As standards of history teaching are supposed to be falling around the world, it might be worth trying to captue the imagination of students of world history by presenting much of it in terms of romantic sounding trade routes. This approach has clearly paid dividends with centuries of obscure Central Asian history, as demonstrated, yet again, with another well attended "Silk Road" exhibition in Japan, "Treasures of the Silk Road" at the Edo-Tokyo Museum. Although, somehow, I don't think teaching the history of the British Empire as the "Tea Lane" or 20th century U.S. history as the "Oil Path" would have quite the same cachet with the public.
Since Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen coined the term "Silk Road" about 130 years ago, interest in a large, nebulous, almost forgotten tract of Asiatic history has grown, receiving a further boost in Japan through the popular NHK series "Silk Road," which debuted 25 years ago.
This exhibition celebrates the digitalization of this classic series (DVDs are available in the museum shop) and showcases recent discoveries from China's Xinjiang Region and Shaanxi Province, although many of the artifacts, like "Gold and Precious Stone Mask" (fifth-sixth century), may well be the same as objects seen at the Tokyo National Museum's Silk Road exhibition three years ago.
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