drawings of modern japanese menLesson (pdf)
Handout one
Handout 2
Handout 2 Central
PowerPoint

Authors:

Ted Pierce, Marshwood High School, Due south Berwick, ME
Matthew Sudnik, Key Catholic High School, Pittsburgh, PA

Introduction

What did it hateful to exist modern, for nations and people, in the early 20th century? One salient aspect of modernity is the dynamic, shifting roles and identity of men and women within society, the economy, and the family unit. We often look at the shifting roles of women as a lens into the modernization procedure and experience. Every bit 1 example, every bit women received more education in many societies in the tardily 19th and 20th centuries, they likewise sought and won greater social and economic empowerment. Equally women'due south roles inverse, men recalibrated their identities. Some recommitted to the traditional patriarchal norms while others liberated themselves from these former expectations. The shifts in gender roles and identities were no different for Japanese men and women as Nihon transformed into a modern nation and society. Through the Meiji, Taishō, and early on Shōwa periods (1868-1930s), every bit Nihon industrialized and modernized, men as well as women experienced this dynamic shift in gender identities.

In this lesson, students explore images of the various "male identities" constructed commencement in the late 1800s. Some of these identities—the head of the household and the soldier—were intentional constructions of the Meiji government as office of the project of building a modern nation state. Every bit heads of household, men had a paramount part to serve the nation past creating strong, productive families who embraced new national values. Men also had the critical responsibilities of protecting the nation through armed forces service and/or  contributing their private industry to enrich the nation. Modernization, the infusion of Western civilisation, and the resulting social and economic alter engendered other male person roles—political radical and protester, breadwinner, the mobo (modern boy)—at the beginning of the 20th century. These roles might be seen as antitheses of the model male roles. As influences that would undermine the evolution of a strong and unified state, such roles were oftentimes perceived as a threat to Japanese culture by conservatives and traditionalists likewise equally by the modern government of the belatedly 19th and early on 20th centuries.

Grade Level/Subject field Area: High Schoolhouse/Human Geography, World History

Fourth dimension Required: one pre-course homework assignment and one-two class periods

Materials

For Students:

  • Handout i:  Selected Writings on the Invention of the Modern Japanese Man
  • Handout 2:  Analyzing Historical Images

For Teachers:

  • PowerPoint: "Picturing" the Invention of the Modern Japanese Man; Projection equipment
  • Handout 2 Central

Objectives

At the conclusion of this lesson, students will be improve able to:

  • Empathise the role that the state played in molding men'southward roles and identities as the Japanese government built a modern nation state in the belatedly 19th and early 20th centuries.
  • Explicate various male roles in the modern Nippon of the tardily 19th and early 20th centuries, including means in which men'due south roles and identities changed organically vis-a-vis the evolving cocky-identity of women, who came to come across themselves in not-traditional ways.
  • Analyze the emerging roles of men in mod Japanese society in terms of wide themes of modernization, including nationalism, militarism, industrialization, imperialism.
  • Understand identity equally a socially constructed phenomenon that changes across time and identify.

Essential Questions

  • What was the duty of citizen to society, of man to state in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Japan?
  • How did the identity of the Japanese man change because of reforms in the late 19th and early 20th centuries?
  • What was the balance between private life and rights and duties to the state in Nippon during this flow?
  • How did visual messages promote ideals of men's roles inside a modernistic land? What roles and responsibilities were promoted through visual media?

Instructor Groundwork

The modernization of Japan between roughly the 1880s and the 1930s dramatically inverse not only Nippon's economic system and political system merely as well Japanese culture. In exploring this period with students, it is of import to emphasize that Nihon's path to modernization was both unique and a part of global trends. Modernization did not make Japan the same as the W. As historian Andrew Gordon writes in A Modern History of Nippon, "the revolution that began in the 1860s was a Japanese variation on a global theme of mod revolution" (Gordon 2014, 62). However, different Europe, the Japanese had a "revolution from above." Members of the samurai, the elites of the quondam order, led the movement for change. The changes imposed past the Meiji government were a direct response to the reformers' criticism of the Tokugawa era. They saw in the Tokugawa arrangement "military and economical weakness, political fragmentation, and a social hierarchy that failed to recognize men of talent" (Gordon 2014, 62).

Out of this critique came a new system emphasizing armed services and economic forcefulness through unity and centralization. Mod Nippon besides built a generation of men who labored for themselves besides as national prosperity. The revolution in Japanese male identity was on display in the pop artwork of the time.

