Lesson Four

Yokohama Boomtown Curriculum, Lesson 04

Site Quest: Creating a Guide to the “Foreigners”

Introduction
A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used by students in constructing a response to a given question is drawn from Web sources. In this activity, students use one Web site, Yokohama Boomtown, to collect data and inform their analysis and response to a historical question.

In this site quest students work in groups, taking the roles of either Americans or Japanese charged with creating a Cross-Cultural Training Guide to help educate their countrymen and women about the customs and habits of the other culture.

Note: this activity parallels Lesson Eight in the Black Ships and Samurai curriculum.

National History Standards

Objectives
At the conclusion of this activity, students will be better able to:
• Plan and organize arguments.
• Interrogate a variety of visual texts in order to select and organize data.
• Identify new cultural influences on Japan and Western nations as a result of cultural contact and exchange in the Yokohama treaty port.
• Identify a range of Western influences on Japan’s modernization process in the late-19th century.

Time Required
2–3 class periods and homework

Materials and preparation
• Access to the Yokohama Boomtown unit
• Copies of the Lesson Four Student Directions for all students
• Copies of Handout 04-A for all students

Procedure
1. Before beginning the site quest, students should have basic knowledge of the “opening” of Japan to the West in the mid-19th century and the growth of port cities in which Westerners traded with Japan. For students at lower reading levels, the teacher should present key points from the Yokohama Boomtown Essay “Introduction” section; students at higher reading levels may be assigned to read this section for homework. Spend a short time in class discussing key points before assigning the site quest.

Key points to consider in classroom discussion are provided in the Teacher Background Notes.

2. In this site quest, students will take the roles of either Westerners or Japanese engaged in learning about each other’s culture in the Yokohama treaty port in the 1850s and 1860s.

Teachers may introduce the lesson by asking students to consider visits they have made to other countries. How did they learn about different customs of that country? Did they read travel guides? Did they try to learn by observation? Ask students for examples of differing customs in other countries that they know about. If students do not have examples, you might offer the example of Japanese and American greeting customs. Students may know that Japanese bow when introduced for the first time while the American custom is to shake hands.

Guidebooks usually have a section that introduces foreign visitors to a country’s important customs and manners. Students will create this kind of cultural explanation in this site quest activity. They will explore Yokohama Boomtown for examples of Japanese and Western customs, manners, and ways of life that were unfamiliar to the other culture. Students will then consider how each side tried to interpret, understand, and learn from the other side. Students will identify several traits, customs, new ideas, or products and create a cross-cultural “training guide” designed to help people work successfully with the “foreigners.”

3. Explain that foreign is a relative term. To Japanese, people from other countries who populated the treaty ports were foreigners. But Japanese were equally foreign to Westerners in Yokohama, though Westerners were the ones residing outside of their native countries.

4. To give students a concrete example show them Handout 04-A, an extract from a Japanese guide to Westerners written in 1867 by scholar Yukichi Fukuzawa. Distribute or project Handout 04-A and go over the reading with the class.

5. Assign students to six groups and assign each group one of the following roles and research focuses:

A. Americans writing a guide to Japanese clothing and standards of beauty.
B. Japanese writing a guide to American clothing and standards of beauty.
C. Americans writing a guide to the roles of men and women in Japan.
D. Japanese writing a guide to the roles of men and women in the United States.
E. Americans writing a guide to Japanese entertainment, recreation, and pastimes.
F. Japanese writing a guide to American entertainment, recreation, and pastimes.

6. From this point, Student Directions are provided. Review the steps carefully with students before they begin their site quest. A rubric for evaluating the student projects is provided in Word and PDF formats. Teachers may choose to grade students or have students grade themselves within each group.

Lesson developed by Lynn Parisi.

Table of Contents | Lessons: