Lesson Three

Yokohama Boomtown Curriculum, Lesson 03

Yokohama, Crossroads of Culture:
A Look at Cultural Transmission

Handout 03-C | Printer-friendly PDF file | Printer-friendly Word doc

Creating Your PowerPoint Presentation

Working in your group, proceed through each step below to create a PowerPoint Presentation or mural illustrating cultural transmission in Yokohama in the 1860s.

1. Review the focus question.
Your group will be creating a PowerPoint Presentation or mural to address the question:

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?

Place this statement on the first slide of your PowerPoint presentation.

2. Select your evidence.
Each person in your group brought two examples of cultural transmission to the group. Review the categories of cultural transmission and the examples of each. In which categories do you feel you have the strongest examples of cultural transmission? Are you able to show cultural transmission taking place from both West to East and East to West? Narrow your evidence to the four categories in which you think you have the strongest evidence. List the four categories and examples of each that you want to use in your presentation below. Refer to your data from Handout 03-B to complete this section.

Category 1:

Example A:
From (title of picture):

Example B:
From (title of picture):

Category 2:

Example C:
From (title of picture):

Example D:
From (title of picture)

Category 3:

Example E:
From (title of picture):

Example F:
From (title of picture)

Category 4:

Example G:
From (title of picture):

Example H:
From (title of picture):

3. Create a thesis statement.
Write a thesis statement about cultural transmission in Yokohama based on the four categories and the evidence you have chosen. Your thesis statement should provide an answer to the focus question. To create a thesis statement, decide as a group what you want to say or argue is true about cultural transmission in Yokohama in the 1860s and 1870s. Present this idea or argument as a one- or two-sentence statement. Write your thesis statement below and place it on the second slide of your PowerPoint presentation.

4. Supporting paragraphs.
For each of your four categories listed in step #2 (above), write a statement that (A) supports your thesis and (B) is illustrated and supported by one of the examples you found. You have two examples for each category, so you should have two supporting paragraphs for each category.

Use the data you recorded on Handouts 03-A and 03-B to help you make a good statement about each example. For each category, your statements should include information on what was being transferred or learned, by whom, and in what context.

Place each supporting statement together with its visual evidence from Yokohama Boomtown on slides in your PowerPoint presentation.

5. Conclusion.
In the space below, write a concluding statement that takes your argument further. Your concluding statement should address the second part of the focus question—how was cultural transmission important in the developing relationship between Japan and the Western nations? Transfer this text to the final slide of your PowerPoint presentation.

Note: if your class does not have access to PowerPoint, follow the same steps above to create a mural and essay. Butcher paper and markers will be provided by your teacher. In this case, you will need to print copies of the woodblock prints from the Yokohama Boomtown unit.

Lesson developed by Lynn Parisi.

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