Virtual Edo is a complex and highly detailed virtual tour of 18th century Edo(now Tokyo)using traditional Japanese woodblock prints to explore not only the sights of the city but the nature and texture of life within it. Virtual Edo is a document about early mordern urban life in an important Asian city. This site is a useful source on traditional Japanese history and culture.
Type of Material:
Simulation
Technical Requirements:
None. However, basic knowledge of the computer and use of the mouse is encouraged.
Identify Major Learning Goals:
The goals depend on the viewer and user of the site. The site merely invites a long and rather unfocused excursion through the many-sided world of traditional Japan and its culture.
Target Student Population:
High School and College
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
No special conceptual or historical knowledge is needed because the site is designed for a general audience without a familiarity with Japan or its history. A willingness to explore and learn through a spontaneous, indirect approach would, however, be of value. No prior knowledge of Japan is needed, but some interest in the country would be important to motivate a student to explore the site in depth.
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
Virtual Edo was originally an exhibit held at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The factual information about the city and early modern Japanese life is very accurate, and for all that it is presented in great detail through documents such as traditional woodblock prints, which serve as the device to view scenes on a simulated tour. This gives the site a casual rather than a pedantic feel and allows discussions into all kinds of interesting aspects of premodern Japanese sosciety, history, and culture.
Concerns:
The site has no scholarly aparatus such as an index, notes, bibliography, etc. and offers no suggestions on how to use its rich information in other contexts.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
This site is designed with a narrowgoal in mind or a highly focused learning objective. It is set up as an elaborate world for viewers to explore on their own in the manner and pace they choose. In one sense that may be a weakness, particularly in light of broken links in the tour approach, as students simply set out to view sites off the map and may be overwhelmed by too much seemingly random information and no way to access information on specific topics of interest to them. The site provides freedom to explore and discover things spontaneously--much as students do in elaborate computer games. And, this explorative mode, which avoids a narrowly defined goal, closely mirrors the discursive approach so marked in Japanese art and literature. The site thus offers an important cultural insight as well as much factual information.
The site is a Japanese model of presentation (both in terms of prints and design) and its rich and detailed coverage of early Japanese life and lore through a lively and easy to follow concept (and one of historic import to the Japanese who have long written and prized travel diaries about trips and pilgrimages)--a simulated journey into another time.
Concerns:
Support on how to use it, however, does not seem forthcoming from either the site or its author, and instructors would be wise to give students some goal or object to achieve when asking them to view the site.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
This site is well designed for hypertext style movement. It is set up so the viewer can either proceed on a guided tour (with side trips and follow-up notes for the more curious) or by selecting scenes personally from a map. Instructions on how to navigage in the former mode are clear.
Concerns:
Broken links prevent completion of the full trip, leaving about half the sites accessible on the map uncovered. Because links to notes explaining details in the prints are not marked and are activiated only by the passage of a mouse over them, many may be missed by the unwary. Unless viewers set their monitors to maximum screen size (800X600) or more or reopen the prints in separate windows, the prints are drastically cropped without any indication of this fact. Broken links need to be fixed. More information needs to be given about how to best view the site and where to look for "hidden links." Some scenes involve audio and well as visual material. This inconsistency may be disconcerting.
Creative Commons:
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