Paper short abstract:

This presentation focuses on medieval/early modern periodization in Japanese high school history textbooks. In Japan, World History and Japanese History are minutely separated, and the periodization between them is discordant. I propose a tentative plan of periodization to solve this problem.

Paper long abstract:

My presentation discusses a tentative plan of medieval/early modern periodization, which is based on recent studies, especially on maritime Asia, in Japanese high school history textbooks.

Japanese school education is based on a 'Course of Study' set by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Both Japanese History and World History, which deals with the history of the world except Japan, are high school history subjects. The 'Course of Study' describes the basic contents of each subject.

The chapter 'World History' in it considers the duration from the Song to Yuan dynasties as one period and that from the Ming to Qing dynasties as another period in Asian history, which seems to be based on researches by Chinese studies scholars. It coincides with the images drawn by many researchers of maritime Asia. The 'Age of Commerce' dawned in maritime Asia, overcoming the crisis of the fourteenth century, and European merchants entered as new players in the sixteenth century.

On the other hand, in 'Japanese History', the early modern period starts with the coming of Europeans to Japan. This is based on the old-fashioned idea that the age of rival loads end because Europeans brought sciences and techniques, for example, guns, and the Shoen system was dissolved by Toyotomi Hideyoshi's land survey.

We can find two problems in this periodization from the viewpoint of history education.

One, epoch from medieval to early modern and one from early modern to modern (Matthew Perry's visit to Japan) are from 'Western Impacts', and it gives a strong 'Eurocentrism' without consciousness. Second, many researches imply that medieval/early modern periodization should be reconsidered. Furthermore, it creates difficulties in understanding the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century history correctly. While it is described as one period in 'World History' textbooks, the dynamism of maritime Asia, described as the 'Age of Commerce', must be divided in 'Japanese History' textbooks.

In the near future, Japanese History and World History will be united under a new subject. Hence, it is necessary to unite the images given by these subjects to students.