Class on the 2nd of December

Today in class we examined the role of media creating gender expectations.

Class on December 2nd

Reminder you have a current event due on Monday the 5th.  You have three popoganda posters due on various forms of government due on Tuesday the 6th. The forms are listed below.   

dic·ta·tor·ship

 

noun

1.

a country, government, or the form of government in which absolute power is exercised by a dictator. 

2.

absolute, imperious, or overbearing power or control. 

3.

the office or position held by a dictator. 

Origin: 
1580–90; dictator + -ship

mon·ar·chy

noun, plural -chies.

1.

a state or nation in which the supreme power is actually or nominally lodged in a monarch. Compare absolute monarchy, limited monarchy. 

2.

supreme power or sovereignty held by a single person. 

Origin: 
1300–50; Middle English monarchie  < Late Latin monarchia  < Greek monarchía. See monarch, -y³

de·moc·ra·cy

 

noun, plural -cies.

1.

government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system. 

2.

a state having such a form of government: The United States and Canada are democracies.

3.

a state of society characterized by formal equality of rights and privileges. 

4.

political or social equality; democratic spirit. 

5.

the common people of a community as distinguished from any privileged class; the common people with respect to their political power. 

Origin: 
1525–35; < Middle French démocratie  < Late Latin dēmocratia  < Greek dēmokratía popular government, equivalent to dēmo- demo- + -kratia -cracy

ol·i·gar·chy

noun, plural -chies.

1.

a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few. 

2.

a state or organization so ruled. 

3.

the persons or class so ruling. 

Origin: 
1570–80; < Medieval Latin oligarchia  < Greek oligarchía. See olig-, -archy

re·pub·lic

noun

1.

a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them. 

2.

any body of persons viewed as a commonwealth. 

3.

a state in which the head of government is not a monarch or other hereditary head of state. 

4.

( initial capital letter ) any of the five periods of republican government in France. Compare First Republic, Second Republic, Third Republic, Fourth Republic, Fifth Republic. 

5.

( initial capital letter, italics ) a philosophical dialogue (4th century b.c.) by Plato dealing with the composition and structure of the ideal state. 

Origin: 
1595–1605; < French république, Middle French < Latin rēs pūblica,  equivalent to rēs thing, entity + pūblica public

the·oc·ra·cy

 

noun, plural -cies.

1.

a form of government in which God or a deity is recognized as the supreme civil ruler, the God's or deity's laws being interpreted by the ecclesiastical authorities. 

2.

a system of government by priests claiming a divine commission. 

3.

a commonwealth or state under such a form or system of government. 

Origin: 
1615–25; < Greek theokratía. See theo-, -cracy

an·ar·chy

noun

1.

a state of society without government or law. 

2.

political and social disorder due to the absence of governmental control: The death of the king was followed by a year of anarchy.

3.

a theory that regards the absence of all direct or coercive government as a political ideal and that proposes the cooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups as the principal mode of organized society. 

4.

confusion; chaos; disorder: Intellectual and moral anarchy followed his loss of faith.

Origin: 
1530–40; (< Middle French anarchie  or Medieval Latin anarchia ) < Greek, anarchía lawlessness, literally, lack of a leader, equivalent to ánarch ( os ) leaderless ( an-an-¹ + arch ( ós ) leader + -os  adj. suffix) + -ia -y

so·cial·ism

 

noun

1.

a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole. 

2.

procedure or practice in accordance with this theory. 

3.

(in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles. 

Origin: 
1830–40; social + -ism

cap·i·tal·ism

 

noun

an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth. 

1854, "condition of having capital;" from capital + -ism. Meaning "political/economic system which encourages capitalists" is recorded by 1877. 

com·mu·nism

 

noun

1.

a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state.

2.

( often initial capital letter ) a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party. 

Origin: 
1835–45; < French communisme. See common, -ism

Class on the 2nd of December

Today in class we had a map summative and worked to begin creating our own Bushido codes.  Remember you have a current event on Cuba due on Monday the 5th.

You will create your own personal code of Bushido and Zen that can be practiced successfully within the confines of Pembroke Academy in 2016.  In doing so you will become Samurai(one who serves).  Choose a teacher or administrator to pledge your services to.  Create a statement for this individual how you can be of value to them.  Be sure to include your personal mon.   Within the statement of allegiance create a diagram of the teacher’s room, or office and how you can work to protect it from unwanted outside elements.  Include all this information on a poster outlining yourself as a Samurai. 

