What is History? PPT for introducing history to Japanese university students taking content and language integrated English classes.

1. What is history?
Why study history?

2. What is history?
Did you like history at school?
Why? Why not?
At school, what was
important for doing well in
history?
Why do people study history?

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

7. What is history?What is history?

8. History is finding information.
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 find 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

11. What is history?What is history?

12. Look at this picture.
Think of questions about the
information in the picture.

13. Questions
• Who was Emperor Meiji?
• Why does everything look so western in
Japan?
• Why did he give the people a constitution?
• Did he write the consitution? Did someone lse
write it?
• What were the important points in the
constitution?
• Did people support the constitution?

14. What is history?What is history?

16. History: Choosing information
What questions does the picture
raise?
•
•
•
•

17. 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.

18. Choosing facts is important for
creating history.

19. How did the oni feel?
Why don’t we think about the oni’s
side?

21. Analyse, interpret. What is happening?

22. • A(n).. attack was made on the soldiers…
our lives were in danger…(so) three or
four soldiers fired (at the crowd)… The
crowd ran away, except three men who
died…I asked the soldiers why they fired
without orders, they said they heard the
word “fire” and thought it came from
me. This might be true because many
people in the crowd called out “fire”
“fire” but… I didn’t give this order.
Captain Preston, the leader of the

23. 1. Who is Captain Preston?
2. What does he say?
3. How is Captain Preston’s story
different from the story in the picture?
4. Why do you think the stories are
different? Think of various possibilities.
e.g. does either have a reason to lie?

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

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

26. “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

27. • It was in 1968 during the Vietnam war the
Communist North was fighting the South.
The South was supported by the US,
Australia, and Korea. The Vietcong
Communist fighters had made a promise
that there would be no fighting during the
Tet Festival, the Vietnamese New Year.
But the Vietcong didattack. Many people
were killed in the Vietcong attacks. Just
before the photo was taken, several of the
general’s men had been killed by Viet
Cong.
Context ( 事情 )

28. The photographer:
• The general killed the Viet
Cong; I killed the general with
my camera.

29. When we analyze we need to think
and ask questions.

30. 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.

31. 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

32. 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?
Analysing:

33. 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’

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

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

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

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

38. Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881),
History is
rumour
crystallized•

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

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

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

42. E. H. Carr (1892-1982) Historian
"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."

43. 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.