"The mountain fairy does Adams a solid, and summons a gigantic eagle!"

November 15, 2018 4:47 AM

A thread of images from a Japanese illustrated history of America from 1861. Nick Kapur posts images from "Osanaetoki Bankokubanashi" (童絵解万国噺): "A Child's Illustrated Book of All Countries". Including: John Adams battling an enormous snake, Ben Franklin's impressive squat and more.

The whole book is available online at Waseda University Library.

posted by dill (35 comments total)

Lin-Manuel is gonna have some serious translating to do before the Hamilton tour stops in Tokyo.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 5:03 AM on November 15, 2018 [17 favorites]

Lin-Manuel is gonna have some serious translating to do before the Hamilton tour stops in Tokyo
It must be nice,
It must be ni--ice,
To have a giant eagle on your side.
posted by dannyboybell at 5:29 AM on November 15, 2018 [18 favorites]

Oh my that brightens the morning wonderfully, thank you!
posted by JanetLand at 5:44 AM on November 15, 2018 [2 favorites]

I feel like the animals could be metaphorical, along with the Goddess of America (who I choose to believe is Columbia). The eagle is maybe the revolutionary army? And the giant snake is... taxation without representation? And the tiger that Washington punches is... I'm reaching for it... a cherry tree.
posted by Mizu at 5:44 AM on November 15, 2018 [7 favorites]

This is totally delightful and in a few thousand years might as well be true
posted by rebent at 5:48 AM on November 15, 2018 [12 favorites]

And the giant snake is... taxation without representation?

Eh, sometimes a giant snake is just a giant snake. No need to dig for symbolism like Adams feeling inadequate in the face of Franklin's impressive squat and conjures up a giant snake as his enemy.
posted by gusottertrout at 5:56 AM on November 15, 2018 [4 favorites]

I love this dearly and I need a translation.

5: Why is Benjamin Franklin a bishonen? Come to think of it, how do I know he wasn’t? He must have been young once, and the ladies loved him.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:56 AM on November 15, 2018 [3 favorites]

Yeah, I tried to find a translation. I would love that too.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 6:01 AM on November 15, 2018

John Adams: Fuck off, Snake!
Snake: I SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED THE OPPOSITE OF THIS
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 6:05 AM on November 15, 2018 [19 favorites]

These are delightful and I'd love to see some translation.

I just imagined trying to create a single sentence on the history of Japan. I know zero. I'd be like, There were some poets, one was named Basho and he was good and wrote about a frog. And there was an amazing visual art history with print making. And there was an emperor and the country was closed and then for some reason it opened and there was a very bad history with China and then WWII and then... a seemingly very functional society if perhaps problematically anti immigrant and sexist, like most places. Welcome to my humiliatingly stupid Ted talk.
posted by latkes at 6:10 AM on November 15, 2018 [15 favorites]

and then for some reason it opened

Ha! Convenient amnesia, American devil!
posted by Segundus at 6:21 AM on November 15, 2018 [14 favorites]

And the giant snake is... taxation without representation

If the snake did not want to be trod on, it had a funny way of achieving that goal.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:50 AM on November 15, 2018 [6 favorites]

Fucking with historical figures seems to be an enduring Japanese institution. Their own historical giants Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu are frequently resurrected for use in high adventure. Nobunaga, alone, can be found as a big-headed cutie, or found fighting pokemon, or riding a giant robot to subjugate and unify alien worlds. And sometimes he's merely a Japanese high schooler who unfortunately got caught in a time vortex.
posted by ardgedee at 6:55 AM on November 15, 2018 [6 favorites]

A...tactical, turn-based strategy game involving Nobunaga and an army of Pokemon? How have I never heard of this?

