Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2022 November 28

= November 28 =

Minamoto no Yoshitsune
--80.116.51.107 (talk) 10:01, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Who was the commander of Kamakura's soldiers send by Yoritomo to Hiraizumi in 1189, in order to capture him?
 * He was born in Kyoto in 1159, but are there also the month and day?
 * There is a short anime film produced by Osamu Tezuka in 1999, "Benkei to Ushiwakamaru". Can you find the full video, even in Japanese without subs?
 * Yoshitsune and Benkei's first meeting was on Gojo Bridge in a full moon night from 1173, but are there also the month and day, or in alternative the season?
 * Benkei was born in 1155, but are there also the month and day? Moreover, was he married or had a first love?
 * Can you find a picture for Fujiwara no Yasuhira and upload here?
 * For Togashi Yasuie, the head of Ataka checkpoint during Yoshitsune's journey in 1187, can you find his dates of birth and death?


 * 3. Benkei to Ushiwakamaru is 弁慶と牛若丸 in Japanese script, which might help seeking. --Lambiam 15:04, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I've already search, but I always find a cut scene video of 3 min, then can you search if there's one with the full version of 7 min? Thank you very much.
 * Did you try https://zoro.to/benkei-and-ushiwakamaru-17814 ? --Askedonty (talk) 16:10, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * There isn't a video here.
 * There's a "Watch with Friends" icon on the above top of the page. --Askedonty (talk) 16:21, 28 November 2022 (UTC)


 * I think the answer to all of your questions is going to be "nobody knows". The primary sources for the Yoshitsune stories are three Japanese texts; Heike Monogatari, written at least 50 years after the events and probably transcribed from oral accounts; Azuma Kagami, written about a century later; and Gikeiki, probably written two hundred years on. The aim of these accounts was not historical accuracy, but rather political propaganda. Unlike Robin Hood, we know that these characters actually existed, but the facts are obscured by centuries of storytelling. Alansplodge (talk) 21:29, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you, but can you search anyway for something? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.244.89.94 (talk) 22:32, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Why did the Impressionists ignore history?
My understanding, according to art historians, is that artists in the Impressionist movement virtually ignored the Franco-Prussian War, the Siege of Paris, and the Paris Commune from 1870–1871 in their collective work. I find this incredibly difficult to comprehend. Thousands of art works and not a single piece addresses these events? Viriditas (talk) 21:02, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * You mean "ignore current events", not "ignore history". --174.89.144.126 (talk) 23:19, 28 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Claude Monet was hiding in London to avoid conscription. Alansplodge (talk) 21:36, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Ditto Camille Pissarro. Alansplodge (talk) 21:41, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm sure that was part of it. I'm also coming to understand that it could be because many of their wealthy patrons and sponsors were directly connected to the Third Republic. For example, in the case of Renoir, the Le Cœur family were his first collectors and gave him his start.  It might have been controversial for him to approach those subjects based on where his money was coming from.  Plus, he was trying to appeal to the Salon which was part of the establishment. What's interesting is that Renoir is virtually silent about the war, the siege, and the Commune.  It's as if they never happened. Viriditas (talk) 21:55, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * A lot of people wanted to go back to pretending it never happened, wherever possible. Around the World In 80 Days notably doesn't even mention it, despite being set and written in 1872. (When the communards were being deported to New Caledonia - including Paschal Grousset, who would later be one of Jules Verne's collaborators.) Lots of political trouble involved in appearing too sympathetic to one side or another, after the fact. But also art made in Paris during the events risked destruction in various ways (fighting, fires, seizures, etc). -- asilvering (talk) 22:41, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's what most of my sources say. It's just that I can't understand it from the POV of 2022.  As an artist, it seems like it's something you want to address, but I understand the problem you present--whatever side you take, you're going to be attacked, so it might be best to be quiet and try to remain neutral to maintain the peace.  But once again, remaining quiet is taking a position of sorts. Also, by way of recent analogy, we saw what happened to Americans who publicly came out against the Iraq War. Phil Donahue had his television show canceled on MSNBC because it was owned by defense contractor General Electric, and there's an entire article devoted to what happened to the Dixie Chicks. Viriditas (talk) 22:53, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes - and in the USA, it was not illegal to be anti-war, and the war didn't take place in, say, NYC. Another analogy might be Covid-19 - many people simply don't want to hear about it, not because of political position or political risk, but more because it's depressing to think about. I'm a teacher, so I couldn't really ignore it whether I wanted to or not, but would I go to an art exhibit about covid? Eh. I don't think so. If I were thinking of collecting art, would I buy art about covid? Certainly not. An artist might want to take a principled and political position on the events of 1870-71 in their art and do so as often as they can, but at some point they'd still need to sell something someone will buy or hang in a gallery. If they ever wanted to get paid, anyway. -- asilvering (talk) 23:13, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * And for that matter, they might prefer to do subjects that they simply enjoyed doing. --174.89.144.126 (talk) 23:19, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * That makes a lot of sense. After both the flight disruptions of 9/11, and decades later, the travel bans and initial COVID lockdowns, I remember thinking how empty the city streets were (the 2001 film Vanilla Sky perfectly captured the empty street scene aesthetic, a kind of The World Without Us vibe that hits you viscerally when you see it). In both instances, I thought I should take photos documenting the impacts of the travel restrictions.  I never did because it was too depressing. Viriditas (talk) 23:26, 28 November 2022 (UTC)


