September 28, 2020 • 32 mins
Tanaka Hisashige was an inventor, a craftsman and an artisan, and he lived during a time that Japan went through enormous cultural, scientific and technological changes.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy be Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we
are going to talk about to Knock, a gay who
was an inventor, a craftsman, and an artisan. And he
(00:24):
also lived during a time that Japan went through just
enormous cultural and scientific and technological changes that like directly
affected his life and his work. So his story is
about creating amazing and intricate works of engineering and craftsmanship,
but it's also about witnessing and being part of just
(00:45):
a dramatic shift in Japan as a nation and Japan's
place on the world stage. Tanakahisashiga was born in September
eighteen sevent in Karuma, on the island of q Shu
in the southwestern part of the Japanese archip hele Ago.
This was in a later part of the Edo Period,
also known as the Tokugawa Period. We talked about this
(01:06):
period in Japanese history a little earlier this year. We
did the Saturday Classic on Hokusai, which came out in
January for a really quick recap. Though this lasted from
about sixteen oh three to eighteen sixty seven, and it
was a period that was known for its relatively prosperous stability.
Japan had an emperor, but the nation was controlled by
(01:28):
the Tokugawa Shogunate and its provinces were ruled by feudal
lords known as the daimyo, and Japan was also pretty
isolated from the rest of the world Beyond Asia. Japan
issued a series of edicts in the sixteen thirties that
expelled Christians and Westerners from its borders and restricted trade
with other nations. It maintained trading relationships only with the
(01:50):
Chinese and the Dutch. Japan's only international trading port was
in Nagasaki. Tanaka's father was a craftsman who made accessories
and naments from tortoise shells, and as the oldest son,
Tanaka's involvement with this business and the skills and techniques
that were involved with it that would have started at
an early age, but tortoise shell carving really was not
(02:13):
what inspired him at heart. He was really an inventor.
When he was nine, Tanaka took one of his first
inventions to school. It was an inkstone case with a
locking drawer. It's locking mechanism involved a chord that had
to be twisted in a very specific way to release
the lock. At fourteen, he built a loom used to
make a type of patterned fabric known as karumi kasuri.
(02:37):
As the name suggests, this is a style of cloth
that's specific to the Karume region and was developed by
a twelve year old girl named Inu a Den in
about eighteen hundred. It is woven with indigo dyed cotton
thread with intricate patterns, usually in white as part of
the weaving. Another source of fascination for Tanaka was Karricari
(02:57):
puppets are dolls. Karat create essentially means mechanism, and it's
a term that's used to describe various complicated devices. Terricreate
dolls or puppets could also be called automeda. They have
a lot in common with the automeda that we talked
about in our previous episode called five Historical Robots. They
used things like strings, pulleys, cams, gears, gravity, air pressure,
(03:22):
and hydraulics to move around and perform various tasks. They
were both beautiful and complex, and they combined long established
traditions of puppetry and clockmaking in Japan. These contraptions were
really popular during the Edo period, and there was an
annual festival held for them at a shrine where Tanaka lived.
He also read about and studied them through a work
(03:44):
called The Illustrated Compendium of Clever Machines by Hosakawa Hanzo
your Now. This has been published in sevent and it
included all kinds of illustrations, descriptions, and diagrams of things
like mechanical clocks, toys, and curac repuppets. Tanaka was building
these himself by the time he was twenty. Some were
(04:05):
based on designs that other people had created, like the
ones in this book. One of them was a tea
serving doll. It would carry a full cup of tea
from one end of a table to another, and then
after the recipient drank the tea and put the empty
cup back onto the doll's tray, it would turn around
and go back to where it started. This is one
of the devices that was described in The Illustrated Compendium
(04:27):
of Clever Machines. I want this Illustrated Compendium. Others of
Tanaka's karakuri dolls were from his own design. He had
studied and made a replica of a Dutch air gun,
and he used the same principles of air compression in
some of his designs. His best known device was the
yumihiki Dozy, or little archer. It's a figure on a
(04:48):
box that has a bow with a fan like stand
of four arrows in front of it. It shoots each
of the arrows at a nearby target. The little archer
is often described as being a boy, but in Tanaka's
notes it's described as a girl. The head and the
face are very lifelike, and every time it hits the target,
the head moves in a way that makes it look
(05:09):
like the archer is smiling in a pretty satisfied way.
But one of the four arrows always misses, and when
that happens, the head instead moves away that it makes
it seem crestfallen and defeated. To add even more to
the complexity, if you remove the sides of the box
that the archer sits on, you can see the gears
at work inside, along with another figure that appears to
(05:32):
be winding the lower gears to keep the whole thing moving.
It's kind of almost like cartoon physics, kind of situation
where there's a machine and inside the machine is something
that's like making the machine do. All of the archer's
motions are really precise and exact. It grasps every arrow
between a thumb and the finger, It moves its head
(05:53):
while it aims, and it shifts the bow when it
releases the arrow. At this point, this little archer is
more than two two hundred years old and it still works.
You can see videos of it online. Tanaka's other automata
included sake cups, which behaved a lot like the tea
serving dolls that we talked about earlier. Another was Kobodaishi's
Secret ink Brush. It depicted the Japanese Buddhist monk Kobo Daishi,
(06:16):
who was known as ku Kai during his life in
the late eighth and early ninth centuries. The figure of
Kobodaishi uses a brush to draw a character in the air,
and the character that he's drawing simultaneously appears on a
separate Japanese sliding door. Tanaka often left some of the
automata's inner workings visible so observers could get a hint
(06:38):
of all the complex gears and pulleys and other systems inside.
By the age of twenty four, Tanaka was considered to
be a master and making these automeda. He was nicknamed
Karakuri Gaiman. Guiman was another version of the name He's Ashige,
and he was hoping to make his living by creating
(06:59):
these a tamata and then also entertaining people with them.
This was a career that combined being an engineer and inventor,
a craftsman, and an entertainer all into one. He was
so eager to do it and so clearly skilled at it,
that he convinced his father to let one of his
younger brothers take his place in the family business, and
then Tanaka started touring Japan with his automata. There's some
(07:23):
debate about whether the techniques and innovations that were used
in Karakuri influenced other Japanese technology and innovations, but when
it comes to the people who made them, it's clear
that some went on to make technological advances in other fields.
One example Tanaka, he'sas she Gay, who we will talk
about more after a sponsor break Tonka spent a few
(07:52):
years touring Japan with his Karakuri automata. He became famous
in this process, but Unfortunately, this care or did not last.
