Suguroku Game

I found the trip to the Clements Library very interesting overall. I found the hand-carved original carvings to be beautiful, and the curator’s explanation of the American documents to be fascinating. However, I think the artifact that interested me most was the Suguroku Game Board.

 

This game board had squares on it that each represented a different country, illustrating what the people of this country looked like, their clothing, and other aspects of the culture. It would also give a fact about the country and its people. Of course on the gameboard these explanations were written in Japanese so it was extremely helpful to have the translated version was also there for us to look at. Some of these explanations were absolutely ridiculous and proved that the Japanese didn’t have a lot of reliable knowledge about certain foreign countries. For example, the description of the North Americans says that the people of this country are less than four feet tall. A description of people from Mexico describes them as over eight feet tall. These are obviously false observations that have been exaggerated by a lack of information. However, the descriptions of countries that were well known to Japan at the time were fairly accurate. Some of these descriptions and illustrations also seemed to show certain countries in a bad light. Perhaps part of this was to manipulate the players into thinking a certain way about a specific country. This was probably because the leaders of Japan either didn’t trust the country or didn’t respect it. I know that the government uses many types of media in order to sway its people a certain, but I’d never seen it done in a game before.

 

Done