EALC 24422 Lecture 1: EALC Week 1
20 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Most important feature of Tokugawa history: lack of warfare
Important People:
Oda Nobunaga: One of the first so-called unifiers
Toyotomi Hideyoshi: brilliant political strategist; pursued politics of alliance building; turned
against Jesuit missionaries
Ieyasu: harsh leader
Lecture
I. What do we mean by ‘Japan?’
A. Identity is cobbled together in the face of a resistant geography
1. Ie. Hokkaido, didn’t consider them to be a part of Japan until the 19th cent
B. Domains (regions) 国, kuni
1. Even more autonomous than the reading describes, in the Tokugawa
period and previously, they really were autonomous. Post Tokugawa, they
were only semi-autonomous
2. Didn’t pay taxes! Helped make them autonomous
3. Now, we see “prefectures” (ken) 県
II. Japan: root of the sun, land of the rising sun. 日本
A. Not always the name of Japan. Came to use these characters at the end of the
6th century
B. Used to be called (wa) 倭
III. Perception of themselves in relation to China
A. China was basically “superior” to the rest of the world in China’s eyes, so they
expected Japanese to be subordinate. However, Japan didn’t really follow this
IV. Role of the ocean
A. Multiple failed invasions of Korea
B. Trade
C. Economy, development of its nation
D. Encourages isolation (?) More of a buffer zone, however
V. What did the Japanese take from the Chinese?
A. Ideas of rank of officials
B. Urban planning
C. Characters (kanji)
1. How did China, Korea, and Japan talk to each other? They basically all
used Chinese characters to communicate. This is because Chinese
characters were just more versatile
D. Buddhism and Confucianism
E. Medicine, science, technological innovations
F. Japanese did take certain things from China, but they more modified the thing
rather than completely adopting it, like the Koreans did