As we noted at the top of the show, the
Tokugawa period in Japan was known for its stability, but
at the same time it was something of a financial
house of cards. The daimio were required to keep one
(08:14):
home in their province and another and edo, and then
to travel back and forth between them. Both households and
the travel were expected to be expensive and opulent, the
idea being that if the daimio were spending all their
money on all this lavish upkeep, they'd never have enough
money to be able to raise an army and rise
up against the shogunate. At the same time, because the
(08:35):
Tokugawa period was also relatively peaceful, the samurai class had
evolved from being warriors to being administrators and bureaucrats, with
most of them living on small stipends that weren't really
enough to get by. Many were impoverished and dissatisfied with
the shogunate and the daimyo. These and other factors led
Missuo Tatakuni, who was an advisor to the Showgun, to
(08:58):
institute a seer use of reforms starting in eighteen thirty
during what was known as the Tempo era, they emphasized
austerity and frugality in all areas of life. Many officials
and bureaucrats lost their positions, and expensive styles of artwork, clothing,
and entertainment were discouraged or outright outlawed. This included the
(09:21):
karakuri automeda that Tanaka, he says she gay had been
designing and making. Tanaka turned out to be one of
the Edo period's last karakuri masters, and many of the
surviving pieces that still exist today are ones that he created.
With his career as a Karricori craftsman no longer possible,
Tamaka moved to Osaka in eighteen thirty four and started
(09:42):
focusing on more practical uses for his skills and invention
and engineering. He developed a water pump that firefighters put
to use. He also created a collapsible candle stand that
became very popular among doctors, who could fold it flat
to carry with them when they visited their patients. He
also drew on the technology of that Dutch air gun
(10:03):
to improve on the oil lamps that were being used
for illumination. These lamps generally used a type of oil
that didn't move up the lamps wick very easily, which
meant that the light tended to be dim and kind
of flickery. Tanaka used compressed air to force the oil
through the wick, which made the lamp burn brighter, longer,
and more reliably. This lamp was called the mugento, and
(10:25):
Tanaka made them in different sizes and styles to suit
different tastes and needs, and soon they were being used
all over Osaka. However, those tempo reforms had not returned
Japan to a state of prosperous plenty the way they
were intended. A famine developed alongside the austerity measures and
other reforms, and that famine spiked in eighteen thirty six
(10:47):
and eighteen thirty seven and Osaka. This led to food
riots and an uprising against the local leadership. Tanakashi and
his family fled, leaving behind a workshop that was burned
to the ground in the uprising. They moved to the
Fushimi district of Kyoto. In Kyoto, Tanaka opened a shop
where he made and sold candle stands and mugento lamps.
(11:10):
He branched into new areas of study, including mathematics and astronomy.
He also became interested in Western style clocks that were
being imported to Japan from Europe. He started making clocks
on his own, including one that used a tycho drum
as an alarm. He also got back to making devices
that were not strictly practical, this time they were incredibly
(11:31):
intricate time pieces. One was called the Shumi Senghi, which
he finished in eighteen fifty. This was requested by a
Buddhist monk named Fumon in Su and it represented the
universe as explained through Buddhist cosmology rather than through Western astronomy.
The Earth is at the center, with the Sun and
the moon orbiting Mount Sumuru. It also indicated the twenty
(11:55):
four seasons of the year in the Buddhist calendar. This
was a table top device that was wound up with
a key, and sometimes it's described as Japan's first planetarium.
His most famous creation during this time was the man
named Jimmy, a show chronometer or the myriad year clock,
sometimes called the million year clock. He started on it
in eighteen forty eight and he finished it in eighteen
(12:18):
fifty one. This clock measures about sixty three centimeters or high,
and at weighs thirty eight kilograms. It's about eighty three
pounds and the words of Julia Frumer, author of Making
Time Astronomical time measurement in Tokugawa, Japan. Quote while constructing
the ultimate clock, he says, she gave aspired to a
(12:39):
perfection and beauty that we're not only technical, but also
aesthetic and material. This time piece is intricate, and it's
also beautiful, with an ornate surface that's covered in tiny
mother of pearl inlays that are patterned in a style
that's known as raiding. They're also painted enamel inlays around
the base depicting things like a tortoise, a rooster, a drum,
(13:02):
and a rabbit. This device has approximately a thousand pieces
and its internal working parts. This clock has six faces,
each with a unique purpose. The first is Awake or
a traditional Japanese clock that was used during the Edo period.
In western time keeping, everything is a fixed length. There
are twenty four hours a day, sixty minutes an hour,
(13:23):
sixty seconds in a minute, and the lengths of those
increments do not change. But in traditional Japanese timekeeping, the
length of an hour varies by the season. Each day
is divided in half, with one half being daylight hours
and the other being darkness. During the summer, when the
days are longer, the daylight hours are longer, and the
nighttime hours are shorter during the summer when the nights
(13:46):
are longer. It is, of course the opposite that sounds
to me both beautiful and hard to keep up with,
just because we didn't grow up with it. If it
were your normal thing, you'd be like, Yeah, now is
the time when the hours you're longer? What are you
talking about? You'd be like, why are all hours the
same number of length all the time? Uh So. Clockmakers
(14:09):
in Japan made clocks that told time this way for
about two hundred years. They used a variety of methods
to count for these seasonal variations. For example, they might
have interchangeable faces or pulleys that people adjusted as the
seasons changed. In the Myriad year clock, the hours were
represented by twelve moving silver pieces, six for the day
(14:31):
and six for the night, with the clock's inner workings
adjusting the widths between them over time. So during the summer,
the pieces on the top half of the clock face
would slide farther apart to account for the longer hours,
while the pieces on the bottom half would slide together,
and then in the fall that would reverse the myriad
year clocks. Second face shows the twenty four traditional seasons
(14:52):
in a Japanese year, which were originally taken from the
Chinese calendar. This calendar starts in the early spring, and
it includes the spring and all equinox, as well as
the summer and winter solstice, but it also contains other
seasons in between those markers, like rainwater which is between
the beginning of spring and the spring equinox, as well
as lesser heat and greater heat, which are between the
(15:14):
summer solstice and the beginning of autumn. The third phase
shows the days of the week and the hours of
the day, and the fourth shows the date using the
Chinese sex of generary or sixty year cycle. The fifth
displays the lunar month and the phases of the moon,
and the sixth includes a Western style pocket watch, probably
of French or Swiss origin, which shows the hours, minutes,
(15:37):
and seconds according to Western timekeeping. This pocket watch also
acts as a regulator for the rest of the clock.
