
Period (1333-1568) |
• The
Age of the Samurai (1185-1868) [Asia for
Educators]
An introductory outline, with discussion questions.
• Muromachi
Period (1392-1573) [Timeline of Art History,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art]
A short introduction, with images of six artworks in the museum's
collection.
• Japan's
Medieval Age: The Kamakura & Muromachi Periods [About
Japan: A Teacher's Resource]
An in-depth look at political, economic, cultural, and religious
life during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods.
• Age
of Military Rule: Cycles of Restoration and Destruction [Princeton
University Art Museum]
An excellent short overview of the Kamakura, Kenmu, Nanbokucho, and
Muromachi periods.
Lesson Plan • A
Case Study of Medieval Japan through Art: Samurai Life in Medieval
Japan [Program for Teaching East Asia,
Center for Asian Studies, University of Colorado]
"The samurai warrior has come to symbolize Japan's medieval period of social
and political unrest that lasted from the late twelfth to late sixteenth centuries.
Working with artistic renderings of the samurai as well as cultural artifacts of
samurai life, students recognize the complex, complementary aspects of the samurai
culture that developed during this period. Students consider this more nuanced view
of the samurai as they take on the role of advisors to a director hoping to make
an authentic film about Medieval Japan."
An in-depth introductory essay and lesson plan, with images, focusing
on the Kamakura (1185-1333), the Muromachi (1336-1573), and the Momoyama
(1573-1603) shogunates.
• Teacher's
Guide for Medieval Japan and the Rise of the Shoguns [Cobblestone
Publications]
This teacher's guide is for the January 2006 issue of Calliope,
a world history magazine for junior high school students, but the
questions would be relevant to many of the resources listed here.
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|
| Momoyama
(1573-1615) Period; Edo Period (1615-1868) |
• The
Age of the Samurai (1185-1868) [Asia for
Educators]
An introductory outline, with discussion questions.
• Unification
and Endurance: From Fortresses to Cities [Princeton
University Art Museum]
An excellent overview of the Momoyama and Edo periods.
Lesson Plan • A
Case Study of Tokugawa Japan through Art: Views of a Society in
Transformation [Program for Teaching East
Asia, Center for Asian Studies, University of Colorado]
"For many years, Western scholarship presented a narrative of Tokugawa Japan
as a stable, but also stagnant society. More recent scholarship identifies the Tokugawa
period, 1603-1868, as a time when Japan experienced significant social, economic,
and political changes that laid the groundwork for modernization. In this lesson,
students consider a major art form of the period — woodblock prints — as
historical documents providing a visual record of a society and country in transformation.
They identify specific changes Japan underwent on its early path to becoming a modern
nation." With an in-depth introductory essay and lesson plan.
Lesson Plans • Teaching
East and West: Establishing Historical Context Through a Comparison
of Tokugawa Japan and Elizabethan England [Center
for Renaissance and Baroque Studies, University of Maryland]
With 18 lesson plans created by the participants of "Teaching
East and West," a 2004-2005 conference for K-12 teachers.
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|
| GOVERNMENT
AND ADMINISTRATION |
| The
Government of the Tokugawa Shôgunate |
• The
Epoch of Unification: 1568-1615 AD [About
Japan: A Teacher's Resource]
An in-depth article examining Japan's transformation "from a divided
land of constant warfare to a unified, relatively peaceful land during
the years 1568-1615."
• The
Polity of the Tokugawa Era [About Japan:
A Teacher's Resource]
An in-depth article explaining
"the nature of the Tokugawa polity, which featured a political system
that survived for more than two centuries."
Edicts of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, 1536-1598
Primary Source w/DBQs • The
Edicts of Toyotomi Hideyoshi: Excerpts from Limitation on
the Propagation of Christianity, 1587, and Expulsion of Missionaries,
1587 [PDF] [Asia for Educators]
Primary Source w/DBQs • The
Edicts of Toyotomi Hideyoshi: Excerpts from Collection of
Swords, 1588 [PDF] [Asia for Educators]
Edicts of the Tokugawa Shogunate
Primary Source w/DBQs • The
Edicts of the Tokugawa Shogunate: Excerpts from Laws of Military
Households, 1615 [PDF] [Asia for Educators]
Primary Source w/DBQs • The
Edicts of 1635 Ordering the Closing of Japan: Addressed to the Joint
Bugyô of Nagasaki [PDF] [Asia for Educators]
Also see the Video
Unit on Tokugawa Japan in the History-Archaeology
section (Momoyama and Edo Periods), above, for more about
the unification
of Japan under Tokugawa Ieyasu.
