Exercise 3

Throwing Off Asia: Reading A Visual Primary Source

Patterns in Pictures of Disorder

This exercise is on the woodblock prints in Throwing Off Asia II, "Old China, New Japan" and "Devil in the Details." You will do this as a group.

Your assignment is to consider what the idea of "Old China" or "New Japan" actually meant, as represented in Japanese woodblock propaganda that presented the Sino - Japanese War in pictures and informed the Japanese people about this war.

Repeatedly, across artists and individual woodblocks, patterns and categories of the ways in which China was portrayed as old, outmoded, and representative of old-fashioned ways emerge. Similarly, across the woodblocks, patterns and categories of the ways in which Japan was presented as being China's opposite—what was new and modern in the world—emerge.

Examine the woodblock prints of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 carefully. Choose one of the following.

Identify five categories of "old" ways that are emphasized in the woodblock print depictions of Chinese and China, or:

Identify five categories of "new' ways that are emphasized in the woodblock print depictions of Japanese and Japan.

Note that you may want to use one woodblock print in more than one category. You do not need to use all woodblock prints.

In addition, find an image, still or moving, that might trigger controversy among a particular group of people. The image need not be about Japan/Asia.

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