In addition to those six faces, the top of the
clock is seen from above, also shows a map of
the Japanese archipelago with a model of the sun and
moon on arms above it, showing the position of the
Sun and the Moon in relation to the Earth. There
(15:58):
are four main springs inside this clock, connected to one
another with chains to keep them in sync with each other.
Each spring is housed in a barrel that's small enough
to fit in the palm of a person's hand, and
when fully wound, the clock is meant to run for
a year. When Tanaka made this clock, he hoped to
sell it, but it was so complex and expensive that
(16:20):
he could not find a buyer, so he toured with it,
as he had done with this Karakuri automeda earlier in
his career. Today, the clock is designated as an important
cultural property in Japan. We're going to come back to
it later. When Tanaka finished the Myriad Year Clock in
eighteen fifty one, Japan was about to go through massive
changes that affected virtually every area of life, including timekeeping,
(16:43):
and we will get to that after a sponsor break.
Between sixteen thirty three and eighteen fifty three, Japan was
relatively but not completely isolated from the rest of world,
as we noted earlier in the show, Even after Japan
(17:04):
closed its borders in the sixteen thirties that had continued
to trade with the Chinese and the Dutch at the
port of Nagasaki in southwestern Japan. People in and around
Nagasaki personally witnessed the new and changing technologies that were
making their way to and through the port. The Saga
Domain was responsible for Nagasaki security and defense. Now Massa Nabashima,
(17:25):
who was the domains daimio, established a physics and chemistry
research institute in eighteen fifty two. He invited some of
Japan's foremost inventors and engineers to the institute, and one
of them was Tanaka Hisashiga. Another was Sano To Netamy,
founder of the Japanese Red Cross Society. Then, on July
eighteen fifty three, American commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Edo
(17:50):
Bay now Tokyo Bay to try to force Japan to
start trading with the West, particularly with the United States.
The US had been successfully trying to establish trade with
Japan for about twenty years at this point, and this
time Perry arrived with four ships from the U. S.
Navy as a show of force. Japan knew it had
(18:11):
no way to defend itself from the steamships and their armaments.
It had seen a similar situation play out in China
during the First Opium War just a decade before, which
pitted British forces with steam powered warships against Chinese vessels
that were powered by sale. China's defeat had been disastrous,
so reluctantly Japan began negotiating with United States. After months
(18:35):
of negotiation, the US and Japan signed the Treaty of
Kanagawa on March thirty one, eighteen fifty four. This treaty
established a US consulate in Japan and gave American ships
the right to buy supplies like coal and water into
Japanese ports. It also provided protection for American sailors who
were shipwrecked in Japanese waters. This treaty heavily favored the
(18:59):
United States and interests. The only thing Japan really got
out of it was not being attacked by Perry's warships.
The Treaty of Kinagawa didn't open Japan up to commercial
trade with the US. That was still a few years off.
But Perry had presented the emperor with several gifts, including
working models of several technologies that included a steam locomotive
(19:20):
and a telegraph. Perry's arrival in Japan, and these models
had a huge impact on Tanaka's work at the institute.
His earlier work had mostly been focused on technologies than
an individual person might use at home, but now he
and others started looking at technologies that a whole community
might use, like a railroad or a telegraph system. He
(19:41):
became part of the team that built Japan's first working
model of a steam locomotive, and in eighteen sixty five
he helped build Japan's first steamship. As we noted earlier,
Japan's social and economic structure had already been struggling before
Perry arrived, and attempted reforms had often made the situation
worse instead of better. In eighteen sixty eight, two clans
(20:04):
combined forces to stage Acupita, which took place on January
three of that year. They overthrew the Tokugawa shogun and
restored Emperor Meiji, who was fourteen at the time, to power.
Massive changes followed to virtually every aspect of Japanese life.
The feudal system and the samurai class were abolished, as
(20:25):
were the daimio's personal armies. The nation industrialized very rapidly.
Even that Japanese system of timekeeping that we talked about
with the myriad year clock was replaced with the Western
style twenty four hour day. Basically, the emperor and his
advisers recognized that Japan was under serious threat from Western powers,
and they believed that their best chance at retaining their
(20:46):
independence was to make the nation of Japan more compatible
with the Western world. This is often described as a
process of westernization and modernization, but some sources really given
a slightly different nuance that Japan as a nation and
was trying to find a more Western oriented way of
being Japanese. This mindset affected Tanaka's work as well, as
(21:09):
noted in a piece from the Saco Museum, he wanted
quote to accept advanced Western technologies and integrate them with
Japanese culture in ways useful for society. During this time,
Tanaka did some work on military technology, and eventually he
moved back to his home province of Karumi to take
over a factory. He kept on inventing things while they're
(21:32):
including an artificial ice making machine. In eighteen seventy three,
when he was seventy three years old, the Department of
Industry appointed Tanaka to develop Japan's telegraph system. He moved
to Tokyo at the government's request do this work. Two
years later, on July eleventh, eighteen seventy five, he founded
Tanaka says Oh Show or Tanaka Engineering Company. Tanaka Ghisashigi
(21:57):
died in Tokyo on November seven, eight eighty one, and
he had continued to create, invent, and refine until the
end of his life. His adopted son took over Tanaka
Engineering Company, which, after a series of name changes in mergers,
became Tokyo Shibora Danki or Toshiba in nine nine. Today,
Tanaka he Sashiga is seen as one of the founders
(22:19):
of Japan's technology industry. The Myriad year clock stopped working
sometime after Tanaka's death, then in two thousand and four,
it was totally disassembled to make a replica for the
Expo two thousand five World's Fair. The National Museum of
Nature and Science and Toshiba Corporation were both part of
this project, which was intended to analyze Eto period innovations
(22:42):
and figure out their engineering. One hundred specialists worked with
the Myriad year clock for an entire year, including the
Saco Watch Corporation, calling one of their retired watchmakers in
for help. Just taking the clock apart and figuring out
what all the components did took five months, and the
team discovered that two of the clock's original springs had
(23:03):
warped and cracked, which was probably what caused it to
stop running. Putting the clock back together was also an
enormous undertaking, and in terms of the replica, microscopic analysis
of the original showed that every single piece was handmade,
including individually filing every tooth of every gear. Some of
these handmade pieces just could not be perfectly replicated. Today.
