電気通信大学 ASE II: Timelines of things from past to present & future・過去、現在、未来のタイムライン

Hello!

How are you? Today let's look at more ideas about the future, but from a different viewpoint - from timelines of things from the past to the present, and what we could imagine about the future. 

Look at the picture above. It comes from a magazine in the U.S. called Popular Science. It has been published for a long time, and this picture is from 1947. In one of their magazines from 1947, Popular Science had a report about the future. It imagined many things about it. From the picture, what do you see that it imagined about the future? Talk about it!

例えば：In the picture at the top, maybe they thought all our electricity (電気) would come from nuclear power plants (原子力発電所) in the future. 

Now look at this short video. It's the opening and closing credits to an animated cartoon from the early 1960s that was popular in the U.S. It was called The Jetsons and it was about an American family living in the future. What sorts of things do you notice in the video? 

What do you think of that? Every culture has its own ideas about what the future looks like. The Jetsons video clip plus the picture at the top are very some American ideas, especially after World War II and into the 1950s and 1960s, about what the future would look like. Would any of these ideas be the same as some Japanese ideas at that time about the future?  

Activity
Now how have some things developed and changed over time? Here are two (2) other short videos for all of you - one is about money, and the other, about cars. 

In a pair or group, choose one (1) video. Watch it and note how things have changed with the topic - either money or cars - over time. 

Then - get together with another pair or group who has watched a different video. With the other pair or group, compare and contrast (比較対照して) what you have seen in your video - and give each other some ideas about the future with the thing you watched about (either money, or cars). 

About money

About cars

Have fun! See you next time!

Image: Screenshot of illustration uploaded to Popular Science website. 

Uploaded for educational purposes only. I do not own the rights to this illustration. All rights reserved to the copyright holder(s). 
Videos uploaded from YouTube. I do not own the rights to the animation or other content within. All rights reserved to the copyright holders. Uploaded for educational purposes only.

電気通信大学 ASE II: Japan & the future・日本の未来

Hello! 

How are you? A big otsukaresamadeshita on the presentations last week. Good job on those! 

Now here is a post on the future - this time, Japan and the future. 

Look at the picture above. It shows an average Japanese family having dinner, and it comes from a Japanese magazine article from 1954 about home life. Is there anything different about family dinner time now than from then? 

Activity
What kinds of social or cultural changes can you see happening in Japan in the future? Japanese society and culture has already been through many changes since World War II. 

Take a look at these next group of pictures. They show some changes that have happened in around the last 50 years or so, up to now. What do you notice about the buildings, or the cars, or the way people dress? How do you feel that things have changed? 

Chuo-dori, Ginza, Tokyo, late 1960s

Chuo-dori, Ginza, Tokyo, today

Japanese young people, early 1960s

Japanese young people, today

Some contemporary fashions in Japan, late 1960s

Some contemporary fashions in Japan, today

Now let's take a look at this video about the Tsukuba Expo in 1985. This was almost 20 years later, but already things had changed since the 1960s: 

I have just two questions: 

What was the theme of the Tsukuba Expo? 

What kinds of achievements did the Tsukuba Expo want to show?

Other questions to think about:

So what kinds of changes can you imagine happening in society or culture in the future from now? What sorts of fashions might people be wearing? For example, would long hair come back into fashion among men? Would women wear mini-skirts again? Or - would men wear skirts and women wear suits? How about music? What would it sound like in the future? 

What designs in cars could you see in the future? Would we see a return to some older designs in cars? How about buildings? How might they be different? Perhaps would we see something in the future that people 50 years ago would never have imagined! 

Now here are the board notes for our class from 11/19:

See you next week!

Images: Top - by Unknown - Japanese magazine "Photograph Gazette, May 1954 issue" published by Government of Japan., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17850644/Ginza in 1967 - by Roger W from Sarasota, Florida, U.S.A. - Tokyo - Chuo-Dori, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60804070/Ginza in 2017 - by Gary - DSC08269 - Chuo-dori Ginza, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40961932/Japanese young people in 1964 - screenshot taken from Japanese+youth,+Tokyo,+1964+(11).jpg/Japanese young people today - screenshot taken from https://www.google.co.jp/search?biw=1199&bih=746&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=w2dXWpWxAcr08QXcjLHAAg&q=japanese+young+people&oq=japanese+young+people&gs_l=psy-ab.12...0.0.0.37755.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0....0...1c..64.psy-ab..0.0.0....0.ZsHKi1iiTEI#imgrc=VXhxXXgo1PeJ-M:/Fashions in the 1960s - screenshot taken from https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggSgihLQJ00A84oVxNXdnaTdsbeTOGyngG-Cw7QCFjOczG3LECPdEbMZn_H9xcCV5UGrB9aZYdZqsodtUNL0InEGB4x1qi37sgsipFgP8_t3ThGqxbukg0V5zUJZvTYyx5ZwU6YWul76k/s1600/Street fashion today – screenshot taken from images on Instagram.
I do not own the rights to the images originally posted on Instagram. All rights reserved on original images to the copyright holders. Screenshots of images uploaded for educational purposes only.

電気通信大学 ASE II: Japan & the future・日本の未来

Hello! 

How are you? Here is another post on the future - this time, Japan and the future. 

Look at the picture above. It shows an average Japanese family having dinner, and it comes from a Japanese magazine article from 1954 about home life. Is there anything different about family dinner time now than from then? 

Activity
What kinds of social or cultural changes can you see happening in Japan in the future? Japanese society and culture has already been through many changes since World War II. 

Take a look at these next group of pictures. They show some changes that have happened in around the last 50 years or so, up to now. What do you notice about the buildings, or the cars, or the way people dress? How do you feel that things have changed? 