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|
| ECONOMY,
WORK, TRADE, FOREIGN RELATIONS |
| Japanese-Dutch
Trade |
Primary Source +
DBQs + Map Exercise + Lesson Plans • Paper
Trails: Deshima Island: A Stepping Stone between Civilizations [World
History Connected]
"Deshima ... was a small artificial
island in Nagasaki Bay ... on the southwestern Japanese island of
Kyushu. From 1641 to 1845, Deshima served as the sole conduit of
trade between Europe and Japan, and during the period of self-imposed
Japanese seclusion (approximately 1639-1854) was Japan's only major
link to the European world." An excellent overview, with primary
sources, discussion questions, document and map-based exercises,
plus links to relevant lesson plans.
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|
| SOCIETY |
| Social
Hierarchy under the Tokugawa Shôgunate |
|
| The
Samurai Class |
|
| The
Merchant Class |
|
| Women |
|
| LITERATURE |
| Comic
Prose, Comic Verse |
|
| The
Poetry of Matsuo Bashô (1644-1694) |
Primary Source • The
Poetry of Bashô [Asia
for Educators]
Six examples of haiku by Matsuo Bashô. Followed by discussion
questions.
Primary Source • Bashô's
Narrow Road to the Deep North [Asia
for Educators]
An excerpt from Bashô's Narrow Road to the Deep North. Followed
by discussion questions.
Video Unit • Bashô's
Narrow Road to the Deep North [Asia for Educators]
This video unit on Matsuo Bashô's Narrow Road to the Deep North, the author's
famous account of his own journey through northern Japan, discusses the notion of
travel as metaphor and the figure of Bashô as a symbol of spiritual freedom
in Tokugawa Japan. Featuring Columbia University professors Donald Keene and Haruo
Shirane.
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|
| Bunraku;
Kabuki |
Chikamatsu Monzaemon,
1653-1725
Primary Source • Chikamatsu:
"Japan's Shakespeare" [Asia
for Educators]
A short introduction to Bunraku, the puppet theater of Japan, and
its great dramatist, Chikamatsu Monzaemon. Includes
a description of a recommended play (The Love Suicides at
Sonezaki), followed by classroom exercises for students.
• The
Barbara Curtis Adachi Bunraku Collection [C.V.
Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University]
"Columbia University Libraries' Bunraku collection is one the most
extensive in the world... The Bunraku gallery is divided into plays,
productions, authors, backstage subjects, kashira, and characters.
It documents the form's revival in the second half of the 20th century,
through more than 12,500 slides and nearly 7,000 black-and-white photographs
of rehearsals and performances." The collection includes images from
Chikamatsu's
The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, recommended above.
• Kabuki
Theatre of Japan [The British Museum]
Online presentation of the 2005 exhibition , which examined the famous rivalry between
the Kabuki actors Rikan and Shikan. Features 24 images, each with explanatory text.
An excellent introduction to aspects of Kabuki, including history, audiences, music,
costumes, roles, and actors.
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|
| ART
AND MUSIC |
| The
Cultivated Samurai |
• Samurai [The
Metropolitan Museum of Art]
"In contrast with the brutality of their profession, many leaders
of the military government became highly cultivated individuals.
Some were devoted patrons of Buddhism, especially of the Zen and
Jodo schools. Several were known as accomplished poets, and others
as talented calligraphers." With three related artworks.
• Shoguns
and Art [The
Metropolitan Museum of Art]
" ... the shogunate promoted a culture that
combined aspects of samurai culture and the arts of the imperial
court, with the balance between the two shifting in accordance with
the interests of individual shoguns and their advisors. With the
ascendancy of Zen Buddhism and the interest of many prominent monks
in Chinese culture, the shogunate absorbed the arts of Chinese literature,
Confucian studies, the ritualized consumption of tea, ink monochrome
paintings, garden design, and calligraphy." With nine
related artworks.
• Permanent
Exhibitions at the Tokugawa Art Museum [The
Tokugawa Art Museum]
The core of the museum's collection comprises objects inherited from
the first shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu. The online collection displayed
at the museum's website includes arms and armor, teaware,
decorative arts, clothing, and Noh theater masks. See especially
Exhibition Rooms 1 (The Symbol of the Warrior), 2 (The
Practice of Tea: A Daimyo's Tea Room), and 3 (Formal Chamber of a
Daimyo's Residence) for a glimpse into the life of the shogun during
the Edo and Tokugawa periods.
• Formal
Audience Hall
(Shoin) [Minneapolis Institute of Arts]
With introductory overview and images of a permanent architectural installation at
the MIA that replicates a formal 17th-century shoin at the Konchi-in, a temple within
the vast Zen monastery of Nanzenji in eastern Kyoto. The CURATOR INTERVIEW section
examines aspects of the room in greater detail.
