Lesson Three

Yokohama Boomtown Curriculum, Lesson 03

Yokohama, Crossroads of Culture:
A Look at Cultural Transmission

Introduction
Cultural transmission—the dissemination of aspects of culture from people to people—takes place within a single culture across time, generations, and places through movement of goods, materials, and ideas. Cultural transmission also takes place across cultures. In 1860s Japan contact with Westerners was still limited primarily to treaty ports, which served as points of contact and transmission of cultures. Yokohama was one such point of contact. People from five Western nations—the United States, Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Russia—initially interacted, communicated, traded, and exchanged with Japanese within Yokohama. A sixth Western nation—Prussia—soon negotiated a treaty and joined the treaty-port mosaic. In addition, other Asians—Chinese and Indians—were part of the treaty-port dynamic, although they will not be the focus of this lesson.

In this lesson, students scan Yokohama Boomtown to select images that depict evidence of contact, communication, and exchange between Japan and Western nations. They then document the forms and dimensions of cultural transmission in both directions—East and West.

National History Standards

Objectives
At the conclusion of this activity, students will be better able to:
• Interrogate and draw data from visual historical sources.
• Compare and contrast several 19th-century Western societies with that of Japan.
• Appreciate the role that treaty ports played in cultural transmission and cross-cultural education between Asia and the West.
• Understand and apply the concept of cultural transmission as it applies to the exchanges that took place in 19th-century Yokohama.
• Describe life and exchange in the treaty port of Yokohama in the mid-19th century.
• Discuss aspects of tradition and change in 19th-century Japan.
• Synthesize learning in a PowerPoint or other visual presentation.

Time Required
1–2 class periods

Materials and Preparation
• Handouts 03-A, 03-B, and 03-C for all students
• Overhead of lesson focus question (from Teacher Background Notes)
• Internet access to the Yokohama Boomtown unit for individual students and groups.
• PowerPoint OR posting sheets
• Printer to print images from the Yokohama Boomtown unit
• Paper and pen for student note-taking

Procedure
Note: students will work with images from the entire Yokohama Boomtown Essay or the Yokohama Boomtown Image Gallery. If the teacher determines that students need to work with a limited set of images, they can focus on the “Interactions” and/or “Internationalism” sections of the Essay. Alternatively, the teacher may wish to identify a limited set of images from the Image Gallery.

1. Introduce or review the concept of cultural transmission with students. Ask students for a definition or provide a definition and discuss it with students. Clarify the concept through real examples in students’ lives. Cultural transmission is the dissemination of aspects of culture from people to people. It takes place within a single culture across time, generations, and places through movement of goods, materials, and ideas. Ask students for examples of cultural transmission across generations and time within their own families or within the United States.

Turn student attention to cultural transmission as a process across countries and cultures. Many secondary students will be familiar with anime, which provides a good example of cultural transmission. Ask students where anime originated. Students are probably aware of anime’s origins in Japan. Ask for examples of cultural exports from the United States to other countries and vice versa.

2. Explain that in 1860s Japan, contact with Westerners was still limited primarily to treaty ports, which became geographic centers of cultural exchange. Yokohama was one such point of contact. People from six Western nations—the United States, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Russia, and Prussia—interacted, communicated, traded, and exchanged with Japanese within Yokohama. Alert students that other Asians—most notably Chinese—were part of the treaty-port mosaic and should not be overlooked in terms of cultural exchange. However, in this lesson, students will focus on cultural exchange and transmission between Japanese and Westerners.

Explain that students are going to research and document dimensions of cultural transmission between Japan and these Western nations. Present the following focus question, which will ultimately be the subject of group PowerPoint presentations or murals. This question is also available for use as an overhead in the Teacher Background Notes.

Yokohama provided a geographic crossroads of culture. Within this treaty-port city, Japanese, Americans, British, French, Dutch, Russians, and Prussians (Germans) learned about each other by working together, buying and selling goods, and just observing. What aspects of cultural transmission were captured and conveyed by the Japanese woodblock prints of the time and how was cultural transmission important in the developing relationship between Japan and Western nations?

3. Organize students into six groups. Assign each group one of the following categories in which cultural transmission was probably occurring in the Yokohama treaty port. Note: these groups will later jigsaw to form new groups to share information across the following categories:

• Technology and transportation
• Industry and commerce
• Dress
• Manners and customs
• Everyday goods, materials, and food
• Entertainment, arts, and leisure activity

Introduce the steps of the activity, which are outlined below. To complete this activity, students will need online access to the Yokohama Boomtown unit, either at school or at home.

Each group is responsible for examining a minimum of two woodblock prints from within the Yokohama Boomtown Essay or the Yokohama Boomtown Image Gallery that show evidence of this category of cultural transmission.

In upper grades, students will benefit from searching the Essay or the Yokohama Boomtown Image Gallery on their own to select two or more woodblocks that best address their category. To facilitate the assignment for lower grades, teachers may want to assign particular woodblocks to groups. If so, teachers should print copies of these images in advance. The Teacher Background Notes list several woodblocks for each of the categories (above) that may be assigned to groups.

Once they have selected (or been assigned) woodblock prints, each group will work to analyze the prints carefully to pull out all examples they can find of cultural transmission in the assigned category. Clarify with students that the larger woodblock prints show detailed scenes. Students should look for multiple examples of cultural transmission within each woodblock print, not just one example. It is also important to emphasize that groups should look for cultural transmission in various directions—i.e., Japan to the West and Western nations to Japan.

Provide each student with a copy of Handout 03-A. Each group should complete Handout 03-A for each woodblock print they analyze.

Instruct students to print copies (one for each student in the group) of whichever woodblock prints they worked with in this activity.

Allow 30 minutes or the remainder of class and homework.

4. If students had homework time to finish the assignment, allow time to share findings within the groups at the start of class the next day. For this step students can work with their print copies of the woodblocks.

5. As a next step, each group will decide on its strongest examples of cultural transmission. Groups should refer to their notes for Handout 03-A to complete this assignment. Groups can work online or with printed copies of woodblocks at the teacher’s discretion.

Explain the process to students as follows: each group must review all the examples of cultural transmission that it had identified while completing Handout 03-A and agree on two concrete visual examples that clearly and powerfully illustrate cultural transmission. Distribute Handout 03-B to all students and instruct groups to work together to complete this task. Each student will take Handout 03-B to his or her next group.

6. Jigsaw students to form new groups that include a student from each of the old groups. The new group will include students who have each investigated a different category of cultural transmission. Allow 10 minutes for students to share their examples of cultural transmission with their new group members. If possible, enable students to conduct this sharing with access to the Web site, so that they can easily show their examples via the woodblock prints online.

7. As the culmination of this lesson, each group will create a PowerPoint presentation or, if PowerPoint is unavailable, a wall mural. The latter will require butcher paper, markers, and the capability of printing paper copies of images from the Yokohama Boomtown unit. Distribute Handout 03-C and review the required steps for creating the presentations. Ensure that students are familiar with the requirements of a thesis statement before they begin the PowerPoint assignment. Students will be working with data collected and recorded on Handouts 03-A and 03-B to complete this portion of the activity.

8. Allow time for groups to present their projects.

Lesson developed by Lynn Parisi.

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