While there is a lot of data on irresolute roles of women, the scholarship is sparse on the effects of modernistic nation-edifice on the changing roles of men in Japanese society. However, while the change in women's roles might be perceived as more radical or exceptional, it is clear from research that men'due south roles changed also. This lesson includes written and visual sources that demonstrate competing views of the man's role in Japanese society during the Meiji, Taishō, and Shōwa eras. The topic is an interesting area for students to explore considering gender is an of import aspect of identity also as cultural and political geography. Throughout world history, gender has been an ongoing business organization of religious and political institutions. The caste to which people conform to designated gender roles may take a pregnant impact on changes in society. For instance, women'southward education and status are linked to nascence rates. While male roles may not be linked so closely to demographic forces, men's comprehend or rejection of conformity can significantly unsettle order'due south traditions. Modernization in Japan required the obedience of the male person as a worker and soldier. Male person refusal to conform could have repercussions for security and the economic forcefulness of the state. Finally, the topic of gender remains salient inside Japanese culture today, when more young men and women are delaying marriage and even shunning adulthood, choosing instead to stay in their parents' households.

While the male roles emerging at this time cannot exist confined to any one category, we use two categorizations to help students consider and analyze irresolute roles of men during this menses: (1) male roles that support the nation and (two) male roles that challenge the national order.

Male person Roles that Supported the Nation.

Male person roles that supported the nation included caput of household, worker, and soldier.  Equally husbands and fathers, men contributed to national unity, modeling respect for authority and inculcating social values. As workers, at all levels, men also strengthened the national economy.  In 1873, the Meiji regime decreed universal conscription. The use of patriotism to induce military service was a hallmark of modernistic nationalism. In their roles in the military, men strengthened and protected the nation.

Male Roles that Challenged National Order.

On the other paw, modernization engendered another set of roles and identities that the empowered elite perceived as threatening to society and the new nation state. For example, the laborers' identity emerged from the Meiji project of industrialization. However, just as in the West, the laborers often turned radical as they demanded more than merely working conditions. Similarly, those left out of the Meiji modernization miracle—unemployed and impoverished segments of society—turned to protestation.

The tumultuous relationship between Japan and its neighbors also led to social protestation. For example, while Japan was victorious in the Russo-Japanese War, a conflict driven by Japan'south regal ambition, the Japanese public did not accept the weather condition for peace. The public resented their government's losing the claim to monetary reparations and territorial proceeds after a state of war that had been and so plush. The paradigm of the 1905 riot in Tokyo depicts the Japanese public'southward response to the treaty.  Co-ordinate to Andrew Gordon, "For Nippon's bureaucratic and military rulers, the Hibiya riot was a frightening event. By their deportment too as in speeches, people were maxim that if they were to pay for empire, and dice for it, their vocalisation should be respected in politics" (Gordon 2014, 132).

Finally, the introduction of Western clothes and music, coupled with rising prosperity and disposable income among urban Japanese, led to changes in style and customs. The mobo, or "modern boy," rejected many of the traditions equally well as contemporary norms of Japanese society to encompass a lifestyle of freedom and individualism. In brusk, modernization led to a range of roles and identities, from male person conformity in service to the nation to male person individualism and radicalism.

Preparing to Teach the Lesson

  1. Familiarize yourself with the images in the lesson PowerPoint, the background on the images provided in the Handout 2 Answer Primal, and the overall lesson and handouts prior to grade.
  2. Copy handouts for all students. Distribute Handout 1 prior to the first twenty-four hours of the lesson, as required advance reading. Have Handout ii ready to distribute on the start day of the lesson.
  3. At that place are many ways to nowadays the PowerPoint images contained in this lesson. The images are provided in a PowerPoint, which tin can be projected on a whiteboard or shared with students via personal devices. Either set to show the slideshow included in this lesson, or post it to your class webpage for students' personal viewing.

