Just like the old World Book encyclopedias, I could spend hours looking at old maps on wikipedia. There is so much information about Japan, the Dutch, and cross cultural interactions in the above map from 1890. How will people view the maps we have today in 2190?
The Wedded Rocks, also known as Meoto Iwa in Japanese, are a pair of natural rock formations located off the coast of Futami in Ise City, Mie Prefecture, Japan. The rocks are considered sacred in the Shinto religion and are one of the most famous and popular spiritual landmarks in Japan. The larger rock, which …
Teaching the history of East Asia this year has given me the opportunity to conceptualize different ways to teach history – through academic works, literature, and manga. The tetralogy of Yukio Mishima is a series of four novels written by the Japanese author Yukio Mishima, published between 1965 and 1970. The four novels, which are …
The Temple University Graduate Student Association is on strike. They have been striking since January 31 in order to get fairer wages for the considerable amount of work they do as graduate students and instructors. In response, on February 8, Temple University ended their tuition-remission, sent the strikers a bill for the semester, cancelled their …
Like the Compostela on the Camino de Santiago, the Kumano Kodo has Ofuda. Ofuda is a type of talisman or amulet commonly used in Shinto, a traditional religion in Japan. It is a small wooden tablet or piece of paper that has been inscribed with prayers, religious texts, or symbols and is believed to have …
This documentary shows eleven pilgrims as they travel for several months from their hometown to Lhasa. It was released in 2017 and shown in settings ranging from MoMa in NYC to theatres in Beijing. Here is a twelve minute cut of a much longer film:
After years of reports on the Uyghur concentration camps China has in Xinjiang, people are starting to look back at Tibet. There, the government of China is separating families and currently has over a million students prisoner in state-run boarding schools. You can read more here. The official UN report is here. Residential schools shouldn’t …
A famous story that has been remade into several movies, this version wasreleased days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 1, 1941. A piece of imperial propaganda, that survived the disasterous war.
“Silence” by Shusaku Endo is a novel that has garnered much attention and critical acclaim since its publication in 1966. Set in 17th century Japan, it tells the story of a Portuguese Jesuit priest named Sebastião Rodrigues who travels to Japan to investigate the disappearance of his mentor, Fr. Cristóvão Ferreira. The novel is not …
As I continue rereading my favorite Japanese literature to prepare for my trip to Japan, I had to revist Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri. I had read this in the build up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and the beginning of the pandemic. It was just as powerful the second time around, but rather …