Japan
“The Way of Ruling a State”: Tokugawa Japan and Bureaucratic Elites
Discussion of how Tokugawa Japan encouraged samurai to also become civil officials
“Seven Snowfalls Until the Spring”: The Little Ice Age and Tokugawa Japan
Discussion of teaching the Little Ice Age in Japan
The Popularity of East Asian Buddhist Woodblock Prints
Discussion of using images to teach continuity of Buddhism in East Asia
Visualizing the Continuity of Asian Trade Networks in Sixteenth-Century Japanese Nanban Screens
Discussion of Japanese nanban screens and teaching continuity in the sixteenth-century Indian Ocean.
Stepping Out from Zheng He’s Shadow: World History, Ming China, and Greater East Asia in the Fifteenth Century
Most authors of world history textbooks and world history teachers seem to love the voyages of Zheng He. The treasure ships dwarfed all contemporary ships, the two main individuals (the Yongle Emperor and Admiral Zheng He) were larger than life characters, and there were African giraffes being mistaken for mythical
Eurocentrism and the Myth of East Asian Isolation
Explores the eurocentric tendency to describe early modern China and Japan as isolationist. Instead of thinking of these states as isolationist, we should view them as simply having a different model of foreign relations.