(23:27):
Tashiba Corporation owns the original Myriad year clock, but it
is on permanent display at the National Museum of Nature
and Science in Tokyo. The replica is at the Tshiba
Science Museum in Kawasaki. Also, the October silve Google Doodle
honored to Knocks twote birthday. It depicts a charactery figure
(23:49):
that uses calligraphy like strokes to make a G to
complete the name Google. This is one of those people
whose minds I so admire and feel like, yeah, um,
just complete dumb dumb who can't do anything. When I
think about all that they're able to conceive of and process. Uh,
do you have listener mail for us? I do. This
(24:11):
is from Tea and the subject line of the email
is in all capital letters, the green beans followed by
four exclamation points. Uh and Tia says dear Holly, Tracy
and stuffy miss Staff. Yes. I resonated on a deep
level with tracy experience of home canned green beans. I
(24:31):
spent a week with my parents this summer helping pick,
snap and canned green beans in order to share the bounty,
because they are just that amazing. I too, find fresh
green beans yucky to my palate. They squeak. Yeah. My
parents still freeze and can a host of fruits and
veggies from their gardens or from local farms. I appreciated
learning about the origins of canning. I was surprised to
(24:52):
learn it was so recent in the Grand Scheme. Thank
you for all the work you do. I've been listening
for several years now and so appreciate the breadth of
scope you ladies cover two other recent whims I especially appreciate.
It made me so happy to hear the story of
the goat statue and ensuring arson attempts and successes corroborated.
(25:13):
I used to work as an occupational therapist with high schoolers,
and yes, in this day and age, I had handwriting
goals for teenagers. Don't get me started on how irrelevant
that was. I tried to find things that would interest
students rather than having them copy boring sentences, and that
vignette got some fun reactions. Especially appreciated the history of
the Bureau of Home Economics episode as well. I'm now
(25:33):
working as a homemaker, and I was fascinated to realize
that there was an entire organization to help make guidelines
and recommendations for the science of homemaking. I had a
question I didn't submit in time for your question and answer,
so but I'm still curious to know what was your
personal ah ha moment when you realized or began to
realize that not everyone shares the same privilege as yourself.
I hope I worded that well. I know it's a
(25:55):
difficult question in a difficult time. One of you, Hollier Tracy,
I don't remember which aired in conjunction with the James
Baldwin episode that you heard his speech about the Pledge
of allegiance as a child, and that was the start
of your AHA moment. For me, Unfortunately, that AHA moment
didn't come, and until college, when I had a person
of color as a gospel choir director, he would share
stories about his life, and the light bulb started to
(26:16):
click that my white middle class life had been very
sheltered and very privileged. I'm still learning and growing, as
are we all, and I appreciate how you both highlight
those people in groups in history that are so often overlooked.
Thank you for all you do. It is so appreciated, Tia,
Thank you, Tia for this note. That was Holly who
talked about the AHA movement while listening to James Baldwin.
(26:37):
Since I grew up in like northwest North Carolina, in
an area that had like a sizeable population, like a
sizable white population, assizable Black population, and then sort of
like slightly outside of where we were directly living a
sizeable Hispanic population. Um, like, my mom had to talk
(26:58):
to me about racism from an early age. So I
think the first conversation I remember having specifically about racism
I was in elementary school, maybe as young as kindergarten. Basically,
someone said a joke at school and I repeated that
joke to my mom, and UM, this was like a
(27:18):
very child logic kind of joke but also racist, and
my mom, in like the most age appropriate way I
can think of, explained to me that that joke would
be hurtful to some of my friends, and it was
sort of it was obvious to me from an early age,
like like that not everybody had the same advantages UM
in terms of an AHA movement of the way one
(27:42):
of the ways that racism works in society. Was actually
working on this podcast UM after the Trayvon Martin case,
after his murder, UM, I had put an article on
our Facebook page UM that by a woman historian that
I thought was relevant, and a whole lot of people
(28:06):
came to leave implicitly racist comments that they did not
comprehend were racist when they said them. And it was
the first time that I had seen like that level
of vitriol about something from people who had previously seemed
rational fans of the podcast UM, and I was totally
(28:29):
unprepared for how to deal with it. It was like
one of the worst days of managing our social media presence.
And it was not long at all after we started
working on the show, and so I like that that
was sort of a different kind of ah ha moment
than when I was a kid. Yeah. I mean I
feel like even though I had that saying that reaction
(28:51):
listening to James Baldwin when I was a child, like
it was probably foundational, but it wasn't like I carried
that daily and was like, I need to be thinking
about this. I also did a lot of stupid stuff
and said incredibly hurtful and ignorant things along the way.
And I feel like I still have aha moments all
the time. And there was the one that I think
about from the show was when we had Jerry Hancock
(29:16):
on talking about Sears and him mentioning that the reason
that Sears was so popular from the beginning with black
customers was because it was one of the first places
they could shop. I e. Threw a catalog and not
be discriminated against, and it was just like, Oh, I
(29:37):
never thought about it. And the fact that I never
had to think about that was like, because you never
had to we have those all the time. Yeah, I
definitely still have a ha moments and still learn things
that I had never considered before, and still have moments
where something comes out of my mouth and then I
kind of go, Tracy, right, did you just is that
what you just said? Yeah, it's hard, and it is.
(30:01):
It's a lifelong process. It is, and I feel like
a jerk so often, and I'm always trying to be
better and examine things. But even so, there are times
when I'm like, I don't know if I just screwed
up or not. Um. I remember having a moment and thankfully,
(30:22):
one of our colleagues, who was a black woman, is
very patient with me, and she and I are close.
And I had seen a woman that I did not
know in the hallway of our office who had this
she's dark skin, and she had on this very beautiful
light blue blouse and I just said that color looks
spectacular on your skin, and she was like, oh, thank you,
(30:43):
and she was very sweet. But then as I walked
away from her, I was like, was that just inappropriate?
It's so then I had this conversation with our colleague
and with some of my other friends of color, um,
black and otherwise, and and kind of got their take
on it, and thankfully, like it is not their job
to educate me, but because they have always been very
(31:04):
kind and we have a close enough relationship that I
can go. Can I ask you this question? You can
tell me no. Um, luckily I got my gut checked.
The consensus on that was no. But I still think
about it and I'm like, I hope she didn't perceive it.
And that's that's part of being privileged, is that, like
you can say things that you may you might mean well.
(31:26):
That's always the phrase like well they meant well, you
might genuinely mean well and still hurt someone. And I
think that's where people get really caught up and defensive
is like, but my intention was, but that doesn't matter
if somebody still gets hurt in the end. Yeah, that's
kind of the lifelong aha of this show for me. Yeah, yeah,
I will be lifelong time, I think. Uh so Tea,
(31:50):
thank you so much for this email. Um, if you
would like to write to us about this or any
other podcast for it History podcast I heart radio dot
com and we're all over social media. Missed in History.
