Visualizing Cultures


Black Ships & Samurai, Lesson 04

Capturing Culture through the Visual Record

Introduction
This lesson introduces students to a framework for analyzing and understanding the concept of culture. Students will use this framework to consider what people encountering a new culture for the first time may tend to note about that culture. They will look at the specific case study of the Black Ship Scroll, a 30-foot-long painting in which Japanese artists created a visual record of American culture during their initial encounter with Perry’s American mission to Japan in 1853 and 1854.

The framework that students work with in this lesson is the “Universals of Culture,” a classic social studies taxonomy that helps teachers and students analyze and deconstruct the concept of culture by considering broad categories of components. According to the model’s authors, Alice Ann Cleaveland, Jean Craven, and Maryanne Danfelser, the “universals are functions which culture serves and which are found in some form in every culture on earth.” As a teaching framework, the universals provide a way for students to think about and organize information about cultures. Moreover, the universals of culture provide a useful vehicle for considering cultural commonalities and differences: the framework establishes broad functional categories common to all cultures, while recognizing that the ways individual cultures realize these categories may look very different from one another.

In analyzing the Black Ship Scroll, students will also consider the significance of what this visual narrative of American culture and Japanese-American interaction included and what it omitted, and why.

National History Standards

Objectives
At the conclusion of this activity, students will be better able to:
    • Define and discuss the concept of culture
    • Understand and apply a framework for analyzing the components and characteristics of any culture
    • Identify aspects of the unfamiliar American culture that captured Japanese attention in the initial interaction between Japan and the United States
    • Analyze why Japanese artists of the Black Ship Scrolls selected to record what they did and consider why the artists omitted other aspects of American culture
    • Apply their learning by writing about this cross-cultural encounter from Japanese perspectives

Materials and Preparation
    • Student access to the Black Ships & Samurai unit
    • Handout 04-A, Universals of Culture outline, available on the Black Ships & Samurai unit or printed and copied in advance for all students
    • Universals of Culture template (PowerPoint file, 1.2 Megs)
    • Student access to PowerPoint

Time
1-2 class periods, homework

Procedure
Prior to online student work:

1. Explain to students that social scientists have formulated numerous definitions and conceptual frameworks to help them systematically study cultures. In this activity, students will be applying a particular framework for understanding and defining culture.

Spend some time introducing students to “The Universals of Culture” before they begin the assignment. Teachers may choose to project the Universals of Culture (Handout 04-A) on a classroom screen for discussion, or print copies of the outline for all students.

Explain that the Universals of Culture framework establishes nine very broad categories that we see in all societies, across time and place. At the same time, the framework helps us recognize that the ways that individual cultures address these categories may look very different from one another. Give one or two examples to illustrate this point. For example, all cultures have a method of oral communication, although individual cultures often speak a language unrecognizable to people outside that culture. Food is another category that is easy for students to understand. Students are well aware that everyone eats, but are also generally familiar with different kinds of ethnic foods popular in their own towns and so recognize differences in the cuisines of China, Mexico, and Italy, for example.

As a class, read through the nine major categories and their subcategories in the Universals of Culture. Clarify definitions and check for understanding by asking students to give examples from U.S. culture (or from cultural groups with which students are familiar within your own community).

2. Introduce the lesson by having students think about how and what observers tend to record about an unfamiliar culture. In trying to learn about another culture, observers often tend to record what is most striking or interesting in their encounters. Thus, their observations may tend to focus on what is novel and different—aspects of culture that do not resemble the familiar from one’s own culture and experience. Ask students to consider a recent trip they may have taken to other countries or places within the United States and what they tended to record on film or in a travel journal. Do they see any tendency towards recording the unfamiliar and unusual?

By extension, ask students how Japanese and Americans may have reacted to each other’s cultures when they met in Japan in 1853 and 1854. Be sure to point out that the Americans who arrived with the Perry mission to Japan and the Japanese living in the vicinity of the landing interacted for a very limited time, with limited information about the other group. Explain that students will work individually or in pairs on the Black Ships & Samurai unit to conduct an analysis, using visual sources, of the aspects of American culture that captured the Japanese imagination and interest in the initial meeting between these two cultures.