	A	B	C
	Student applies an understanding of Feudal Japanese philosophy into their own life and the culture of Pembroke Academy. Includes all elements of the assignment.	Student applies an understanding of Feudal Japanese philosophy into their own life. Includes all elements of the assignment.	Student demonstrates an understanding of Feudal Japanese philosophy. Includes all elements of the assignment.
	Student applies an understanding of Feudal Japanese Hierarchy into their own life and the culture of Pembroke Academy.  Includes all elements of the assignment.	Student applies an understanding of Feudal Japanese Hierarchy. Includes all elements of the assignment.	Student demonstrates an understanding of Feudal Japanese Hierarchy. Includes all elements of the assignment.
	Information is clear and accurate.  Writing contains few grammatical errors.  Writing style demonstrates a concept of Feudal Japanese Philosophy.	Information is clear and accurate.  Writing contains few grammatical errors.	Information is clear and accurate.

Class on the first of December

Today in class we examined the following questions.

Using the above terms and definitions as a guide answer the following questions.

Which form of government is the most free?  How so?

Which form of government is the least free?  How so?

Which form of government fosters the greatest equality among citizens?  How so?

Which form of government creates the safest environment for citizens?  How so?

Which form of government creates the least safe environment for citizens?  How so?

Which form of government fosters the greatest inequality among citizens?  How so?

Which form of government would you like to live under the most, why?

Which form of government would you least like to live under, why?

Class on the first of December

Today in class we continued taking notes for our Gender & Sex summative.

Class on December the first

Today in class we began to examine the Bushido code in Japan.  Reminder you have a current event on Cuba due on Monday the 5th of November.

Hierarchy In Feudal Japan

Society was divided into two classes in Feudal Japan, the nobility and the peasants. The noble class made up roughly twelve percent of the population with peasants making up the rest.

Emperor and Shogun
The Emperor and the Shogun were the highest ranking nobles. During Japan's feudal period the Shogun held the most power while the Emperor was more of a puppet figure with little actual power. As the Shogun was a military leader his sword, or Nihonto in Japanese (katana came later in the Mid-Muromachi period), was an important part of his attire.

Daimyo
Daimyo were powerful warlords and the most powerful rulers under the Shogun from the 10th century to the early 19th century. Within their province the Daimyo had complete military and economic power. Daimyo had vast hereditary land holdings and armies to protect the land and its workers. The most powerful warlords sometimes achieved the status of Shogun.

Samurai
The Daimyo armies were made up of Samurai warriors. Samurai worked under Daimyo, but they had additional privileges and held a higher social status than common people. These privileges included being able to have a surname, a family crest, and carry two swords. People with Samurai family names are still treated with great respect in Japan today. Although most samurai were not well educated, they had a strict code of honor or the "way of the warrior", known as bushido in Japanese. If a Samurai broke the bushido code and brought dishonor to him/herself they would be expected to commit seppuku, or ritual suicide. Women were allowed to serve as samurai but always served under a male leader.

Peasants
Peasants were divided into several sub-classes. The highest ranking of the peasants were farmers. Farmers who owned their own land ranked higher than farmers who did not. Craftsmen, or artisans, were the second highest ranking after the farmers. They worked with wood and metal and some became well-known as expert Samura sword makers. Merchants were the lowest ranking because it was felt they made their living off of other people's work. However, in later times when Japan began to use money more as currency merchants became more wealthy.

Extra Info

Women
Women who belonged to the aristocracy were allowed to take part in politics. Women could also become samurai warriors but this was not allowed if they were in the aristocratic class. Although women were allowed to become samurai, a male samurai of equal rank could give orders to a female samurai. Female samurai were able to give orders to men of lower social classes like farmers and craftsmen. In the beginning of the Kamakura period women were also allowed to inherit land estates. However, this changed later as the amount of available land decreased towards the middle of Kamakura period.

Answer the following questions. 

Why do you think women were treated more equally to men in Feudal Japan as opposed to Feudal Europe? 

If Pembroke Academy now is Feudal Japan break down the Hierarchy as it would apply to the classes of people within the school.  Create a one to three sentences in justification for why you chose to apply this label to each group.

Emperor and Shogun

Daimyo

Samurai

Peasants

Seppuku

Often called “hara-kiri” in the West, “seppuku” is a form of ritual suicide that originated with Japan’s ancient samurai warrior class. The grisly act typically involved stabbing oneself in the belly with a short sword, slicing open the stomach and then turning the blade upwards to ensure a fatal wound. Some practitioners of seppuku allowed themselves to die slowly, but they usually enlisted the help of a “kaishakunin,” or second, who would lop off their head with a katana as soon as they made their initial cut. The entire process was accompanied by great ceremony. Among other rituals, the doomed individual often drank sake and composed a short “death poem” before taking up the blade.