That is where you'll find our Facebook and Pinterest and
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on the I Heart radio app and Apple podcast and
anywhere else you get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in
(32:16):
History class is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy be Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we
are going to talk about to Knock, a gay who
was an inventor, a craftsman, and an artisan. And he
(00:24):
also lived during a time that Japan went through just
enormous cultural and scientific and technological changes that like directly
affected his life and his work. So his story is
about creating amazing and intricate works of engineering and craftsmanship,
but it's also about witnessing and being part of just
(00:45):
a dramatic shift in Japan as a nation and Japan's
place on the world stage. Tanakahisashiga was born in September
eighteen sevent in Karuma, on the island of q Shu
in the southwestern part of the Japanese archip hele Ago.
This was in a later part of the Edo Period,
also known as the Tokugawa Period. We talked about this
(01:06):
period in Japanese history a little earlier this year. We
did the Saturday Classic on Hokusai, which came out in
January for a really quick recap. Though this lasted from
about sixteen oh three to eighteen sixty seven, and it
was a period that was known for its relatively prosperous stability.
Japan had an emperor, but the nation was controlled by
(01:28):
the Tokugawa Shogunate and its provinces were ruled by feudal
lords known as the daimyo, and Japan was also pretty
isolated from the rest of the world Beyond Asia. Japan
issued a series of edicts in the sixteen thirties that
expelled Christians and Westerners from its borders and restricted trade
with other nations. It maintained trading relationships only with the
(01:50):
Chinese and the Dutch. Japan's only international trading port was
in Nagasaki. Tanaka's father was a craftsman who made accessories
and naments from tortoise shells, and as the oldest son,
Tanaka's involvement with this business and the skills and techniques
that were involved with it that would have started at
an early age, but tortoise shell carving really was not
(02:13):
what inspired him at heart. He was really an inventor.
When he was nine, Tanaka took one of his first
inventions to school. It was an inkstone case with a
locking drawer. It's locking mechanism involved a chord that had
to be twisted in a very specific way to release
the lock. At fourteen, he built a loom used to
make a type of patterned fabric known as karumi kasuri.
(02:37):
As the name suggests, this is a style of cloth
that's specific to the Karume region and was developed by
a twelve year old girl named Inu a Den in
about eighteen hundred. It is woven with indigo dyed cotton
thread with intricate patterns, usually in white as part of
the weaving. Another source of fascination for Tanaka was Karricari
(02:57):
puppets are dolls. Karat create essentially means mechanism, and it's
a term that's used to describe various complicated devices. Terricreate
dolls or puppets could also be called automeda. They have
a lot in common with the automeda that we talked
about in our previous episode called five Historical Robots. They
used things like strings, pulleys, cams, gears, gravity, air pressure,
(03:22):
and hydraulics to move around and perform various tasks. They
were both beautiful and complex, and they combined long established
traditions of puppetry and clockmaking in Japan. These contraptions were
really popular during the Edo period, and there was an
annual festival held for them at a shrine where Tanaka lived.
He also read about and studied them through a work
(03:44):
called The Illustrated Compendium of Clever Machines by Hosakawa Hanzo
your Now. This has been published in sevent and it
included all kinds of illustrations, descriptions, and diagrams of things
like mechanical clocks, toys, and curac repuppets. Tanaka was building
these himself by the time he was twenty. Some were
(04:05):
based on designs that other people had created, like the
ones in this book. One of them was a tea
serving doll. It would carry a full cup of tea
from one end of a table to another, and then
after the recipient drank the tea and put the empty
cup back onto the doll's tray, it would turn around
and go back to where it started. This is one
of the devices that was described in The Illustrated Compendium
(04:27):
of Clever Machines. I want this Illustrated Compendium. Others of
Tanaka's karakuri dolls were from his own design. He had
studied and made a replica of a Dutch air gun,
and he used the same principles of air compression in
some of his designs. His best known device was the
yumihiki Dozy, or little archer. It's a figure on a
(04:48):
box that has a bow with a fan like stand
of four arrows in front of it. It shoots each
of the arrows at a nearby target. The little archer
is often described as being a boy, but in Tanaka's
notes it's described as a girl. The head and the
face are very lifelike, and every time it hits the target,
the head moves in a way that makes it look
(05:09):
like the archer is smiling in a pretty satisfied way.
But one of the four arrows always misses, and when
that happens, the head instead moves away that it makes
it seem crestfallen and defeated. To add even more to
the complexity, if you remove the sides of the box
that the archer sits on, you can see the gears
at work inside, along with another figure that appears to
(05:32):
be winding the lower gears to keep the whole thing moving.
It's kind of almost like cartoon physics, kind of situation
where there's a machine and inside the machine is something
that's like making the machine do. All of the archer's
motions are really precise and exact. It grasps every arrow
between a thumb and the finger, It moves its head
(05:53):
while it aims, and it shifts the bow when it
releases the arrow. At this point, this little archer is
more than two two hundred years old and it still works.
You can see videos of it online. Tanaka's other automata
included sake cups, which behaved a lot like the tea
serving dolls that we talked about earlier. Another was Kobodaishi's
Secret ink Brush. It depicted the Japanese Buddhist monk Kobo Daishi,
(06:16):
who was known as ku Kai during his life in
the late eighth and early ninth centuries. The figure of
Kobodaishi uses a brush to draw a character in the air,
and the character that he's drawing simultaneously appears on a
separate Japanese sliding door. Tanaka often left some of the
automata's inner workings visible so observers could get a hint
(06:38):
of all the complex gears and pulleys and other systems inside.
By the age of twenty four, Tanaka was considered to
be a master and making these automeda. He was nicknamed
Karakuri Gaiman. Guiman was another version of the name He's Ashige,
and he was hoping to make his living by creating
(06:59):
these a tamata and then also entertaining people with them.
This was a career that combined being an engineer and inventor,
a craftsman, and an entertainer all into one. He was
so eager to do it and so clearly skilled at it,
that he convinced his father to let one of his
younger brothers take his place in the family business, and
then Tanaka started touring Japan with his automata. There's some
(07:23):
debate about whether the techniques and innovations that were used
in Karakuri influenced other Japanese technology and innovations, but when
it comes to the people who made them, it's clear
that some went on to make technological advances in other fields.
One example Tanaka, he'sas she Gay, who we will talk
about more after a sponsor break Tonka spent a few
(07:52):
years touring Japan with his Karakuri automata. He became famous
in this process, but Unfortunately, this care or did not last.
