EricBlkASem2

= = **Eric Park's WikiPage** [Hyun-Kyu Park]

//__**Meiji Restoration and the Japanese Restoration**__//

**//__The Sino-Japanese War__//**

>>
 * 3. View the [|wood block prints of the Sino-Japanese War] **
 * ** How are the Chinese soldiers portrayed in these prints? The Japanese soldiers? **
 * **The Chinese troops are all dead and half-buried in the ground under the feet of the Japanese soldiers, while on the other hand the Japanese are striking victorious poses and seem superior. The prints show the Chinese as the losers and the Japanese as the winners. **
 *  **Look at the weapons used by each side, are they different? How? Does this tell us anything about Japanese technological advancement?**
 * **Both seem to have similar weapons, such as rifles with bayonets, but the weapons of the Japanese troops seem more modernized. The presence of advanced weapons like cannons really show the dominance over the Chinese, especially when the Chinese troops are carrying spears and swords in the prints. This definitely shows the technological advancement of the Japanese. **

**4. Read the Ichiko's** **[|Baseball Club Rouse] ** > >>
 * **Why do sports often become symbolic battlegrounds between nations?**
 * **Sports is a competition; in terms of competing against another nation in order to win, sports share a big commonality with war. However, the difference would be that there is no bloodshed and that sports are carried out under set rules, so there is almost no way that somebody can complain about losing or winning. The reason sports are called symbolic battlegrounds is because nations fight against each other through sports matches but do not gain nor lose any physical things. **
 * **Is imperialism/colonialism simply about militarily and politically controlling another nation, or is it also about proving one’s self-perceived cultural superiority over another?**
 * **Cultural superiority is a big factor of imperialism and colonialism. Being superior in terms of both physical and abstract aspects definitely puts a country on a higher level than others and thus allows them to be looked up as a superior country. **

**__//The Russo-Japanese War//__**

**1. Do artistic renditions or photographs depict the heroics of war better?**
 * If its the heroics, definitely the artistic renditions since they were very bias and were used as forms of propaganda. Usually, the renditions would not show what was actually happening and depict only the heroics of war.

**2. Do artistic renditions or photographs depict the horrors of war better?**
 * Photographs show things the way they are, thus do a better job in depicting the horrors of war. Heaps of corpses, sinking ships, wounded soldiers are all shown in photographs the way they really are without any sugarcoating.

**3. How does the medium affect the message? Can we say that "The medium is the message?"**
 * Definitely so. For example, the artistic renditions do not give the messages about war that they are supposed to. The artists who draw them are the mediums and they clearly distort the messages through propaganda. On the other hand photographs, which represent the same thing as the artistic renditions, deliver the message the way they are supposed to be delivered. "The medium is the message" is definitely true.

<span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">**4. Why is the 1905 such a turning point in Japanese and World history? How might history have been different had Japan lost the Russo-Japanese War?**
 * If Japan had lost and Russia had won, Korea might not be the way it is right now. Russia could have taken over Korea instead of Japan and the modernization we ultimately received from Japan might not have resulted. Or maybe, Russia wouldn't have cared about Korea and we could have been left alone for a while, which could've lead us to either prospering on our own or becoming a weak nation.

May 11, 2011

Queen Min (died in 1895) Reading 1.
 * 1851 Noble family, married at 14 years of age to king Kojong
 * Queen Min achieved a lot
 * modernization in technology
 * balance between Russia, China and Japan
 * Queen Min's authority did go against the Confucianist ideals
 * Maintaing Korea's Independence
 * Buys time by making the powers face each other

Izabella Bird
 * was a traveler and had met Queen Min
 * described Queen Min as a nice and slender woman
 * Queen Min was a very graceful person

<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding-right: 10px;">[]
 * Timeline Project (with Peter Lee)**

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal;">- "Japan-Korea Treaty of 1910."//Wikipedia//. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 May 2011. <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan–Korea_Treaty_of_1910>. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal;">- "Treaty of Shimonoseki - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." //Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia//. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2011. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal;"> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Shimonoseki> <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal;">- "The Story of Taiwan-Culture Taiwan Culture and Its Social Environment." //Government Information Office, Republic of China (Taiwan)//. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 May 2011. <http://www.gio.gov.tw/info/taiwan-story/culture/edown/3-1.htm>. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal;">- "The Tonghak (Donghak) Rebellion 1894 동학농민운동. Korean History. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 May 2011. <http://koreanhistory.info/Tonghak.htm>"
 * MLA Format Citations**