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|
| Chanoyu (Tea Ceremony) and Related Decorative Arts |
• The
Evolution of the Tea Ceremony [About Japan:
A Teacher's Resource]
"[A] concise and accessible introduction to the Japanese tea
ceremony, or chanoyu," describing "its history from the early ninth century
to the present day" and discussing "the four major aspects of chanoyu."
• Cornell
University Teahouse Project [Cornell University,
Johnson Museum of Art]
This website documents a 2003 project by Cornell University students "to study
the early development of chanoyu culture, architecture, and gardens, and to build
an experimental teahouse and tea garden outside the Johnson Museum." Includes
information about the cultural history of chanoyu, historical background of the soan ("rustic teahouse") and the roji ("rustic tea garden"), and photographs
documenting the building process.
• Teahouse
(Chashitsu) [Minneapolis Institute of Arts]
With introductory overview and images of a permanent architectural installation
at the MIA that replicates the Sa-an, an 18th-century teahouse in the Gyokurin-in,
a temple complex within the famous Zen monastery of Daitoku-ji in Kyoto. The CURATOR
INTERVIEW section examines aspects of the room in greater detail.
• Turning
Point: Oribe and the Arts of Sixteenth-Century Japan [The
Metropolitan Museum of Art]
Online presentation of a 2003-2004 exhibition that "explores the genesis of
the dramatic stylistic changes in Japanese art during the brief but brilliant Momoyama
period (1573–1615), which witnessed the struggles of ambitious warlords for
control of the long-splintered country and Japan’s first encounter with the
West. ... Serving the last two leaders [of the period] as warrior and tea master—or
cultural adviser—was Furuta Oribe (1543/44–1615), who left an indelible
mark on the aesthetics of the period." Featuring related artworks with descriptions,
organized by medium (genre painting on folding screens and hanging scrolls; ceramics
for the tea ceremony; lacquerware; and tsujigahana textiles for garments worn by
the society's elite).
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|
| Kano
and Rinpa Schools of Painting; Early Ukiyo-e Prints |
• The
Kano School of Painting [The
Metropolitan Museum of Art]
A brief overview of the Kano school, established by Kano Masanobu (1434-1530). Prominent
for more than 300 years, the Kano school is considered to be the "longest lived
and most influential school of painting in Japanese history." Closely associated
with their powerful patrons, the Tokugawa shogunate, the Kano school prospered throughout
the Edo period. With three related artworks.
• Rinpa
Painting Style [The
Metropolitan Museum of Art]
A brief introduction to the Rinpa school of painting, which was "a key part
of the revival in the Edo period of indigenous Japanese artistic interests described
by the term yamato-e." With five related artworks and links to related essays
about yamato-e painting and seasonal imagery in Japanese art.
• The
Art of Hon'ami Kôetsu [Princeton
University Art Museum]
An excellent interactive website for exploring an Edo period handscroll by Hon'ami
Kôetsu (1558-1637). "In this handscroll Kôetsu transcribed ten verses
from the poetry anthology Shinkokin wakashû on sheets of colored paper
that are decorated on the front and back with woodblock-printed mica designs." After
exploring the scroll the user can write his/her own poem (by selecting from a set
of phrases) and then see this poem "written" on his/her own handscroll
in the style of Kôetsu.
• Art
of the Pleasure Quarters and the Ukiyo-e Style [The
Metropolitan Museum of Art]
A lengthy discussion of the social developments in the Edo period
that gave rise to literary and visual arts such as kabuki theater
and ukiyo-e paintings and woodblock prints. With five related artworks.
• The
Floating World of Ukiyo-e: Shadows, Dreams, and Substance [The
Library of Congress]
Online presentation of a 2003 exhibition showcasing the Library's holdings of Japanese
prints, books, and drawings from the 17th to the 19th century. Images organized into
the following categories: 1) Early Masters (1600-1740); 2) Major Genres: Beauties,
Actors, and Landscapes; 3) Images and Literary Sources; 4) Realia and Reportage;
5) Japan and the West: Artistic Cross-Fertilization; 6) Beyond Ukiyo-e: Modern and
Contemporary Japanese Prints. The EXHIBITION OVERVIEW provides historical background
about ukiyo-e.
Also see the Video
Unit on Tokugawa Japan in the History-Archaeology
section (Momoyama and Edo Periods),
above, for more about the pleasure
quarters of Tokugawa Japan.
Find more art-related
resources for Japan,
1450-1750 CE
at OMuRAA (Online Museum Resources on Asian
Art)
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| © 2009 Asia for Educators,
Columbia University |
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