As we noted at the top of the show, the
Tokugawa period in Japan was known for its stability, but
at the same time it was something of a financial
house of cards. The daimio were required to keep one
(08:14):
home in their province and another and edo, and then
to travel back and forth between them. Both households and
the travel were expected to be expensive and opulent, the
idea being that if the daimio were spending all their
money on all this lavish upkeep, they'd never have enough
money to be able to raise an army and rise
up against the shogunate. At the same time, because the
(08:35):
Tokugawa period was also relatively peaceful, the samurai class had
evolved from being warriors to being administrators and bureaucrats, with
most of them living on small stipends that weren't really
enough to get by. Many were impoverished and dissatisfied with
the shogunate and the daimyo. These and other factors led
Missuo Tatakuni, who was an advisor to the Showgun, to
(08:58):
institute a seer use of reforms starting in eighteen thirty
during what was known as the Tempo era, they emphasized
austerity and frugality in all areas of life. Many officials
and bureaucrats lost their positions, and expensive styles of artwork, clothing,
and entertainment were discouraged or outright outlawed. This included the
(09:21):
karakuri automeda that Tanaka, he says she gay had been
designing and making. Tanaka turned out to be one of
the Edo period's last karakuri masters, and many of the
surviving pieces that still exist today are ones that he created.
With his career as a Karricori craftsman no longer possible,
Tamaka moved to Osaka in eighteen thirty four and started
(09:42):
focusing on more practical uses for his skills and invention
and engineering. He developed a water pump that firefighters put
to use. He also created a collapsible candle stand that
became very popular among doctors, who could fold it flat
to carry with them when they visited their patients. He
also drew on the technology of that Dutch air gun
(10:03):
to improve on the oil lamps that were being used
for illumination. These lamps generally used a type of oil
that didn't move up the lamps wick very easily, which
meant that the light tended to be dim and kind
of flickery. Tanaka used compressed air to force the oil
through the wick, which made the lamp burn brighter, longer,
and more reliably. This lamp was called the mugento, and
(10:25):
Tanaka made them in different sizes and styles to suit
different tastes and needs, and soon they were being used
all over Osaka. However, those tempo reforms had not returned
Japan to a state of prosperous plenty the way they
were intended. A famine developed alongside the austerity measures and
other reforms, and that famine spiked in eighteen thirty six
(10:47):
and eighteen thirty seven and Osaka. This led to food
riots and an uprising against the local leadership. Tanakashi and
his family fled, leaving behind a workshop that was burned
to the ground in the uprising. They moved to the
Fushimi district of Kyoto. In Kyoto, Tanaka opened a shop
where he made and sold candle stands and mugento lamps.
(11:10):
He branched into new areas of study, including mathematics and astronomy.
He also became interested in Western style clocks that were
being imported to Japan from Europe. He started making clocks
on his own, including one that used a tycho drum
as an alarm. He also got back to making devices
that were not strictly practical, this time they were incredibly
(11:31):
intricate time pieces. One was called the Shumi Senghi, which
he finished in eighteen fifty. This was requested by a
Buddhist monk named Fumon in Su and it represented the
universe as explained through Buddhist cosmology rather than through Western astronomy.
The Earth is at the center, with the Sun and
the moon orbiting Mount Sumuru. It also indicated the twenty
(11:55):
four seasons of the year in the Buddhist calendar. This
was a table top device that was wound up with
a key, and sometimes it's described as Japan's first planetarium.
His most famous creation during this time was the man
named Jimmy, a show chronometer or the myriad year clock,
sometimes called the million year clock. He started on it
in eighteen forty eight and he finished it in eighteen
(12:18):
fifty one. This clock measures about sixty three centimeters or high,
and at weighs thirty eight kilograms. It's about eighty three
pounds and the words of Julia Frumer, author of Making
Time Astronomical time measurement in Tokugawa, Japan. Quote while constructing
the ultimate clock, he says, she gave aspired to a
(12:39):
perfection and beauty that we're not only technical, but also
aesthetic and material. This time piece is intricate, and it's
also beautiful, with an ornate surface that's covered in tiny
mother of pearl inlays that are patterned in a style
that's known as raiding. They're also painted enamel inlays around
the base depicting things like a tortoise, a rooster, a drum,
(13:02):
and a rabbit. This device has approximately a thousand pieces
and its internal working parts. This clock has six faces,
each with a unique purpose. The first is Awake or
a traditional Japanese clock that was used during the Edo period.
In western time keeping, everything is a fixed length. There
are twenty four hours a day, sixty minutes an hour,
(13:23):
sixty seconds in a minute, and the lengths of those
increments do not change. But in traditional Japanese timekeeping, the
length of an hour varies by the season. Each day
is divided in half, with one half being daylight hours
and the other being darkness. During the summer, when the
days are longer, the daylight hours are longer, and the
nighttime hours are shorter during the summer when the nights
(13:46):
are longer. It is, of course the opposite that sounds
to me both beautiful and hard to keep up with,
just because we didn't grow up with it. If it
were your normal thing, you'd be like, Yeah, now is
the time when the hours you're longer? What are you
talking about? You'd be like, why are all hours the
same number of length all the time? Uh So. Clockmakers
(14:09):
in Japan made clocks that told time this way for
about two hundred years. They used a variety of methods
to count for these seasonal variations. For example, they might
have interchangeable faces or pulleys that people adjusted as the
seasons changed. In the Myriad year clock, the hours were
represented by twelve moving silver pieces, six for the day
(14:31):
and six for the night, with the clock's inner workings
adjusting the widths between them over time. So during the summer,
the pieces on the top half of the clock face
would slide farther apart to account for the longer hours,
while the pieces on the bottom half would slide together,
and then in the fall that would reverse the myriad
year clocks. Second face shows the twenty four traditional seasons
(14:52):
in a Japanese year, which were originally taken from the
Chinese calendar. This calendar starts in the early spring, and
it includes the spring and all equinox, as well as
the summer and winter solstice, but it also contains other
seasons in between those markers, like rainwater which is between
the beginning of spring and the spring equinox, as well
as lesser heat and greater heat, which are between the
(15:14):
summer solstice and the beginning of autumn. The third phase
shows the days of the week and the hours of
the day, and the fourth shows the date using the
Chinese sex of generary or sixty year cycle. The fifth
displays the lunar month and the phases of the moon,
and the sixth includes a Western style pocket watch, probably
of French or Swiss origin, which shows the hours, minutes,
(15:37):
and seconds according to Western timekeeping. This pocket watch also
acts as a regulator for the rest of the clock.
In addition to those six faces, the top of the
clock is seen from above, also shows a map of
the Japanese archipelago with a model of the sun and
moon on arms above it, showing the position of the
Sun and the Moon in relation to the Earth. There
(15:58):
are four main springs inside this clock, connected to one
another with chains to keep them in sync with each other.