Chuo-dori, Ginza, Tokyo, 1967

Chuo-dori, Ginza, Tokyo, 2017

Japanese young people, 1964

Japanese young people, 2017

Some contemporary fashions in Japan, late 1960s

Some contemporary fashions in Japan, 2017

Now let's take a look at this video about the Tsukuba Expo in 1985. This was almost 20 years later, but already things had changed since the 1960s: 

I have just two questions: 

What was the theme of the Tsukuba Expo? 

What kinds of achievements did the expo want to show?

Other questions to think about:

So what kinds of changes can you imagine happening in society or culture in the future from now? What sorts of fashions might people be wearing? For example, would long hair come back into fashion among men? Would women wear mini-skirts again? Or - would men wear skirts and women wear suits? How about music? What would it sound like in the future? 

What designs in cars could you see in the future? Would we see a return to some older designs in cars? How about buildings? How might they be different? Perhaps would we see something in the future that people 50 years ago would never have imagined! 

See you next week!

Images: Top - by Unknown - Japanese magazine "Photograph Gazette, May 1954 issue" published by Government of Japan., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17850644/Ginza in 1967 - By Roger W from Sarasota, Florida, U.S.A. - Tokyo - Chuo-Dori, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60804070/Ginza in 2017 - By Gary - DSC08269 - Chuo-dori Ginza, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40961932/Japanese young people in 1964 - screenshot taken from Japanese+youth,+Tokyo,+1964+(11).jpg/Japanese young people in 2017 - screenshot taken from https://www.google.co.jp/search?biw=1199&bih=746&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=w2dXWpWxAcr08QXcjLHAAg&q=japanese+young+people&oq=japanese+young+people&gs_l=psy-ab.12...0.0.0.37755.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0....0...1c..64.psy-ab..0.0.0....0.ZsHKi1iiTEI#imgrc=VXhxXXgo1PeJ-M:/Fashions in the 1960s - screenshot taken from https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggSgihLQJ00A84oVxNXdnaTdsbeTOGyngG-Cw7QCFjOczG3LECPdEbMZn_H9xcCV5UGrB9aZYdZqsodtUNL0InEGB4x1qi37sgsipFgP8_t3ThGqxbukg0V5zUJZvTYyx5ZwU6YWul76k/s1600/Street fashion in 2017 – screenshot taken from https://medium.com/@TokyoFashion/japanese-street-fashion-2017-15-things-you-need-to-know-ab06eabfca39

電気通信大学 AWE II: Fall semester final writing assignment supporting post (Part 2)・後期末作文の付記 (Part 2)

Hello! 

How are you? Here is one more supporting post for your final writing assignment about Japan and the future. 

Science and technology are not all there are about the future, because there is also society and culture too. You do not have to focus on science and technology in your thinking about the future - there are also things such as fashion and music, and the looks of cars and buildings, and the way people live in their day-to-day lives.  

Look at the picture above. It's a Bon Curry ad from 50 years ago, when it first was sold, in 1968. At the time, this was revolutionary - a healthy meal in a pack that could be boiled in a pot of water. This was similar to what the Apollo astronauts ate in space!    

Activity
What kinds of social or cultural changes can you see happening in Japan in the future? Japanese society and culture has already been through many changes since World War II. 

Take a look at these next group of pictures. They show some changes that have happened in around the last 50 years, up to now. What do you notice about the buildings, or the cars, or the way people dress? How do you feel that things have changed? 

I choose the 1960s a lot because so much of that time was rich in imagination about the future for many Japanese. So take a look at these pictures:

Japanese young people, 1964

Japanese young people, 2017

Some street fashions in Tokyo, late 1960s

Some street fashions in Tokyo, 2017

So when we think about the future from our viewpoint now, what kinds of changes can you imagine happening in society or culture in the future? 

What kinds of fashions might people wear? For example, would long hair come back into fashion among men? Would women all wear mini-skirts again? Or - would men wear skirts and women wear suits? 

How about music? What would the music of the future be like? What designs in cars could you see in the future? How about architecture? What will buildings in the future look like? These and many other questions are the kinds of things you can think of! 

Good luck with this! I hope this can give you more ideas on how you can write on Japan and the future. 

See you next week!

Images: Top - by Unknown - Japanese magazine "Photograph Gazette, May 1954 issue" published by Government of Japan., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17850644/Ginza in 1967 - By Roger W from Sarasota, Florida, U.S.A. - Tokyo - Chuo-Dori, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60804070/Ginza in 2017 - By Gary - DSC08269 - Chuo-dori Ginza, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40961932/Japanese young people in 1964 - screenshot taken from Japanese+youth,+Tokyo,+1964+(11).jpg/Japanese young people in 2017 - screenshot taken from https://www.google.co.jp/search?biw=1199&bih=746&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=w2dXWpWxAcr08QXcjLHAAg&q=japanese+young+people&oq=japanese+young+people&gs_l=psy-ab.12...0.0.0.37755.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0....0...1c..64.psy-ab..0.0.0....0.ZsHKi1iiTEI#imgrc=VXhxXXgo1PeJ-M:/Fashions in the 1960s - screenshot taken from https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggSgihLQJ00A84oVxNXdnaTdsbeTOGyngG-Cw7QCFjOczG3LECPdEbMZn_H9xcCV5UGrB9aZYdZqsodtUNL0InEGB4x1qi37sgsipFgP8_t3ThGqxbukg0V5zUJZvTYyx5ZwU6YWul76k/s1600/Street fashion in 2017 – screenshot taken from https://medium.com/@TokyoFashion/japanese-street-fashion-2017-15-things-you-need-to-know-ab06eabfca39