Seppuku first developed in the 12th century as a means for samurai to achieve an honorable death. Swordsmen performed the ritual to avoid capture following battlefield defeats, but it also functioned as a means of protest and a way of expressing grief over the death of a revered leader. Beginning in the 1400s, seppuku evolved into a common form of capital punishment for samurai who had committed crimes. In each case, it was considered an act of extreme bravery and self-sacrifice that embodied Bushido, the ancient warrior code of the samurai. There was even a female version of seppuku called “jigai,” which involved cutting the throat using a special knife known as a “tanto.”

Seppuku fell out of favor with the decline of the samurai in the late-19th century, but the practice didn’t disappear entirely. Japanese General Nogi Maresuke disemboweled himself in 1912 out of loyalty to the deceased Meiji Emperor, and many troops later chose the sword over surrender during World War II. Perhaps the most famous case in recent history concerns Yukio Mishima, a renowned novelist and Nobel Prize nominee who committed ritual seppuku in 1970 after leading a failed coup against the Japanese government.

The samurai, members of a powerful military caste in feudal Japan, began as provincial warriors before rising to power in the 12th century with the beginning of the country’s first military dictatorship, known as the shogunate. As servants of the daimyos, or great lords, the samurai backed up the authority of the shogun and gave him power over the mikado (emperor). The samurai would dominate Japanese government and society until the Meiji Restoration of 1868 led to the abolition of the feudal system. Despite being deprived of their traditional privileges, many of the samurai would enter the elite ranks of politics and industry in modern Japan. More importantly, the traditional samurai code of honor, discipline and morality known as bushido–or “the way of the warrior”–was revived and made the basic code of conduct for much of Japanese society.

During the Heian Period (794-1185), the samurai were the armed supporters of wealthy landowners–many of whom left the imperial court to seek their own fortunes after being shut out of power by the powerful Fujiwara clan. The word “samurai” roughly translates to “those who serve.” (Another, more general word for a warrior is “bushi,” from which bushido is derived; this word lacks the connotations of service to a master.)

Beginning in the mid-12th century, real political power in Japan shifted gradually away from the emperor and his nobles in Kyoto to the heads of the clans on their large estates in the country. The Gempei War (1180-1185) pitted two of these great clans–the dominant Taira and the Minamoto–against each other in a struggle for control of the Japanese state. The war ended when one of the most famous samurai heroes in Japanese history, Minamoto Yoshitsune, led his clan to victory against the Taira near the village of Dan-no-ura.

RISE OF THE SAMURAI & KAMAKURA PERIOD

The triumphant leader Minamoto Yoritomo–half-brother of Yoshitsune, whom he drove into exile–established the center of government at Kamakura. The establishment of the Kamakura Shogunate, a hereditary military dictatorship, shifted all real political power in Japan to the samurai. As Yoritomo’s authority depended on their strength, he went to great lengths to establish and define the samurai’s privileged status; no one could call himself a samurai without Yoritomo’s permission.

Zen Buddhism, introduced into Japan from China around this time, held a great appeal for many samurai. Its austere and simple rituals, as well as the belief that salvation would come from within, provided an ideal philosophical background for the samurai’s own code of behavior. Also during the Kamakura period, the sword came to have a great significance in samurai culture. A man’s honor was said to reside in his sword, and the craftsmanship of swords–including carefully hammered blades, gold and silver inlay and sharkskin handgrips–became an art in itself.

JAPAN IN CHAOS: THE ASHIKAGA SHOGUNATE

The strain of defeating two Mongol invasions at the end of the 13th century weakened the Kamakura Shogunate, which fell to a rebellion led by Ashikaga Takauji. The Ashikaga Shogunate, centered in Kyoto, began around 1336. For the next two centuries, Japan was in a near-constant state of conflict between its feuding territorial clans. After the particularly divisive Onin War of 1467-77, the Ashikaga shoguns ceased to be effective, and feudal Japan lacked a strong central authority; local lords and their samurai stepped in to a greater extent to maintain law and order.

Despite the political unrest, this period–known as the Muromachi after the district of that name in Kyoto–saw considerable economic expansion in Japan. It was also a golden age for Japanese art, as the samurai culture came under the growing influence of Zen Buddhism. In addition to such now-famous Japanese art forms as the tea ceremony, rock gardens and flower arranging, theater and painting also flourished during the Muromachi period.

