Introducing the idea of "What is history?" "Why study history?" Introduces the idea of historical perspectives. Aimed at Japanese university history students

1. What is history?
Why study history?

2. What is history?
What do you think of when
you think of studying
history?
What do you need to do to
do well in history?

4. What is history?
Memorizing dates, facts and leaders?
1890: Emperor Meiji bestowed the Constitution upon the people of Japan.

8. Look at this picture.
What can we learn from it?

9. What can we learn? e.g.
• Clothes
• Mix of Japanese & Western Aesthetics
• Attitudes
• Political structure
• Status of the emperor
• Technology
• Focus on military
• Artistic techniques

10. Where can we learn about history?
• Pottery
• Poems
• Art
• Speeches
• Diaries
• News
• Company /
school
documents &
records
• Books
• Interviews
• Maps
• Timetables
• Fashion
• Army records
• Music
• Architecture
• Talking to
people
• Cemeteries
• Photos
• Newspapers
• Campsites
• Posters
• Advertisements
• TV shows
• And many more

12. History: Choosing and interpreting
facts
Who am I?
• An only son
• Poor family
• Wanted to be rich
• Gathered together some friends.
• Started to attack people on an island
• Stole all their money.
• Took them prisoner
• Lived a rich life on the stolen goods.

13. Choosing facts is important for
creating history.

14. How did the oni feel?

16. Analyse, interpret. What is happening?

17. On this a general attack was made on the
soldiers . . . our lives were in [immediate]
danger . . . Instantly three or four soldiers
fired.... The mob ran away, except three
unhappy men who died. . . I asked the
soldiers why they fired without orders,
they said they heard the word fire and
though it came from me. This might be
the case as many of the mob called out
fire, fire, but ….I gave no such order.

18. Fact: a picture of a statue of a minute
man from the US war of independence.
Interpretation?

19. What’s happening here?
Who do you feel sympathetic towards?

20. “Still photographs are the most powerful
weapon in the world. People believe
them, but photographs do lie, even
without manipulation. They are only half-truths.
It didn’t say: What would you do
if you were the general at that time and
place on that hot day, and you caught
the so-called bad guy after he blew away
one, two or three American soldiers?’”
Eddie Adams

21. Context (事情)
• Just before that photo had been taken,
several of the general’s men had been shot
dead. The Vietcong attacked during the
holiday of Tet, even though they said they
would not. The North Vietnamese and Viet
Cong killed many defenceless people.
The general killed the Viet Cong; I
killed the general with my camera.
Eddie Adams, photographer.

22. When we analyse we need to think
and ask questions.

23. Questions that should be asked:
• Who is writing it?
• Who is the intended audience.
• Who is paying the person who is writing it?
• When was it written?
• Where does it come from?
• What is the purpose?
• Is there more to the story? Another side?
• Do other sources confirm or contradict?
• We must cross check before we accept.

24. Kobayashi Kiyochika : In the Battle of the Yellow Sea, 1894-1894 a Sailor
onboard Our Japanese Warship Matsushima, on the Verge of Dying, Asked
Whether or Not the Enemy Ship had been Destroyed

25. Analysing:
1) Who has drawn the picture?
2) When was it drawn?
3) What does it show?
4) How do you think the artist feels
about the war? Give reasons
5) Do you think this is how the war
would really have looked? Explain.
6) Would you expect a Chinese artist to
paint a picture in this way? Explain.
What might be different?

26. Take care to discard prejudices
The Japanese protester:
‘Oppose the new security
treaty, Down with the Kishi
Cabinet! Dissolve the Diet!’
The Chinese demonstrator:
‘Oppose the Japan-U.S.
military treaty, Support the
struggle of the Japanese
people’

27. Study the past if
you want to
make the
future.
Confucius 孔子 551 BC - 479 BC

28. To understand
anything, you need
to observe its
beginning and its
development.
Aristotle 384BC-322BC

29. "Those who
cannot
remember the
past are
condemned to
repeat it”
George Santayana (1836-1952)

30. “The most effective
way to destroy
people is to deny
and destroy their
own understanding
of their history.”
George Orwell

31. History is
rumour
crystal•li zed
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881),

32. History will be
kind to me for I
intend to write it.
“History is
written by the
victors”
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
PM England

33. “One cannot and
must not try to erase
the past merely
because it does not
fit the present.”
Golda Meir –
former PM, Israel

34. History is the
invention of
historians.
Napolean Bonaparte 1769-1821

35. "The role off the
historian is neither to
love the past nor to
free himself from the
past, but to master
and understand it as
the key to the
understanding of the
present."
E. H. Carr (1892-1982) Historian

36. But
• Sometimes it’s not possible to find the truth,
and sometimes there are different truths that
contradict.
• History should be faced bravely. All countries
have terrible things in their past (and present).
• History should be used to create
understanding and a better future.