Lesson Plan: Step-past-Step Process

  1. The twenty-four hour period before the lesson, distribute Handout 1, Selected Writings on the Invention of the Modern Japanese Man. This handout contains excerpts from the writings of Fukuzawa Yukichi and Yosano Akiko. Note: In this lesson, the Japanese convention of family name first, given name 2d is used. Thus Fukuzawa and Yosano are family names. Alert students to this naming club. Provide the students with the following groundwork on these two writers prior to reading the excerpts:
    • Yosano Akiko (1878-1942) was the pen proper noun of one Sho Ho. Yosano Akiko was a leading feminist and social critic in early 20th-century Nihon. In addition to writing political and social commentary, she is considered one of the most significant Japanese poets of the Meiji, Taishō, and Shōwa eras.
    • Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835-1901) was a Japanese philosopher and political writer of the Meiji menstruum. He was a leading proponent of modernization; in the early on stages of nation-building, he embraced the ideas of Europe'southward Age of Enlightenment such as the power of reason and intellect over tradition. His writings were influential in the Meiji Era, and he is credited with helping to modernize Nihon. He is ofttimes compared to the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire.
    • The Importance of Their Writing.Yosano Akiko and Fukuzawa Yukichi were influential public figures who articulated stiff philosophies on the roles of individuals in Japanese lodge during this period. They each made pregnant contributions to the modernization of Japan. In the excerpts of their writings in Handout 1, these writers challenge foundational Japanese institutions and national policies of the times—the family unit, business, war. While Fukuzawa, writing during late Meiji, promoted and endorsed the Meiji government'southward broad reform agenda, Yosano Akiko, writing several decades subsequently, was far more critical of changes brought about past modernization. An instance of her position is reflected in her poem nigh the militarization and role of the Japanese soldier. Both writers should assist students encounter the changing ways of thinking of daily life and gender roles during the catamenia of Japan'due south modernization.

      Inquire students to read the selection and answer to the two questions on the handout in writing for homework, prior to the next course session.

  2. Open the lesson by request students questions most the short reading from Fukuzawa Yukichi and Yosano Akiko. The essential question to guide this give-and-take is: What is the role of the individual in the process of nation-building in early mod Japan? Employ the following questions to stimulate word:
    • In your life, do you accept a duty to your private cocky, your family, your nation?
      (Answers will vary.)
    • How does Yosano Akiko describe mod Japanese men?
      (In "The Value of Work," she writes that men are primarily concerned with coin. In "My Brother, Y'all Must Not Die," she discusses the human equally soldier and questions the calendar of state of war, including the emperor.)
    • Why might the Japanese state from 1890-1937 encourage men to be industrious and concerned with making coin? Why promote the conscript army?
      (Men were encouraged to work for the benefit of the nation and to strengthen their family, which was a microcosm of the nation inside the household. The household was meant to promote the national agenda. As for war, beginning with the Meiji Restoration, all immature men were required to give their service to the nation.)

      Throughout the discussion, jot educatee answers on the board. To culminate the give-and-take, consider the responses equally a whole. What roles and responsibilities emerge? Inquire students why these might exist important roles in a nation trying to modernize and build a sense of nationhood.

  3. Side by side, share the prototype of the Japanese board game, Progression of Educational activity for Men (1890) on the whiteboard or projector. This is the first epitome in the PowerPoint. Provide the following background on this game:
    • Inexpensive, paper lath games, chosen sugoroku, were very popular in Meiji and early 20th-century Nihon and tin still be institute today. These Japanese lath games were distributed free in magazines and newspapers. Frequently these games told a story or served an educational purpose, conveying values or goals of the broader society through the goals and steps of the game.

      This game, Progression of Education for Men, tells the progression, through images and stops on the game board, of a Japanese human being's public life bike from birth through the stages of adulthood.  It is important for students to note that the progression depicted was an ideal of the middle and upper classes in Japan at the time. While not explicitly a work of propaganda, the game has a specific message of behave and responsibility to the nation that supports the larger project of modernization and patriotism. Information technology underscores the importance of public life and responsibility for the upper class man in Japanese society.

