Ancient Japan
Looking up information for learning about Ancient Japan with M today, I found lots of interesting websites so I thought I’d post about them.
Ancient Japan was handy for an overview of Japan’s early history and the different periods the history is divided up into. We started off by talking about this briefly and comparing what the Japanese were doing with what was happening in the Roman Empire and Britain at the same time.
Then we talked about traditional Japanese religion and Shinto shrines. I read M 2 slightly different versions of a story about the mythical beginnings of Japan and the Shinto religion and afterwards he narrated it back to me and coloured in a Torii picture to go with it on his poster.
We also talked about the festival of Hina Matsuri, which may be based on the tradition of making grass dolls and then throwing them in the river to cleanse evil spirits/bad fortunes, which dates from the time period we were talking about. I found these origami dolls to make.
In and among all the different sites I ended up at, I found these that I specially want to mention/remember.
Religious Tolerance.org was a site I found while looking up Shinto, but I could spend ages reading articles here. I like how they try to put all sides of religious beliefs and I spent a while reading their comments pages.
Then I found this website with an interesting theory on similarities between Shinto rituals and Jewish observances, the idea being that one of the 10 lost tribes of Israel settled in Japan. Fascinating, though I’ve no idea really if he’s completely bonkers or not, I don’t know enough to read around it properly.
Finally I came across Mama Lisa’s World Blog when I was looking up Hina Matsuri and have spent a while browsing her info on children’s songs and traditions from around the world.
So I think I’ve home educated myself pretty well today LOL!