DS. Hmm. Not my preferred platform by a long shot, but I think my youngest still has his.
posted by Four Ds at 7:07 AM on November 15, 2018 [2 favorites]

Now I want a version of Pokémon Go where you can also capture Revolutionary War figures. A Washington evolves into a Washingtoise which evolves into a Washingtiger!
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:10 AM on November 15, 2018 [8 favorites]

So this is basically a historical version of Metal Wolf Chaos, is the sense I'm getting here.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:19 AM on November 15, 2018 [4 favorites]

Early to bed and early to rise gives a man massive, cannon-hefting thighs.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 7:33 AM on November 15, 2018 [43 favorites]

Hah, I've had the waseda link open in a tab for the past few days thinking about making a FPP. I forget where I saw it, but here's the r/history thread: The fully scanned contents of an 1861 illustrated Japanese book on the American revolutionary war : history.
posted by zengargoyle at 7:59 AM on November 15, 2018

Others in this series:

Buchanan battles a Beige Wall

William Henry Harrison Creates Lightning with his Chin

Jimmy Carter Soothes the Giant Octopus with Mellifluent Tones
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 8:22 AM on November 15, 2018 [11 favorites]

Goddamn, I knew the Texas textbook committee was up to some shenanigans, but American teens not knowing about John Adams' battle against the serpent of anti-federalism is unforgivable.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 8:28 AM on November 15, 2018 [26 favorites]

Ben Franklin's impressive squat

Fantastic account name up for grabs!
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:58 AM on November 15, 2018 [9 favorites]

That tiger is Gritty.
posted by idiopath at 9:00 AM on November 15, 2018 [6 favorites]

I would watch this anime.

(I'm a little surprised that Franklin hasn't showed up in Bungou Stray Dogs, riding a turkey and draining energy through his 'Poor Richard' attack.)
posted by betweenthebars at 9:05 AM on November 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh yeah! And Hamilton, Madison and Jay could be superhero sentai who have the superpower to unite into a giant mecha called The Federalist, except they can’t agree on who takes the head.
posted by ardgedee at 10:32 AM on November 15, 2018 [4 favorites]

"...Two Things only did I learn from him.
1. that Franklins Ideas of exempting Husbandmen and Mariners &c from the depredations of War, were borrowed from him. 2. that Sneezing is a cure for the Hickups. Accordingly I have cured myself and all my Friends of that provoking disorder, for thirty years with a Pinch of Snuff."

-John Adams.
posted by clavdivs at 11:46 AM on November 15, 2018

You know I try so hard not to make assumptions about other cultures, to respect the limits of my knowledge and listen and learn when I'm outside of my areas of understanding. It seems disrespectful to do otherwise and I really don't want to get anything wrong, you know?

Then a Japanese author from 150 years ago is all like, "-AND THEN GEORGE WASHINGTON PUNCHED A FUCKING TIGER!"

And I'm all like, "FUCK YEAH HE DID"
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 11:57 AM on November 15, 2018 [14 favorites]

This is fabulous! One of the first images in the book is like a hybrid of the Mexican and American seals, with the eagle clutching a sheaf of arrows while fighting a snake in a thunderstorm.

I don't know how the art style or writing fit in with contemporary Japanese historical hero stories, but there are some similarities with the broadsides printed when Commodore Perry's expedition reached Japan. Anyone interested can find more context in Japan Envisions the West or As We Saw Them: The First Japanese Embassy to the United States.
posted by VelveteenBabbitt at 12:25 PM on November 15, 2018 [3 favorites]

Then a Japanese author from 150 years ago is all like, "-AND THEN GEORGE WASHINGTON PUNCHED A FUCKING TIGER!"