Each spring is housed in a barrel that's small enough
to fit in the palm of a person's hand, and
when fully wound, the clock is meant to run for
a year. When Tanaka made this clock, he hoped to
sell it, but it was so complex and expensive that
(16:20):
he could not find a buyer, so he toured with it,
as he had done with this Karakuri automeda earlier in
his career. Today, the clock is designated as an important
cultural property in Japan. We're going to come back to
it later. When Tanaka finished the Myriad Year Clock in
eighteen fifty one, Japan was about to go through massive
changes that affected virtually every area of life, including timekeeping,
(16:43):
and we will get to that after a sponsor break.
Between sixteen thirty three and eighteen fifty three, Japan was
relatively but not completely isolated from the rest of world,
as we noted earlier in the show, Even after Japan
(17:04):
closed its borders in the sixteen thirties that had continued
to trade with the Chinese and the Dutch at the
port of Nagasaki in southwestern Japan. People in and around
Nagasaki personally witnessed the new and changing technologies that were
making their way to and through the port. The Saga
Domain was responsible for Nagasaki security and defense. Now Massa Nabashima,
(17:25):
who was the domains daimio, established a physics and chemistry
research institute in eighteen fifty two. He invited some of
Japan's foremost inventors and engineers to the institute, and one
of them was Tanaka Hisashiga. Another was Sano To Netamy,
founder of the Japanese Red Cross Society. Then, on July
eighteen fifty three, American commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Edo
(17:50):
Bay now Tokyo Bay to try to force Japan to
start trading with the West, particularly with the United States.
The US had been successfully trying to establish trade with
Japan for about twenty years at this point, and this
time Perry arrived with four ships from the U. S.
Navy as a show of force. Japan knew it had
(18:11):
no way to defend itself from the steamships and their armaments.
It had seen a similar situation play out in China
during the First Opium War just a decade before, which
pitted British forces with steam powered warships against Chinese vessels
that were powered by sale. China's defeat had been disastrous,
so reluctantly Japan began negotiating with United States. After months
(18:35):
of negotiation, the US and Japan signed the Treaty of
Kanagawa on March thirty one, eighteen fifty four. This treaty
established a US consulate in Japan and gave American ships
the right to buy supplies like coal and water into
Japanese ports. It also provided protection for American sailors who
were shipwrecked in Japanese waters. This treaty heavily favored the
(18:59):
United States and interests. The only thing Japan really got
out of it was not being attacked by Perry's warships.
The Treaty of Kinagawa didn't open Japan up to commercial
trade with the US. That was still a few years off.
But Perry had presented the emperor with several gifts, including
working models of several technologies that included a steam locomotive
(19:20):
and a telegraph. Perry's arrival in Japan, and these models
had a huge impact on Tanaka's work at the institute.
His earlier work had mostly been focused on technologies than
an individual person might use at home, but now he
and others started looking at technologies that a whole community
might use, like a railroad or a telegraph system. He
(19:41):
became part of the team that built Japan's first working
model of a steam locomotive, and in eighteen sixty five
he helped build Japan's first steamship. As we noted earlier,
Japan's social and economic structure had already been struggling before
Perry arrived, and attempted reforms had often made the situation
worse instead of better. In eighteen sixty eight, two clans
(20:04):
combined forces to stage Acupita, which took place on January
three of that year. They overthrew the Tokugawa shogun and
restored Emperor Meiji, who was fourteen at the time, to power.
Massive changes followed to virtually every aspect of Japanese life.
The feudal system and the samurai class were abolished, as
(20:25):
were the daimio's personal armies. The nation industrialized very rapidly.
Even that Japanese system of timekeeping that we talked about
with the myriad year clock was replaced with the Western
style twenty four hour day. Basically, the emperor and his
advisers recognized that Japan was under serious threat from Western powers,
and they believed that their best chance at retaining their
(20:46):
independence was to make the nation of Japan more compatible
with the Western world. This is often described as a
process of westernization and modernization, but some sources really given
a slightly different nuance that Japan as a nation and
was trying to find a more Western oriented way of
being Japanese. This mindset affected Tanaka's work as well, as
(21:09):
noted in a piece from the Saco Museum, he wanted
quote to accept advanced Western technologies and integrate them with
Japanese culture in ways useful for society. During this time,
Tanaka did some work on military technology, and eventually he
moved back to his home province of Karumi to take
over a factory. He kept on inventing things while they're
(21:32):
including an artificial ice making machine. In eighteen seventy three,
when he was seventy three years old, the Department of
Industry appointed Tanaka to develop Japan's telegraph system. He moved
to Tokyo at the government's request do this work. Two
years later, on July eleventh, eighteen seventy five, he founded
Tanaka says Oh Show or Tanaka Engineering Company. Tanaka Ghisashigi
(21:57):
died in Tokyo on November seven, eight eighty one, and
he had continued to create, invent, and refine until the
end of his life. His adopted son took over Tanaka
Engineering Company, which, after a series of name changes in mergers,
became Tokyo Shibora Danki or Toshiba in nine nine. Today,
Tanaka he Sashiga is seen as one of the founders
(22:19):
of Japan's technology industry. The Myriad year clock stopped working
sometime after Tanaka's death, then in two thousand and four,
it was totally disassembled to make a replica for the
Expo two thousand five World's Fair. The National Museum of
Nature and Science and Toshiba Corporation were both part of
this project, which was intended to analyze Eto period innovations
(22:42):
and figure out their engineering. One hundred specialists worked with
the Myriad year clock for an entire year, including the
Saco Watch Corporation, calling one of their retired watchmakers in
for help. Just taking the clock apart and figuring out
what all the components did took five months, and the
team discovered that two of the clock's original springs had
(23:03):
warped and cracked, which was probably what caused it to
stop running. Putting the clock back together was also an
enormous undertaking, and in terms of the replica, microscopic analysis
of the original showed that every single piece was handmade,
including individually filing every tooth of every gear. Some of
these handmade pieces just could not be perfectly replicated. Today.
