A fun book to draw from when teaching modern Japan is Soeda Azembo and Michael Lewis, A Life Adrift: Soeda Azembo, Popular Song and Modern Mass Culture in Japan ( London: Routledge, 2009). You can’t assign it, since it is not in our databases and costs too much, and maybe would not work that way ..read more

Below is the mid-term for my Modern Japan class. You can see the syllabus here. I wanted to think about this a bit, because I am trying to do several things with it, and I am not sure how well it will work. First a bit of background. I have usually liked take-home tests, since ..read more

For those of you who don’t follow American politics, the immigrant scourge is back. This time it is Haitian immigrants eating your pets which has gone from a crazy internet meme to the Republican candidate for Vice-President pushing it in his speeches. That actually is, I think, sort of new, in that this used to ..read more

To all students! Below are some quotes from Chairman Mao Zedong, ripped shamelessly from their context, to help you in the research and writing of your essay.1 Approaching your Essay with the Right Attitude “On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written; the freshest ..read more

There are lots of things to keep in mind when working with texts by Mao Zedong. Many of the works that come to us today were speeches or notes on speeches that have undergone significant changes over time as Mao edited many of his best known works. In research on, say, the 1930s and 1940s ..read more

As is the tradition here, I am posting my syllabi so people can make suggestions, although I  m doing so too late to take much advantage of your helpful advice. Three classes this Fall Drugs in Asian History (senior history capstone/research class) Modern Japan 1850-Present (upper division history class) Rise of Modern Asia –(Gen Ed ..read more

Via Sinologists list, a Chinese news item on a Tang tomb in Taiyuan There is a nice scene of food prep, so if, for teaching purposes, you need a picture of a woman doing laundry? while keeping an eye on the stove, here it is.   From text In the workshop scene, there are scenes of a man pushing a mill to hull grain, a woman pushing a stone mill to grind flour, a man making noodles, a man stepping on a pestle and pounding rice, and a woman fetching water with a water pulley.在生活作坊图上绘有男子推碾为谷物脱壳、妇人推石磨磨面粉、男子制作面食、男子踩碓舂米、妇人用桔槔取水等场景 http://www.news.cn/20240605/1d57a1c59ef048ffb61de309dba26d35/c ..read more

One thing that I did in my final exam for Rice Paddies this Spring was to ask them to compare how how Wikipedia and Chat GPT did at explaining terms that in the past  would have been ID questions. (exam posted below) I think this worked OK. I am increasingly using exams to try and teach them things, rather than to test if they have already learned something. I don’t really care for in-class exams, since the basic concept “How well can you answer this question without looking at any sources” is sort of similar to “how well can you fix this engine if your only tool is a Phillips screwdriver ..read more

“Air policing” was a term the British seem to have come up with after the Great War. Although using the new technology to keep the natives down started almost as soon as men could fly, the development of the concept owed more to Churchill’s enthusiasm for a way to control the Empire on the cheap and Trenchard’s need to find a role for the RAF now that the war was over. Omissi is the standard source.1 He has all the stuff on the early efforts to intimidate Iraqis and Somalis and others from the air, as well as the early debates on how effective this could be. What I find interesting is how the ..read more

Three things to use in class Epitaph for Mme Ren, titled Lady of Virtue (shuren) The Honorable Bao Deming, the Assistant Regional Military Commander for my province, lost his first wife. Prior to her burial, he came to me, saying: “My first wife attended to me most diligently. Now that she has died and left me, I wish to request her epitaph from you.” My epitaph is as follows: Mme Ren was the daughter of Wei Qing, of the Xinyang Guard Battalion. When she married the Assistant Commander, she was honored with the title Lady of Virtue. This Lady of Virtue exemplified womanly virtues in her pers ..read more