Visualizing Cultures (website)

Visualizing Cultures is an educational website intended to tie "images and scholarly commentary in innovative ways to illuminate social and cultural history." The site was created in 2002 by Professors John W. Dower of the History Faculty and Shigeru Miyagawa of Foreign Languages and Literatures. It is affiliated with the MIT open courseware project, a project initiated in 2001 intended to make materials from MIT courses available freely online. The site draws on the digitized visual record to develop historical units covering events in China, Japan, and the Philippines in the modern world. Scholars from multiple universities have collaborated with Visualizing Cultures to produce 40 units comprising essays, visual narratives, and image galleries.
A “gateway to seeing history through images that once had wide circulation among peoples of different times and places" Visualizing Cultures investigates history as “how people saw themselves, how they saw others including foreigners and enemies, and how in turn others saw them.” Nine of the units have curriculum designed for secondary school teaching. Outreach of the project includes workshops for teachers and a traveling exhibition that toured the United States, including an exhibit as part of the revival of Stephen Sondheim's play, "Pacific Overtures" on Broadway, and Japan. Visualizing Cultures (VC)has collaborated with more than 200 museums, libraries, and archives to make the digital visual record in the form of popular, political, and commercial historical images, freely accessible under the Creative Commons license.
The project was recognized by MIT with the “Class of 1960 Innovation in Education Award" in 2004. In 2005, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected VC for inclusion on “EDSITEment” as an online resource for education in the humanities. The curriculum on the website for the Canton Trade unit won the 2011 "Franklin R. Buchanan prize from the Association of Asian Studies for best curricular materials concerning Asia." The first Visualizing Cultures unit, “Black Ships & Samurai,” written by John Dower, juxtaposed the visual record from the two sides of the 1853-1854 encounter when Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States arrived in Japan aboard steam-powered gunboats to force that long-secluded country to open its borders to the outside world.
Units.
The following units are online as of 2020 in order of appearance on site:
Rise & Fall of the Canton Trade System: units l - III China in the World (1700–1860s). Essay by Peter C. Perdue. Three cities - Macau, Canton, and Hong Kong - were the center of the trading system that linked China to the Western European powers and the United States. These units trace the rise and fall of the trading system that spanned 1700 to 1842.
The Garden of Perfect Brightness—I: the Yuanmingyuan as Imperial Paradis (1700-1860). Essay by Lillian Li. The “40 scenes” are the only visual evidence of the Chinese sections of the “Garden of Perfect Brightness” and are reproduced in Part 1.
The Garden of Perfect Brightness—II: the European Palaces and Pavilions of the Yuanmingyuan. Essay by Lillian Li. The European section of the imperial retreat is at the nexus of myth and reality between Orientalism and Occidentalism.
The Garden of Perfect Brightness—III: Destruction, Looting, and Memory (1860–present). Essay by Lillian Li. In October 1860, the Second Opium War came to a violent end when British and French forces sacked and destroyed the Yuanmingyuan.
The First Opium War: The Anglo-Chinese War of 1839-1842. Essay by Peter C. Perdue. Draws on the visual record of the first Opium War to look at the opium trade linking England, India, and China; hostilities; and illustrated accounts of a war that altered China's position in the world.
The Opium War in Japanese Eyes: An Illustrated 1849 “Story from Overseas.” Essay by John W. Dower. Introduces a Japanese illustrated account of the first Opium War in China (1839 - 1842) created before Commodore Perry forced Japan to abandon its policy of seclusion in the early 1850s.
Black Ships & Samurai: units 1 - 11 Commodore Perry & the Opening of Japan (1853–54). Essay by John W. Dower. This unit juxtaposes American and Japanese images of the expedition that “opened” Japan to the modern world.
Yokohama Boomtown: Foreigners in Treaty-Port Japan (1859–1872). Essay by John W. Dower. Western businessmen and their communities in newly opened Japan are examined through the “Yokohama prints” at the Smithsonian Institution's Arthur Sackler Gallery.
Felice Beato's Japan: Places An Album by the Pioneer Foreign Photographer in Yokohama. Essay by Allen Hockley. A 50-image album by the earliest photographer to document Japan features the routes foreign sightseers travelled in the opening years of the Meiji period. Album courtesy Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College.