  4. As a form, brainstorm to analyze the board game, starting with the image in the bottom right-hand corner (the kickoff of the game) and working across and up from right to left (the end of the game). Ask the students to describe what they meet in each epitome. In item, guide students to look at the lifestyle of the homo in each image. Inquire students to answer the following questions: What is the man doing in each block? How is he dressed? Is his attire traditional Japanese or Western? How does he advance in his life? How does he advance in his career? Encourage students to make notes every bit the discussion proceeds.
  5. Show students the 2d PowerPoint image, entitled "A Happy Worker Makes a Happy Home" (1932) and explain that this poster has a very dissimilar origin; information technology was part of an advert entrada by a labor welfare association in the early on 1930s. Ask: How do these two different pieces—the board game and the labor welfare clan affiche—convey national expectations of the Japanese man? What is the message in the game? In the poster? (Students should be able to recognize that the labor poster—like the board game—besides promotes broader government goals for the population, portraying the Japanese homo who is working difficult both for the national economy and his household.) Guide student word so that students can identify the post-obit themes in the ii visuals: nationalism, military machine service, the connection between the national economy and household economy, connection between progress in one'south life and progress of the nation. Write these major themes on the board.
  6. Distribute Handout 2 as the class views the remainder of the slides in the PowerPoint collection. Annotation that, with the exception of the start image, each image first appears individually and so paired with another image. On Handout 2, students are to note both what they come across in each image (formal) and the connection between the male prototype and the modern Japanese nation of the early on 20th century (factual). For example, as y'all project image 1 from the PowerPoint collection on the board, the students should complete questions 1 and 2 on the handout by writing next to #ane what they see in the image of the sugoroku board game (question 1) and connections betwixt the image and the modernistic Japanese nation (question 2). Go on through all the images in the PowerPoint. Project all images then students tin can view the continuity and modify across all of these images.
    If the students take personal devices, upload the PowerPoint of images on a form webpage and encourage the students to view and write well-nigh the images.
  7. As a terminal step in the visual analysis, direct students' attention to the final slide contrasting the modern boy (mobo) with the soldier. Focus students' attending on formal aspects of the images such as the placement of the text, the contrasting backgrounds (street with modern urban landscape vs. the traditional samurai castle, etc.). Then ask students the following questions:
    • What dissimilarity or confusion do these two images create?
    • What makes each image appealing and compelling?
    • What do these images convey well-nigh the office of the state in the lives of Japanese men in this period?
    • How did the state's projection of nation-building reinforce certain ideas of beingness a human being?
    • How did the state benefit or suffer from these various iterations of Japanese men?
  8. Conclude the lesson by having students individually consummate question 3 on Handout 2. Provide additional instructions and objectives of the writing assignment, as follows:
    • Write most the images in terms of political, economic, and social office, as well every bit how these images of the male changed across fourth dimension and expressed nationalism, militarism, industrialization, and imperialism. These features defined Japan equally a mod land on par with the West. For the alternative male types—the protestor, the socialist, the modern man—which of these national ideologies were they challenging? What were their grievances with the four ideologies?
    • This synthesis activity can be completed briefly as an "exit ticket" or equally homework, which would allow students to etch a longer essay.

Assessment

The synthesis writing activity tin serve as the assessment for this lesson. In the essay, the student must describe with precise examples how images of the male changed across fourth dimension. They should draw connections between the image of the male and concepts of nationalism, militarism, industrialization, and imperialism. For example, the educatee should exist able to identify which male images promote the national interest and which male responsibilities—the family human and businessman—promote the national economy. Students should exist able to identify militarism and military service as a salient prototype in both the sugoroku game and the military affiche. These political and economical identities helped define Japan as a modern state.

Standards Alignment

Common Cadre:

  • CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.9-10.1: Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from information technology; cite specific textual bear witness when writing or speaking to back up conclusions drawn from the text.
  • CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.ix-ten.7: Integrate and evaluate content presented in various formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, likewise as in words.
  • CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.9-ten.ix: Clarify how two or more than texts address similar themes or topics in gild to build noesis or to compare the approaches the authors take.

National Standards for World History:

  • Era 7, An Age of Revolutions, 1750-1914, Standard 4: Patterns of nationalism, state-edifice, and social reform in Europe and the Americas, 1830-1914
  • Standard five: Patterns of global change in the era of Western military and economical domination, 1800-1914
  • Standard 6: Major global trends from 1750-1914
  • Era eight: A One-half-Century of Crisis and Accomplishment, 1900-1945, Standard one: Reform, revolution, and social alter in the world economy of the early century

References

Gordon, Andrew.  A Modernistic History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present. 3rd edition. New York: Oxford University Printing, 2014.

Additional Resources

Dower, John W. A Century of Japanese Photography. London: Hutchinson, 1971.

Duus, Peter. Modern Nihon. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.

Gordon, Andrew. A Mod History of Nihon: From Tokugawa Times to the Present. 3rd edition. New York: Oxford Academy Press, 2014.

Morse, Samuel Crowell, et al. Reinventing Tokyo: Nihon's Largest City in the Creative Imagination. Amherst, MA: Mead Art Museum, Amherst Higher, 2012.

Sato, Barbara Hamill. The New Japanese Woman: Modernity, Media, and Women in Interwar Nippon. Durham: Duke University Printing, 2003.

Created 2015 Programme for Teaching East Asia, Academy of Colorado Boulder.