Comfort Women Education is an online resource collection created by Comfort Women Action for Redress and Education or CARE. This source provides a lesson plan to discuss Comfort Women that includes powerpoints, resource handbooks, and video lessons.
“Using personal stories of the comfort women as teaching materials can help educators emphasize the importance of protecting human rights by providing students a vivid picture of the impact that human rights violations have on people’s lives. Comfort women stories may be graphic, but are necessary to fully understand the human rights violations that those women endured. For students who hear about today’s wars and atrocities from the media, an open and forthright discussion would be helpful to teach how to critically understand such events in both the past and the present.”
This site, sponsored by the “Comfort Women” Justice Coalition, the comfort system as a source of ongoing pain with insufficient reparations having been made by the governments responsible. It introduces prevalent comfort system survivors, summarizes the history of the system, and provides a list of resources for further information.
The term “comfort woman” (“慰安婦” pronounced ianfu in Japanese, wianbu in Korean and Wèi’ān fù in Mandarin), literally means “comforting, consoling woman” and is a euphemistic way of referring to those women conscripted by Japan during WWII to provide sexual services for the Japanese military. This page is a great starting point for understanding the how the ianfu system functioned, the reasons for its creation, and its lasting repercussions.
The Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago has a great list of digital resources for educators and learners. Included in this list are links to engaging lesson plans and classroom materials, as well as professional development organizations. Educators can reference this resource compilation for subjects ranging from contemporary issues to ancient history.
“Japanese Sea Lords” from Rogue History on PBS Learning Media offers an exploration into the sea lords of Japan’s maritime past, designed for students in grades 6-12. Labeled as “kaizoku,” or pirates, these lords reigned the seas from the fourteenth to sixteenth century, guarding vital sea zones and supervising maritime trade. This resource delves into their complex roles in Japanese society, challenging historical labels and revealing the legacy left by the Noshima Sea Lord family.
This curriculum made by TEA is a collection of teacher-developed, standards-based, cross-curricular K-6 lessons. The collection is designed to promote the teaching of cultural studies of Japan while developing students’ knowledge and skills in literacy and communication. Each of the six lessons features an authentic children’s literature book on an aspect of Japanese culture.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, though located in Hiroshima, offers permanent exhibitions available for free and easily accessible online. Housed within the museum are items of material culture that represent the victims of the bombing of Hiroshima, in which a single atomic bomb killed tens of thousands of the city’s inhabitants, most of whom were civilians. The museum stands as a testament to the permanently altered way of life led by the survivors, and as a memorial to those who perished. Those who visit the museum’s virtual exhibitions can navigate the site’s user friendly pages to view the entire permanent collection. This interactive resource is encouraged for use in history classrooms in particular.
The MIT Visualizing Cultures project is an online database of historical images accompanied by essays that teach world history, and one of their most important pages is “Ground Zero 1945.” This page teaches about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki through drawings from survivors and an essay by John H. Dower. This is a great interactive resource for high school history classes that will allow students to visualize this unimaginable event. Please note that, though the atomic bombings are a crucial part of history to include in classrooms, the drawings in this resource are graphic depictions of painful and disturbing events. Discretion is advised.
Shinto: An Introduction is a lesson plan for History classes that enables educators to teach about Shinto—the oldest religion in Japan—through its beliefs, values, and rituals. This resource, provided by the World History Encyclopedia, offers a complete lesson plan, activities, homework, assignments, and answer keys, altogether providing everything needed to make understanding Shinto accessible to students. The lesson itself covers Shinto’s gods and core beliefs, its application to everyday life, and classroom ethics teachings on values and accountability. This informative and engaging resource is available for free download as a PDF or Microsoft Word document.
Another online curriculum designed by TEA, “Imaging Japanese History” enhances students’ visual literacy skills, historical thinking skills, and knowledge of Japanese history. Five online modules each provide a case study in the role of art in capturing and conveying not only the history of Japan, but the human experience at large.
Asia For Educators, at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asia Institute, has compiled a collection of resources for K-5 teachers. This collection is centered around Japan and offers resources for a wide variety of subjects: geography, language, culture, history, science, math, literature, arts & crafts, and drama & dance.