Felice Beato's Japan: People An Album by the Pioneer Foreign Photographer in Yokohama. Essay by Alona C. Wilson. Photos of men and women from different walks of life catered to foreign curiosity about the "exotic" Japanese. Most were taken in Beato's studio in Yokohama. Album courtesy of the Smith College Museum of Art.
Globetrotters’ Japan: Places (unit 1) and People (unit 2) Foreigners on the Tourist Circuit in Meiji Japan. Essays by Allen Hockley. Hand-colored photographs of the sights on a typical tour of late-19th-century Japan, reproduced from the 10-volume set by Captain Frank Brinkley. Comments appear from travel books by “globetrotter” tourists of the time. Albums courtesy Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College.
John Thomson's China: units I - III Illustrations of China and Its People, Photo Albums (1873–1874). Essay by Allen Hockley. With images from the first Western photographer to travel widely through China, this unit reproduces and analyzes Thomson's "Illustrations of China and Its People". Images courtesy of Yale University Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
“Pictures to Draw Tears from Iron”: The North China Famine of 1876–1879. Essay by Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley. Discussion of the most lethal drought-famine in imperial China's long history based on illustrations from pamphlets produced by Chinese philanthropists that were reproduced by Christian missionaries as part of a worldwide campaign for famine relief.
Throwing Off Asia l: Woodblock Prints of Domestic “Westernization” (1868–1912). Essay by John W. Dower. The rapid "Westernization" of Japan in the late-19th and early-20th centuries is shown in popular woodblock prints. Images for these three units from the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Throwing Off Asia lI: Woodblock Prints of the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95). Essay by John W. Dower. The "Westernization" of Japan included strengthening the military and waging wars against China and Tsarist Russia. The Sino-Japanese War is looked at through Japan's propaganda prints released during the conflict.
Throwing Off Asia lll: Woodblock Prints of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05). Essay by John W. Dower. Meiji Japan's “Westernization” culminated in war against Tsarist Russia. This unit draws on photographs and Japanese wartime prints from the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Photography & Power in the Colonial Philippines: Dean Worcester's Ethnographic Images of Filipinos (1898-1912). Essay by Christopher Capozzola. Dean C. Worcester was a colonial official, ethnographer, photographer, and collector who generated more than 4000 photographs and shaped Americans' view of their colonial undertaking in the Philippines. Worcester's collection is examined to look at Philippine cultures at the turn of the century as well as the structures of colonial rule.
“The Cause of the Riots in the Yangtze Valley”: Missionary Commentary on an Illustrated Anti-Christian Chinese Pamphlet (1891). Introduction by Peter C. Perdue.
Civilization & Barbarism: Cartoon Commentary & the “White Man’s Burden” (1898–1902). Essay by Ellen Sebring.
Asia Rising: Japanese Postcards of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05). Essay by John W. Dower. This unit presents the Japanese view of the 1904–05 war against Tsarist Russia that changed the global balance of power. Images for this and the next unit courtesy Leonard A. Lauder Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Yellow Promise/Yellow Peril: Foreign Postcards of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05). Essay by John W. Dower. The international view of Japan's 1904–05 war against Tsarist Russia is presented through postcards from around the world; the unit vividly demonstrates the power of juxtaposing images to present an historical treatise.
The Empress Dowager and the Camera: Photographing Cixi, 1903-1904. Essay by David Hogge. Some 70 glass-plate negatives feature the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908), China's head of state during the final decades of the imperial era. Cixi used photographs to enhance her image at the very moment photography was becoming a mass-media vehicle and the Qing dynasty (1644 to 1911).
Social Protest in Imperial Japan: the Hibiya Riot of 1905. Essay by Andrew Gordon. On September 5, 1905, a three-day riot in Tokyo protested the terms of the peace treaty that ended the Russo-Japanese War. Also called the “Hibiya Riot” after the park where the protest began, this incident marked the first major social protest of the age of imperial democracy in Japan.
Selling Shiseido: Cosmetics Advertising & Design in Early 20th-Century Japan, units I-III. Essay by Gennifer Weisenfeld. Shiseido opened its visual archives to reveal a 20th-century history that offers a vivid image of the efflorescence of modernity in Japan: changing ideals of beauty, consumer culture, and cosmopolitanism in the midst of the rise of militarism.
