90

Bundle 90: Edo Era: Prying Open a Closed Country

For thousands of years, Japan was isolated and homogeneous, particularly because the Tokugawa shogunate government closed the country from 1639 to 1854. The essays on 排 and 痘 show the costs of that, including the way this policy prolonged the smallpox crisis by delaying the arrival of vaccines in Japan. The essays on 謁 and 彰 describe how both Townsend Harris (the first U.S. consul general to Japan) and Commodore Matthew Perry signed treaties to change Japan's foreign trade policies, thereby opening the country to other cultures and sparking a westernization that delighted some Japanese and dismayed others.
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謁
audience
JOK: 1022
Did you know that in 1582 teenage Japanese envoys went to Europe and met the pope in Rome? And did you know that a 19th-century British painter depicted Queen Victoria’s encounter with a mysterious kneeling black king? Find out about all this, plus terms for meeting such VIPs. Also learn who opened Japan to foreign trade (not Perry!) and discover surprising words for “pope.”
彰
patent
JOK: 1410
From statues and commemorative coins to Nobel Prizes and Employee-of-the-Month awards, people honor achievements in many ways - even with edible testimonials! From this essay you'll learn the relevant Japanese vocabulary, the salient facts about two dramatic chapters in history (the Horeki River Improvement and the Shogitai), and the figurative usage of "yoke" in Japanese.
痘
pox
JOK: 1654
Find out how smallpox once killed a third of the Japanese population. See how Japan did and did not respond to the smallpox epidemic in the Edo era. Learn terms for “smallpox,” “smallpox vaccine,” “chickenpox,” “monkeypox,” “pockmark,” “pockmarked face,” and more. Also discover how smallpox connects to cows, seeds, dimples, sci-fi imaginings, and a former pond in Tokyo.
排
reject
JOK: 1686
Words with 排 run the gamut from xenophobic policies to culverts that drain water. To make sense of this range, simply perceive 排 as 'pushing out what's bad or unnecessary.' When cars spew exhaust and people scurry to toilets, 排 drives this outward flow. With 排, you can also say that you're overcoming difficulties, doing away with old rules, or doing something at all costs.
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