Looking back on history can be more fun than people might realize. I was browsing my RSS feed during a break today and came across this article about American History as told during Japan’s Edo Period. It was quite a fascinating thing, looking through all of those pictures from a whole other era. This needs an anime or manga adaptation, make it happen and I’ll be on it like a bum on a bologna sandvich.
A thread of images from a Japanese illustrated history of America from 1861.
Here is George Washington (with bow and arrow) pictured alongside the Goddess of America. 1/ pic.twitter.com/LoF54y54bL
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) November 14, 2018
It’s funny to think that there was once a time when Japan wanted to remain closed off from the rest of the world, but at the same time they were fascinated enough to draw depictions of what they thought we were. The depictions of past presidents are astonishing… They had no idea about our culture, anything. There wasn’t much of a way for them to do so either given their strict rules about entering and leaving the country. As a result we have these artistic depictions of what life would be like in the US from the perspective of someone who has never set foot outside of their country or had any access to current events of the time.
This is both beautiful and terrifying to think about… considering I know people who feel that everyone should go back to their (dis)respected countries and stay there. Oddly enough that only seems to be reserved for folks that have skin tones of the spicy or chocolatey variety… I never see one white guy say to another to go back to Finland or England (though that would be amusing). I’m looking at these pictures, and thinking about quite a few of my co-workers or some of the neighbors that feel we can wear blinders to the rest of the world and be perfectly content with it. Hell, some of them don’t even understand why I even have international friends. I never thought that living in the 21st century, where anyone with even a cheap phone can talk to someone half way across the world, and even in this day and age we still have people that would be even the slightest bothered by the smallest speck of indifference.
Of course I would expect conflicts, especially from people that want to buy things from other countries because its cheaper… everyone seems to be all about their own home team until coins are involved.