Present the background information from Lesson 4 Teacher Notes as an introduction to this activity. This introductory information is repeated on the Handout 04-A directions and may be assigned to students to read on their own if this activity is to be conducted as an independent, self-directed student project. In this case, review the assignment with students and provide time to work on their own. Procedure #3 may be omitted.


Online:
3. If the classroom has access to a live Internet connection and an lcd projector, have the class view the entire Black Ship Scroll uninterrupted at “Watch the Scroll Unfold.” Ask students to watch carefully as the 30-foot scroll unfolds without taking notes. Then, conduct a class-wide discussion of student impressions. What did they notice? What did the Japanese artists tend to record? As reflected in the Black Ship scroll, what aspects of American culture seem to have most caught the interest and imagination of Japanese observers?

If you are unable to project the scroll for the entire class, have students work in groups to view the scroll in its entirety, using the Web link above, and reassemble students for a short discussion of what they noticed.

4. Next, designate student pairs or threesomes who will work together online in the computer lab, or assign this task as homework if online access is available to all students will have equitable access.

The task now is for students to analyze the Black Ship Scroll in terms of its representation of the new and unfamiliar American culture its Japanese artists were observing. Using the Universals of Culture as a framework for categorization and analysis, student groups should identify and sort the various images on the scroll. Using the Universals of Culture PowerPoint template, students should copy and paste images from the Black Ship Scroll into a slide for each of the Universals of Culture. Be sure to point out to students that, very often, a panel of the scroll will address multiple categories within the Universals of Culture, since a panel may contain a great deal of visual information. Any categorization the students choose is acceptable, as long as they can justify their placement.

5. Once student groups have created their slides, they should spend time reviewing their findings to determine if images tend to be clustered within certain of the Universals of Culture categories. This may be undertaken in their small groups or though class discussion. Have students consider the following:

    • Did images tend to cluster in some categories? If so, which ones?
    • Were other categories empty? If so, which ones?
    • What might be the reasons for this? Why might artists have captured some aspects of American culture to a greater degree than others?
    • Could some images that students categorized in one way be re-categorized?

Based on where images may have clustered, have student groups or the class identify four areas of American culture that seemed to be especially interesting to the Japanese artists who created this Black Ship Scroll. Discuss these as a full class. Why do students think these aspects of American life held particular interest for the Japanese artists and their Japanese viewer audiences? Do the aspects of American culture that were recorded tend to be similar or different from Japanese culture of the time?

6. Continuing in a full class discussion, explain that what observers do not record is often as revealing and important as what they do record. Ask students to identify several categories of culture that were not pictured in the scroll or had very little representation. Consider the following questions.

    • Why do students think that the Japanese artists did not record much or anything in these categories?
    • Could they have? That is, did the artists have opportunities to observe these aspects of culture?

Consider some elements of the scroll that cannot be captured by the Universals of Culture framework. For example, how would students categorize the interaction and human behavior that is captured in the scroll?
    • Is interaction formal or informal?
    • What kinds of interactions would seem to be a major component of the Perry mission but are not pictured in the scroll? How can you account for this?

Have students consider the nature of the scroll itself and how this might affect the aspects of American culture that the artists recorded. For whom do students think the scroll was created? How would the audience influence the aspects of culture recorded on the scroll? What is the difference in mission/purpose between the artists of this scroll and the American official artist William Heine? What are the similarities?

7. Culminate this activity by having students apply their learning through a written assessment task. In groups or as individual homework, select one slide (i.e., one aspect of culture) from those they created from the Black Ship Scroll and write the “narrative” (parallel to the Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan) that a Japanese would have written to explain this aspect of American culture to other Japanese who had not been able to observe the Americans.







Massachusetts Institute of Technology © 2008 Visualizing Cultures