Japanese Author From 150 Years Ago: "He what?"
Visiting American Folklorist: "He cut down a cherry tree."
JAF150YA: "Why would he do that? The cherry blossom is among the most perfect of nature's creations -- an exquisite symbol of renewal and rebirth, yet at the same time a reminder of the ephemeral nature of existence. Why would you destroy it?"
VAF: "He was just a kid."
JAF150YA: "That's absurd. Even a child knows better than to do that."
VAF: "It's folklore. It has to be memorable. What do you want him to do, get in a fight with a tiger or something?"
JAF150YA, scribbling kanji: ". . . punched a tiger right in the nose . . . . "
posted by The Bellman at 1:30 PM on November 15, 2018 [15 favorites]

can Japan just reboot all of our national history please

I want to hear about how Robert E. Lee was a morally conflicted prince of Hell who was defeated by Ulysses S. Grant, a psychically gifted teenage girl
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:35 PM on November 15, 2018 [12 favorites]

Sadly this thread was copied, sometimes verbatim, from another Twitter user. Would love to see some credit given to the scholar who originally posted these.
posted by sudasana at 1:41 PM on November 15, 2018 [5 favorites]

I can't think of a better place to share the Decemberists doing Lin-Manuel Miranda's outtake from Hamilton, Ben Franklin's Song.

NSFW.

Ben Franklin was a badass, even before we knew about the cannon.
posted by MrVisible at 3:50 PM on November 15, 2018

This bunch of tweets is the best episode of Drunk History ever. Thank you.
posted by gauche at 6:47 PM on November 15, 2018

So, apologies for being lecturey, but on the off chance anyone wants some historical context to this stuff:

In 1600, after generations of civil war, the Japanese home islands were reunited under the power of a new Shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu. Since foreign missionaries and merchants selling weapons (often one and the same) had played a pretty decisive role in the late stages of that struggle, one of the first things Ieyasu did to consolidate his power was kick out all the Westerners, murder all the converts, seize all the guns, and hard close the borders to all foreigners except for a token contingent of Dutch one time a year.

Upside for the new Tokugawa Shogunate is that the isolationism created a surprisingly prosperous, peaceful, and urbane society for a solid two centuries for what amounted to a premodern feudal aristocracy. Downside is that Japan more or less didn't get the news about things like The Industrial Revolution and Western Imperialism until American warships (the "Black Ships") showed up in Edo harbor with a letter from President Nathanial Hawthorne's College Roommate warmly inviting the Japanese Emperor or King or Whoever is in Charge Over There to kindly open trade relations or else prepare to GET REKT. Off the record, Commodore Matthew Perry fires off a couple of cannons just to drive the point home. That's 1853-54, seven years before these were created.

Japan, of course, had no real choice but to give in to the American "unequal treaties," and most every other Western nation rushed in soon after demanding all the same concessions. It didn't take long for Japan to notice that mainland China had been totally destroyed by weaponized trade treaties and for the Shogunate to start up a crash course in "Dutch Studies" (aka Western Culture and Technology). Anyone with even the remotest understanding of European language, culture, and science were recruited into an embassy (Including short-list-personal-hero Yukichi Fukuzawa) to travel to America and basically study up and bring back reports.

Luckily for fans of geographic determinism, the mountains of Japan were loaded with Silver, which America and Britain were more than happy to take from the Shogun in exchange for guns and consultant work. And, you know, also offer the same deal to the Shogun's political enemies.

I mean, what do you want, we're running a business over here?! Anyway -

One of the first things the Shogunate bought was a Western sail-steamer (rechristened the Kanrin Maru) along with hired foreign sailors to train up a Japanese crew for a Pacific crossing to San Francisco. That embassy set sail in 1860. It returned the following year.

So, these illustrations would literally the the first artistic representations of those stories and reports from the west, filtered for a Japanese audience totally unfamiliar with industrial technology, and so projected entirely through the lens of medieval Japanese imagery and cultural understandings.

latkes: If you want to have fun learning a lot more about Japanese history without really learning much: previously on MetaFilter.
posted by absalom at 7:22 PM on November 15, 2018 [20 favorites]

I can't say that modern Japan's understanding of world events is any more accurate.
posted by sebastienbailard at 4:59 AM on November 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm getting a weird William Blake vibe here.
posted by doctornemo at 1:13 PM on November 16, 2018