SAMURAI UNDER THE TOKUGAWA SHOGUNATE

The Sengoku-Jidai, or Period of the Country at War finally ended in 1615 with the unification of Japan under Tokugawa Ieyasu. This period ushered in a 250-year-long stretch of peace and prosperity in Japan, and for the first time the samurai took on the responsibility of governing through civil means rather than through military force. Ieyasu issued the “ordinances for the Military Houses,” by which samurai were told to train equally in arms and “polite” learning according to the principles of Confucianism. This relatively conservative faith, with its emphasis on loyalty and duty, eclipsed Buddhism during the Tokugawa period as the dominant religion of the samurai. It was during this period that the principles of bushido emerged as a general code of conduct for Japanese people in general. Though bushido varied under the influences of Buddhist and Confucian thought, its warrior spirit remained constant, including an emphasis on military skills and fearlessness in the face of an enemy. Bushido also emphasized frugality, kindness, honesty and care for one’s family members, particularly one’s elders.

In a peaceful Japan, many samurai were forced to become bureaucrats or take up some type of trade, even as they preserved their conception of themselves as fighting men. In 1588, the right to carry swords was restricted only to samurai, which created an even greater separation between them and the farmer-peasant class. The samurai during this period became the “two-sword man,” wearing both a short and a long sword as a mark of his privilege. The material well-being of many samurai actually declined during the Tokugawa Shogunate, however. Samurai had traditionally made their living on a fixed stipend from landowners; as these stipends declined, many lower-level samurai were frustrated by their inability to improve their situation.

MEIJI RESTORATION & THE END OF FEUDALISM

In the mid-19th century, the stability of the Tokugawa regime was undermined by a combination of factors, including peasant unrest due to famine and poverty. The incursion of Western powers into Japan–and especially the arrival in 1853 of Commodore Matthew C. Perry of the U.S. Navy, on a mission to get Japan to open its doors to international trade–proved to be the final straw. In 1858, Japan signed a commercial treaty with the United States, followed by similar ones with Russia, Britain, France and Holland. The controversial decision to open the country to Western commerce and investment helped encourage resistance to the shogunate among conservative forces in Japan, including many samurai, who began calling for a restoration of the power of the emperor.

The powerful clans of Choshu and Satsuma combined efforts to topple the Tokugawa Shogunate and announce an “imperial restoration” named for Emperor Meiji in early 1868. Feudalism was officially abolished in 1871; five years later, the wearing of swords was forbidden to anyone except members of the national armed forces, and all samurai stipends were converted into government bonds, often at significant financial loss. The new Japanese national army quashed several samurai rebellions during the 1870s, while some disgruntled samurai joined secret, ultra-nationalist societies, among them the notorious Black Dragon Society, whose object was to incite trouble in China so that the Japanese army would have an excuse to invade and preserve order.

Ironically–given the loss of their privileged status–the Meiji Restoration was actually engineered by members of the samurai class itself. Three of the most influential leaders of the new Japan–Inoue Kaoru, Ito Hirobumi and Yamagata Aritomo–had studied with the famous samurai Yoshida Shouin, who was executed after a failed attempt to kill a Tokugawa official in 1859. It was former samurai who put Japan on the road to what it would become, and many would become leaders in all areas of modern Japanese society.

BUSHIDO IN MODERN JAPAN

In the wake of the Meiji Restoration, Shinto was made the state religion of Japan (unlike Confucianism, Buddhism and Christianity, it was wholly Japanese) and bushido was adopted as its ruling moral code. By 1912, Japan had succeeded in building up its military strength–it signed an alliance with Britain in 1902 and defeated the Russians in Manchuria two years later–as well as its economy. By the end of World War I, the country was recognized as one of the “Big Five” powers alongside Britain, the U.S., France and Italy at the Versailles peace conference.

The liberal, cosmopolitan 1920s gave way to a revival of Japan’s military traditions in the 1930s, leading directly to imperial aggression and Japan’s entrance into World War II. During that conflict, Japanese soldiers brought antique samurai swords into battle and made suicidal “banzai” attacks according to the bushido principle of death before dishonor or defeat. At war’s end, Japan again drew on its strong sense of honor, discipline and devotion to a common cause–not the daimyos or shoguns of the past, but the emperor and the country–in order to rebuild itself and reemerge as one of the world’s greatest economic and industrial powers in the latter 20th century.

Create a modern Pembroke Academy-esque version of these concepts. 

Seppuku

Bushido

Zen