Political Protest in Interwar Japan: Posters & Handbills from the Ohara Collection (1920s-1930s). Essay by Christopher Gerteis. This unit narrates the history of the political struggles led by Japan's interwar-era labor movement by examining the visual propaganda—posters, handbills, and political cartoons—produced to rally Japan's blue-collar workers to the cause.
Tokyo Modern: Koizumi Kishio's “100 Views”, units I - III. Essay by James T. Ulak. Explores the rebirth of Tokyo following the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923. Koizumi's prints depict the city as it embraced modernity, maintained traditions, and became the site of ultimately disastrous political policies. Images courtesy of The Wolfsonian–FIU. MIT Visualizing Cultures, Units (Sets) online as of February 2011.
China's "Modern Sketch": The Golden Era of Cartoon Art, 1934-1937 (units 1-3). Essay by John A. Crespi. "Modern Sketch" stands out among the nearly 20 illustrated humor and satire magazines that proliferated in mid-1930s Shanghai. The illustrations visualize the major crises and contradictions that define China's 20th century as a modern era.
Protest Art in 1950s Japan: The Forgotten Reportage Painters. Essay by Linda Hoaglund. During the 1950s, a now little-known genre of “reportage painting” flourished in Japan, involving left-wing artists who rejected conventional aesthetics while bearing witness to their country's immersion in the unfolding Cold War.
Tokyo 1960: Days of Rage & Grief. Hamaya Hiroshi's Photos of the Anti-Security-Treaty Protests. Essay by Justin Jesty. In May and June 1960, Tokyo was convulsed by the greatest popular protests of its postwar history. This unit introduces Hamaya Hiroshi's photographs, taken between May 20 and June 22, when clashes with police resulted in injuries and the death of a female student.
Ground Zero 1945: Pictures by Atomic Bomb Survivors. Essay by John W. Dower. These drawings and paintings by Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb were created more than a quarter century after the bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Images courtesy Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
Ground Zero 1945: A Schoolboy's Story. Testimony of Hiroshima survivor Akihiro Takahashi, Illustrations by Goro Shikoku. A survivor recounts the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, with illustrations by a Hiroshima artist. This unit is bilingual. Images courtesy Hiroshima Peace Institute.
2006 Controversy.
On April 23, 2006, the MIT homepage posted a link to the Visualizing Cultures project in its “Spotlight” section. 
The "Throwing Off Asia" units included some woodblock prints produced in Japan as propaganda during the Chinese-Japanese War of 1894–1895. One of the prints illustrated Japanese soldiers executing "violent Chinese soldiers," with human heads scattered on the ground and blood gushing from the captives' necks. 
A campus-based Chinese student-led protest ensued, saying that the purpose of the project was not sufficiently clear to contextualize the negative messages of the historical images on the site. The protest led to general concerns over academic freedom and the right to student protest. The website was temporarily taken down in response to the criticism.
"H-Asia," an international history and online discussion forum of scholars and teachers in the Humanities & Social Sciences, published a section on the controversy, and exchanges between Chinese and Japanese researchers ignited a debate upon how it should be handled. Other articles on it included Benjamin A. Elman's "Teaching through the MIT Visualizing Cultures Controversy in Spring 2006". After a week, the authors agreed to include additional context to the sections before republishing their work. The website is currently online.
In 2015, Duke University published a journal article, 'Reconsidering MIT Visualizing Cultures Controversy,' edited by Winnie Wong and Jing Wang, on the debate seen in the larger critical context, is coming out from , Vol. 23, No. 1 (2015). The special issue reflects upon the student protest and public controversy over the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Visualizing Cultures website in 2006 from multiple perspectives. Three sets of questions raised by the incident are addressed by contributors to the volume. The first entails questions over the changing narratives of nationalism and history in Sino-Japanese-US relations, and as taught to and contested by Chinese overseas students. The second revolves around the use and display of visual images in pedagogical, digital, and scholarly contexts, examining debates over authority and interpretation of propagandistic, racist, and violent visual imagery. The third stems from the promises of digital media and examines the challenges of public participation and dissent in the pedagogical sphere. In what ways should or could the norms of scholarship, pedagogy, and student interaction evolve in response to the digital turn, to the globalization of the student body, and to the appropriation of visual technology in the classroom?