Trade & Exchange

Dr. Andrea Horbinski, of the UC Berkeley History-Social Science Project, discusses Japan and its geography at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco as part of the Medieval Japan Teacher Institute.

Lesson plan on the monetary and cultural value of Japanese swords and the role they played in Japanese trade.

The first record of tea drinking in Japan occurs early in the Heian period (794–1185) whenit was introduced to the Japanese aristocracy by scholar-monks returning from Tang dynasty China. Learn more.

Students will research objects from the Asian Art Museum’s collection and choose one that they think will earn the most money in the marketplace. Then, they will create a commercial to try to sell their object to the class using evidence as to why the object/idea was considered valuable at the time.

Four seated musicians, approx. 700–750. China Tang dynasty (618–906). Earthenware. The Avery Brundage Collection, B60P316, B60P317, B60P3186, and B60P319.

Dancer, approx. 618–700. China Tang dynasty (618–906). Painted earthenware. The Avery Brundage Collection, B60P305.

Learn about samurai castles.

During the Muromachi period (1338–1573) the vogue for Chinese art, especially among the Ashikaga shoguns, who ruled as the military leaders of Japan during this period, led to the development of new architectural environments in which to display collections of tea-related objects. Learn more.

A video tour of the Asian Art Museum’s collection galleries highlighting ceramics, jades, bronzes, paintings, and Buddhist arts representing some six thousand years of Chinese culture and tradition.

*Filmed in former museum location (prior to 2003) in Golden Gate Park. Presented by Brian Hogarth.

The Han Dynasty is one of the great dynasties in Chinese history, encompassing nearly four hundred years of expansion and consolidation which coincided with the period of the Roman republic and empire in the West.