(23:27):
Tashiba Corporation owns the original Myriad year clock, but it
is on permanent display at the National Museum of Nature
and Science in Tokyo. The replica is at the Tshiba
Science Museum in Kawasaki. Also, the October silve Google Doodle
honored to Knocks twote birthday. It depicts a charactery figure
(23:49):
that uses calligraphy like strokes to make a G to
complete the name Google. This is one of those people
whose minds I so admire and feel like, yeah, um,
just complete dumb dumb who can't do anything. When I
think about all that they're able to conceive of and process. Uh,
do you have listener mail for us? I do. This
(24:11):
is from Tea and the subject line of the email
is in all capital letters, the green beans followed by
four exclamation points. Uh and Tia says dear Holly, Tracy
and stuffy miss Staff. Yes. I resonated on a deep
level with tracy experience of home canned green beans. I
(24:31):
spent a week with my parents this summer helping pick,
snap and canned green beans in order to share the bounty,
because they are just that amazing. I too, find fresh
green beans yucky to my palate. They squeak. Yeah. My
parents still freeze and can a host of fruits and
veggies from their gardens or from local farms. I appreciated
learning about the origins of canning. I was surprised to
(24:52):
learn it was so recent in the Grand Scheme. Thank
you for all the work you do. I've been listening
for several years now and so appreciate the breadth of
scope you ladies cover two other recent whims I especially appreciate.
It made me so happy to hear the story of
the goat statue and ensuring arson attempts and successes corroborated.
(25:13):
I used to work as an occupational therapist with high schoolers,
and yes, in this day and age, I had handwriting
goals for teenagers. Don't get me started on how irrelevant
that was. I tried to find things that would interest
students rather than having them copy boring sentences, and that
vignette got some fun reactions. Especially appreciated the history of
the Bureau of Home Economics episode as well. I'm now
(25:33):
working as a homemaker, and I was fascinated to realize
that there was an entire organization to help make guidelines
and recommendations for the science of homemaking. I had a
question I didn't submit in time for your question and answer,
so but I'm still curious to know what was your
personal ah ha moment when you realized or began to
realize that not everyone shares the same privilege as yourself.
I hope I worded that well. I know it's a
(25:55):
difficult question in a difficult time. One of you, Hollier Tracy,
I don't remember which aired in conjunction with the James
Baldwin episode that you heard his speech about the Pledge
of allegiance as a child, and that was the start
of your AHA moment. For me, Unfortunately, that AHA moment
didn't come, and until college, when I had a person
of color as a gospel choir director, he would share
stories about his life, and the light bulb started to
(26:16):
click that my white middle class life had been very
sheltered and very privileged. I'm still learning and growing, as
are we all, and I appreciate how you both highlight
those people in groups in history that are so often overlooked.
Thank you for all you do. It is so appreciated, Tia,
Thank you, Tia for this note. That was Holly who
talked about the AHA movement while listening to James Baldwin.
(26:37):
Since I grew up in like northwest North Carolina, in
an area that had like a sizeable population, like a
sizable white population, assizable Black population, and then sort of
like slightly outside of where we were directly living a
sizeable Hispanic population. Um, like, my mom had to talk
(26:58):
to me about racism from an early age. So I
think the first conversation I remember having specifically about racism
I was in elementary school, maybe as young as kindergarten. Basically,
someone said a joke at school and I repeated that
joke to my mom, and UM, this was like a
(27:18):
very child logic kind of joke but also racist, and
my mom, in like the most age appropriate way I
can think of, explained to me that that joke would
be hurtful to some of my friends, and it was
sort of it was obvious to me from an early age,
like like that not everybody had the same advantages UM
in terms of an AHA movement of the way one
(27:42):
of the ways that racism works in society. Was actually
working on this podcast UM after the Trayvon Martin case,
after his murder, UM, I had put an article on
our Facebook page UM that by a woman historian that
I thought was relevant, and a whole lot of people
(28:06):
came to leave implicitly racist comments that they did not
comprehend were racist when they said them. And it was
the first time that I had seen like that level
of vitriol about something from people who had previously seemed
rational fans of the podcast UM, and I was totally
(28:29):
unprepared for how to deal with it. It was like
one of the worst days of managing our social media presence.
And it was not long at all after we started
working on the show, and so I like that that
was sort of a different kind of ah ha moment
than when I was a kid. Yeah. I mean I
feel like even though I had that saying that reaction
(28:51):
listening to James Baldwin when I was a child, like
it was probably foundational, but it wasn't like I carried
that daily and was like, I need to be thinking
about this. I also did a lot of stupid stuff
and said incredibly hurtful and ignorant things along the way.
And I feel like I still have aha moments all
the time. And there was the one that I think
about from the show was when we had Jerry Hancock
(29:16):
on talking about Sears and him mentioning that the reason
that Sears was so popular from the beginning with black
customers was because it was one of the first places
they could shop. I e. Threw a catalog and not
be discriminated against, and it was just like, Oh, I
(29:37):
never thought about it. And the fact that I never
had to think about that was like, because you never
had to we have those all the time. Yeah, I
definitely still have a ha moments and still learn things
that I had never considered before, and still have moments
where something comes out of my mouth and then I
kind of go, Tracy, right, did you just is that
what you just said? Yeah, it's hard, and it is.
(30:01):
It's a lifelong process. It is, and I feel like
a jerk so often, and I'm always trying to be
better and examine things. But even so, there are times
when I'm like, I don't know if I just screwed
up or not. Um. I remember having a moment and thankfully,
(30:22):
one of our colleagues, who was a black woman, is
very patient with me, and she and I are close.
And I had seen a woman that I did not
know in the hallway of our office who had this
she's dark skin, and she had on this very beautiful
light blue blouse and I just said that color looks
spectacular on your skin, and she was like, oh, thank you,
(30:43):
and she was very sweet. But then as I walked
away from her, I was like, was that just inappropriate?
It's so then I had this conversation with our colleague
and with some of my other friends of color, um,
black and otherwise, and and kind of got their take
on it, and thankfully, like it is not their job
to educate me, but because they have always been very
(31:04):
kind and we have a close enough relationship that I
can go. Can I ask you this question? You can
tell me no. Um, luckily I got my gut checked.
The consensus on that was no. But I still think
about it and I'm like, I hope she didn't perceive it.
And that's that's part of being privileged, is that, like
you can say things that you may you might mean well.
(31:26):
That's always the phrase like well they meant well, you
might genuinely mean well and still hurt someone. And I
think that's where people get really caught up and defensive
is like, but my intention was, but that doesn't matter
if somebody still gets hurt in the end. Yeah, that's
kind of the lifelong aha of this show for me. Yeah, yeah,
I will be lifelong time, I think. Uh so Tea,
(31:50):
thank you so much for this email. Um, if you
would like to write to us about this or any
other podcast for it History podcast I heart radio dot
com and we're all over social media. Missed in History.
That is where you'll find our Facebook and Pinterest and
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on the I Heart radio app and Apple podcast and
anywhere else you get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in
(32:16):
History class is a production of I heart Radio. For
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Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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