Education About Asia: Online Archives

NEW FOR 2023: Beginning with Spring 2023, subscribers to the print edition of Education About Asia (EAA) will receive additional exclusive digital access to the current year’s three issues (spring, fall, and winter) as an online flipbook for the duration of their active subscription. Articles from the three print issues for 2023 will be uploaded to the EAA Digital archives in 2024. View the TOC and Editor’s Message for the Spring 2023 issue. Subscribe today to stay up to date with EAA!

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Feature Article

Colors of Japan: Literature Comes to the Table

by Linda H. Chance

Figure 1 shows one of the most delicious treats you can imagine, a Japanese sweet to accompany a bowl of whipped green tea. It imitates the shape of a camella blossom and (not shown here due to the black and white print of the journal) is rendered in delicate colors. Would it surprise you to learn that the ultimate inspiration for this morsel was literature written largely by women a millennium ago? Readers of Japanese works from around the year 1000 in the Heian Period found appreciation there ...

Feature Article

The Past, Present, and Future of the Swastika in Japan

by Todd Munson

Imagine your surprise as a recent arrival to Tokyo, among the world’s most futuristic and globalized cities. Safely ensconced in the Starbucks at Shibuya crossing, you open Apple Maps to plot a day of sightseeing in nearby Kamakura, a locale famed for its rich history and deep connection to Buddhism. Zooming in on the map (Figure 1), the first images to greet your eyes are . . . swastikas? Scattered all over the screen? Does the city hide a secret past related to the National Socialist German ...

Feature Article

Enlivened Learning: How to Play the Karma-based Moksha Game in the College Classroom

by Mark Dennis

Editor’s Note: Please see the EAA online supplements for this issue including video screencasts, a course syllabus, and an example scoring sheet that will help demonstrate the Moksha game and various procedures described in this article. If you have any questions or comments about these materials, or about the Moksha game itself, you may contact the author at m.dennis@tcu.edu. This article describes Moksha (Sanskrit for “liberation” and “freedom”), a karma-based classroom game that ...

Feature Article

Symbolism in the Forbidden City: The Magnificent Design, Distinct Colors, and Lucky Numbers of China’s Imperial Palace

by Jie Gao

The Forbidden City, the sprawling and imposing seat of Chinese Imperial power for almost 500 years, stands out in stark contrast against the ultramodern heart of contemporary Beijing. This United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)-designated World Heritage site is the largest intact wooden palace structure found anywhere on earth and has served as an open museum of China’s history for almost a century. Along with the Great Wall, it is undeniably one of China’...

Book Review Essay, Resources

The Qing Dynasty and Traditional Chinese Culture

by Robert A. Kapp

Early in his monumental portrait of Qing Dynasty China, Richard J. Smith writes about the Kangxi Emperor’s (r. 1661–1722) commission of a massive encyclopedia of Chinese culture: [The Emperor’s] most ambitious effort to celebrate traditional Chinese Culture. . . [was] the Gujin Tushu Jicheng (Complete collection of writings and illustrations, past and present, 1726) . . . Begun in 1700, this massive (more than 100 million words) and well-organized encyclopedia, repository of “all that wa...

Web Gleanings

Web Gleanings: Traditional and Contemporary Asia: Numbers, Symbols, and Colors

by Judith S. Ames

ASIA Meaning of the Flags of Asia From the Nomad Revelations blog, graphics for the flags of all Asian countries are presented in alphabetical order. The graphics are accompanied by descriptions and the symbolic meaning of the flags. Symbols in Asian Art This is a collection of blog posts from the Daruma Museum. These posts focus on symbols in Asian art. There are reviews of books about symbols, as well as articles, including a lengthy one by Dr. Ilana Singer titled “Decorative Motifs in J...

Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

Recreating a Nationalist Movement Through Symbols

by Lesley Solomon

Mahatma Gandhi and Mao Zedong, arguably the two most influential Asian nationalist leaders of the twentieth century, used political symbols to refashion nationalist movements begun by Western-influenced elites. Imbued with the stated ideals of British democracy, English-speaking Indians established the Indian National Congress in 1885 with the objective of gaining more participation in government, rather than overthrowing the Raj. In the early twentieth century, Sun Yat-sen’s Nationalist Pa...

Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

Asian Art

by Kachina Martin

A Book from the Sky by Xu Bing is the opening image from chapter 10, “The Push for Modernization: 1912 to the Present” in the textbook Asian Art by Dorinda Neave, Lara Blanchard, and  Marika  Sardar  (Pearson, 2014), winner of the 2016 Franklin R. Buchanan Prize. Xu’s statement opens the text of the chapter, framing the essence of the big ideas in this section of the book. Each chapter of Asian Art opens in this manner, with a fullpage, richly colored image of a work of art and ...

Online Supplement

Supplemental Materials for “Enlivened Learning: How to Play the Karma-based Moksha Game in the College Classroom”

by Mark Dennis

Preview (supplementary material available as a PDF, attached). How to play Moksha: 1. How to play Moksha: Managing Daily Points, 2. How to play Moksha: Creating Moksha Database, 3. How to play Moksha: Adding Individual and Team Points, 4. How to play Moksha: Individual Scores, 5. How to play Moksha: Team Scores, 6. How to play Moksha: Quiz and Paper Points, 7. How to play Moksha: Sorting Scores and Creating Scoreboard.

