Japan in the National Center for History in the Schools World History Standards
EXPANDING ZONES OF EXCHANGE AND ENCOUNTER 300-1000 CE INTENSIFIED HEMISPHERIC INTERACTIONS 1000-1500 CE
THE EMERGENCE OF THE FIRST GLOBAL AGE 1450-1770 AN AGE OF REVOLUTIONS, 1750-1914 THE 20TH CENTURY
EXPANDING ZONES OF EXCHANGE AND ENCOUNTER 300-1000 CE
Standard 3: Students should understand major developments in East Asia in the era of the Tang dynasty, 600-900 CE
3A Demonstrate understanding of China's sustained political and cultural expansion in the Tang period by:
Grades 7-12
Assessing explanations for the spread and power of Buddhism in Tang China, Korea, and Japan.
3B Demonstrate understanding of Chinese influence on the peoples of Inner Asia, Korea, Southeast Asia, and Japan by:
Grades 5-12
Describing the indigenous development of Japanese society up to the 7th century CE
Describing the establishment of the imperial state in Japan, and assessing the role of the emperor in government.
Assessing the political, social, and cultural contributions of women in the Japanese imperial court.
Grades 7-12
Assessing the patterns of borrowing and adaptation of Chinese culture in Japanese society from the 7th to the 11th century.
INTENSIFIED HEMISPHERIC INTERACTIONS 1000-1500 CE
Standard 1: Students should understand the maturing of an interregional system of communication, trade, and cultural exchange in an era of Chinese economic power and Islamic expansion
1B Demonstrate understanding of the development of Japanese and Southeast Asian civilization between the 11th and 15th centuries by:
Grades 5-12
Describing Japanese government in the Kamakura and early Ashikaga periods, and assessing the applicability of the concept of feudalism to Japan.
Analyzing the rise of the warrior class and the changes in the economic and social status of peasants and women in the context of feudal society.
Evaluating the arts and aesthetic values in warrior culture.
Grades 7-12
Explaining the development of distinctive forms of Japanese Buddhism.
THE EMERGENCE OF THE FIRST GLOBAL AGE 1450-1770
Standard 1: Students should understand how the transoceanic interlinking of all major regions of the world from 1450 to 1600 led to global transformations.
1B Demonstrate understanding of the encounters between Europeans and peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and the Americas in the late 15th and early 16th centuries by:
Grades 7-12
Analyzing the success of the Ottoman, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese powers in restricting European commercial, military, and political penetration in the 16th century.
Grades 9-12
Compare the strategies, tactics, and assumptions of Turks, Indians, Japanese, and Chinese in dealing with foreign merchants in the 16th century. In what ways did they underestimate the threat posed by European naval power?
Research the Japanese reactions to activities of the Portuguese and Spanish. In what ways were Hideyoshi's invasions of Korea a response to Spanish takeover of the Philippines?
1C Demonstrate understanding of the consequences of the worldwide exchange of flora, fauna, and pathogens by:
Grades 5-12
Assessing ways in which the exchange of plants and animals between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia in the late 15th and the 16th centuries affected European, Asian, African, and American Indian societies and commerce.
Standard 5: Students should understand how Asian societies were transformed in the era of European expansion.
5B Demonstrate understanding of transformations in India, China, and Japan in an era of expanding European commercial power by:
Grades 5-12
Explaining the origins and character of centralized feudalism in Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate and how the country achieved political stability, economic growth, and cultural dynamism.
Analyzing Japan's relations with Europeans between the 16th and 18th centuries and the consequences of the policy of limiting contacts with foreigners.
5C Demonstrate understanding of major cultural trends in Asia between the 16th and 18th centuries by:
Grades 7-12
Assessing the influence of both new currents in Confucianism and Chinese art, architecture, and literary styles on cultural life in Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.
Describing the varieties of Buddhist and Hindu teaching and practice in Asia, and comparing their influence on social and cultural life.
Compare Japanese and Chinese brush paintings. What is their relationship to nature?
AN AGE OF REVOLUTIONS, 1750-1914
Standard 3: Students should understand the transformation of Eurasian societies in an era of global trade and rising European power, 1750-1850.
3E Demonstrate understanding of how Japan was transformed from feudal shogunate to modern nation-state in the 19th century by:
Grades 5-12
Analyzing the goals and policies of the Meiji state and their impact on Japan's modernization.
Assessing the impact of Western ideas and the role of Confucianism and Shinto traditional values on Japan in the Meiji period.
Grades 7-12
Analyzing the internal and external causes of the Meiji Restoration.
Explaining changes in Japan's relations with China and the Western powers from the 1850s to the 1890s.
Grades 9-12
Explaining the transformation of Japan from a hereditary social system to a middle-class society.
5B Demonstrate understanding of the causes of European, American, and Japanese imperial expansion, 1850-1914 by:
Grades 7-12
Explaining leading ideas of Social Darwinism and pseudoscientific racism in 19th-century Europe, and assessing the importance of these ideas in activating European imperial expansion in Africa and Asia.
Analyzing the reasons for Japan's imperial expansion in Korea and Manchuria and the rise of Japan as a world power.
9-12 Assessing the effects of the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars and colonization of Korea on the world-power status of Japan.
5C Demonstrate understanding of transformations in South, Southeast, and East Asia in the era of the "new imperialism" by:
Grades 5-12
Analyzing Japan's rapid industrialization, technological advancement, and national integration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
6 Students should demonstrate understanding of major global trends from 1750 to 1914 by:
Grades 5-12
Assessing the importance of ideas associated with republicanism, liberalism, and constitutionalism on 19th-century political life in such states as Great Britain, Germany, Russia, Mexico, Argentina, the Ottoman Empire, China, or Japan.
Identifying regions where Christianity and Islam were growing in this era, and analyzing causes of 19th-century movements of reform or renewal in Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, or Judaism.
Standard 1: Students should understand global and economic trends in the high period of Western dominance
1A Demonstrate understanding of how a belt of industrialized states was emerging in the Northern Hemisphere in the early 20th century by:
Grades 7-12
Comparing Japan's economic development and political ideologies in the early 20th century with those of Europe and the United States.
Standard 3: Students should understand the search for peace and stability in the 1920s and 1930s.
3A Demonstrate understanding of postwar efforts to achieve lasting peace and social and economic recovery by:
Grades 5-12
Describing the conflicting aims and aspirations of the conferees at Versailles, and analyzing the responses of major powers to the terms of the settlement.
Explaining how the League of Nations was founded, and assessing its promise and limitations as a vehicle for achieving lasting peace.
3B Demonstrate understanding of economic, social, and political transformations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America in the 1920s and 1930s period by:
Grades 7-12
Analyzing how militarism and fascism succeeded in derailing parliamentary democracy in Japan.
3D Demonstrate understanding of the causes and global consequences of the Great Depression by:
Grades 5-12
Assessing the human costs of the depression, and comparing its impact on economy and society in such industrialized countries as Britain, France, Germany, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Japan.
Grades 9-12
Analyzing the financial, economic, and social causes of the depression and why it spread to most parts of the world.
Standard 4: Students should understand the causes and global consequences of World War II.
4A Demonstrate understanding of the multiple causes of World War II by:
Grades 7-12
Explaining the German, Italian, and Japanese drives for empire in the 1930s.
Analyzing the precipitating causes of the war and the reasons for early German and Japanese victories.
Analyzing the motives and consequences of the Soviet nonaggression pacts with Germany and Japan.
4B Demonstrate understanding of the global scope and human costs of the war by:
Grades 5-12
Explaining the major turning points of the war, and describing the principal theaters of conflict in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, North Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.