Online Supplement

Chinese Literature: An Introduction

by Ihor Pidhainy

Chinese literature is a pleasure to teach and to read; it holds an importance and relevance both in historical terms and in understanding the world today. Yet, its history, language and culture are quite rich, and different from much of the Western tradition that the study of Chinese literature can prove challenging. When Lucien Ellington first discussed with me the idea of writing a short introduction to Chinese literature, I was immensely intrigued about how to meet this challenge and give bot...

Online Supplement

The Mongol Empire in World History

by Helen Hundley

Although students have heard of Genghis Khan and his empire, most have only a vague knowledge about it and its founder. In order to introduce students to the Mongol Empire’s impact on World History, this volume seeks not only to present a basic outline of the expansive empire and its divisions, but also to expose students to the complex impacts of this historically pivotal empire. Genghis Khan’s empire deeply influenced the history of the Eurasian continent, including China, Iran, the Middle...

Film Review Essay, Online Supplement, Resources

Film Review: Cocktail Party

by David Huebner

As a frequent film critic for Education About Asia, I have viewed and critiqued several documentaries. Cocktail Party, however, is the first full-length movie I’ve reviewed. It features superb acting, an intriguing plot, and an informative portrayal of the social conditions on Okinawa that have complicated US and Japanese relations for decades. A documentary of the Okinawa problem may not have the personal and emotional impact this film has on the viewer.

Online Supplement

The Great Courses “Understanding Japan: A Cultural History”

by Eric G. Dinmore

While serving as President of the American Historical Association, William Cronon of the University of Wisconsin Madison delivered one of the most inspiring addresses in years at that organization’s 2013 annual meeting in New Orleans. Rather than promote an emerging subfield or present from his impressive original research, Professor Cronon used his time to focus on deep concerns he held about the diminished profile of professional historians in public life and the decline in public funding fo...

Film Review Essay, Resources

My Life in China

by Carol Stepanchuk

Not all of us have directly faced the challenges of immigration, but in many classrooms, there will be one or more students who have firsthand experience. Their stories and the growing body of published first-person accounts can open an immediate window for students into the ongoing immigrant experience and feelings of immigrant pioneers. Through the storytelling of new arrivals, we can also begin to examine our place and context within this landscape of settlement— how do we encounter and bui...

Film Review Essay, Resources

Chinese Calligraphy, a Dance on Paper: The Art of Professor Yang Xin

by Jared Hall

Calligraphy is among the most recognizable markers of Chinese culture. Even Americans who have never stepped foot in a Chinatown have likely encountered Chinese characters gracing a takeout restaurant sign or peeking out from a neck tattoo. Partly for this reason, Chinese characters provide an accessible entry point to learning about China and East Asia. It is a process that can begin as simply as it did for me when, as a young child, I was shown at my local public library how the character f...

Feature Article

Debating the Allied Occupation of Japan (Part Two)

by Peter K. Frost

In the fall 2016 issue of Education About Asia, I outlined three policy decisions, which I consider a fascinating way to discuss the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945–1952). The three—the decision to keep the Shōwa Emperor (Hirohito) on the throne, punish selected individuals for war crimes, and create a new constitution that (in Article 9) seemed to outlaw war as an instrument of national policy—were all urged upon the Japanese by SCAP, a term for both the Supreme Commander of the Allied ...

Feature Article

Oh Brave New World That Has Such Lessons In It: Using the Series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex as a Critical Text

by Paul E. Dunscomb

The 2002 and 2004 anime series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex portrays a world where the vast majority of human beings have been transformed into things more like machines.1 Yet perhaps the most remarkable thing about this brave new world is how much it seems like our own. Although their bodies are enhanced and their brains networked, they still engage in human activities. They still read newspapers, books, and magazines, even though the written word has largely been replaced by digital...

Feature Article

Sacred Mountains of Japan, with a Particular Look at the Shikoku Pilgrimage

by Frank L. Chance

Japan is an island country, blessed with many peaks rising up to the clouds. It should come as no surprise that many of the mountains of Japan are treated as sacred spaces, and that visiting those heights may be an act of worship in and of itself. Of course, though we can think of all mountains as sacred, it is important to note that some are particularly venerated as holy peaks, or reizan. Mt. Fuji, probably the best-known of Japanese mountains, is the home of a Shintō goddess, the center o...

Feature Article

Cultivating Enlightenment: The Manifold Meaning of Japanese Zen Gardens

by Eric Cunningham

While Zen gardens have been a fixture of Japanese aesthetics since the Muromachi Period (1336–1573), the purposes and meanings of these austere landscapes have been far less fixed, and indeed have changed somewhat since their first appearance as places for meditation in the Zen temples of medieval Japan. For those of us who have been fortunate enough to visit such magnificent sites as Ryōanji or Tenryūji, the primary function of Zen gardens today seems to be to remind the busloads of tour...

Feature Article

Calligraphy in East Asia: Art, Communication, and Symbology

by Cheryl Crowley, Yu Li

East Asian brush calligraphy closely integrates aspects of art, communication, and symbology, thus offering educators a particularly rich set of resources from which to draw upon. In this article, we start with an overview of brush calligraphy, including its relationship with art, communication, and symbology. We follow with a brief discussion of the historical and contemporary place of brush calligraphy in East Asian education and society; finally, we explore some pragmatic aspects of creating ...

New to EAA?

Before viewing the full archives, view Editor’s Choice Articles, handpicked by EAA Editor, Lucien Ellington, which provide a good overview of EAA and introduction for new readers.