 * This article, The roll call of artists who donned a uniform in 1870 is remarkable, cites some counter examples, such as:
 * Le Rêve (1888) by Édouard Detaille
 * The Bourbaki Panorama (1881) by Édouard Castres
 * Elle attend (1871) by Jean-Jacques Henner
 * These are admitedly not from the top drawer of impressionists, but are perhaps better known in France than in the Anglosphere. Alansplodge (talk) 22:09, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks, great article. Viriditas (talk) 22:24, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Albert Boime has Art and the French Commune (1995) and Art in an Age of Civil Struggle, 1848-1871 (2007). If friends of impressionist are ok, maybe: "Public Commemoration and Private Memory: Félix Bracquemond vis-à-vis the Siege of Paris and the Commune" fiveby(zero) 23:58, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

TIL the Communards burned down the Tuileries Palace, which set fire to the library at the Louvre next door, and almost burned down the art gallery. Viriditas (talk) 01:32, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
 * ...and not satisfied, burned more. fiveby(zero) 02:11, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Forgive me for being a dunce, but why couldn’t the authorities do air drops of food into the city during the siege by hot air balloon? Wasn’t that technology around at that time? It seems like the food shortages caused a lot of the instability. Viriditas (talk) 03:18, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
 * There weren't that many balloons, and because they go where the wind does, it wasn't so easy to get into Paris that way. It says here that 11 tons of mail were carried out of Paris by balloon during the siege, but no balloon flights into Paris were successful.  Compare this to the thousands of tons per day carried by airplanes in the Berlin airlift. --174.89.144.126 (talk) 06:21, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
 * It's very difficult to fly a hot air balloon somewhere on purpose, since they can't steer. *One politician who escaped Paris by balloon ended up in Norway, iirc, presumably not his intended destination.) You can get out of Paris in one, but it's hard to get back there afterwards. -- asilvering (talk) 06:22, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks. It looks like the war led to the advancement of dirigibles.  From airship: "In 1872, the French naval architect Dupuy de Lome launched a large navigable balloon, which was driven by a large propeller turned by eight men. It was developed during the Franco-Prussian war and was intended as an improvement to the balloons used for communications between Paris and the countryside during the siege of Paris, but was completed only after the end of the war." Viriditas (talk) 17:43, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
 * How food shortage and hunger played into instability during the siege and Commune is probably complicated, in a nineteenth century Paris where maybe hunger and instability were always somewhere present. By most accounts Paris had been re-provisioned by mid-February, and though there were lingering effects from the first siege, food shortages were not an issue during the second siege and Commune. The hope of the Government of National Defense and the populace for relief was in Gambetta's guerre à outrance and sorties from the city. Probably most instability in one form during the siege came from failures to meet these hopes and talks of armistice. There are some events closer and more directly connect to the Commune i think usually seen as more relevant.
 * One theory from the right was that malnutrition, along with isolation and the alternating hopes and despair of the siege led to an "obsidional fever", a collective disease or insanity of Parisians. I've looked for some better reference here, but what i keep finding is: reprovisioned by mid-February and food shortage not an issue during the Commune; but i really don't think that is the full story. fiveby(zero) 19:39, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you, very interesting. One thing I couldn't stop thinking about is how the French were already quite familiar with the idea of pemmican due to their long presence and experience in North America.  The fact that it is somewhat relatively easy to produce and store and can help to easily prevent starvation makes me wonder why the government didn't have provisions of pemmican to distribute to the people. Viriditas (talk) 20:11, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
 * You might be underestimating both the pace of events and the scale of what would have to be done to prevent a food shortage. France mobilized 15 July, August a series of defeats up to a 2 September surrender of the army and Napoleon III with a new government 4 September. Some extra provisioning of Paris was happening towards the end of August, but even after Sedan with the realization that Paris would be invested it seems there was an optimistic feeling that it would not last long. More could have been done, but was there time to both realize it was necessary and to accomplish the task?
 * Some estimates i've seen are that the Paris population was 1.9 million, 300,000 fled before the siege but that the population actually grew by 16% as people were driven from outlying areas into the city. Paris mortality rates were already significantly higher than the provinces pre-war. If you'll forgive some more OR, the graph on page 14 here tells the tale of a population already on the brink. The stories of fine dining on rats, horse meat that will feed for 100 days in December, zoo animals slaughtered in January have been called 'caricatures' of the real hunger of the poor. In September they weakest and poorest were already succumbing to the diseases of malnutrition and unsanitary conditions. fiveby(zero) 21:37, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Assuming about 2 million people, that would mean about one million kg or 1000 tons of food per day (based on about 1lb dry weight per person per day). A modern standard hot air ballon can carry about half a ton in payload, the biggest commercial balloon maybe 2 tons. So even if steering were not a problem, we are talking about ~1000 balloons per day, or one every 90 seconds. That seems "logistically challenging" to me ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:01, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what you're basing this conclusion about pemmican on? That seems to me like historical hindsight, unless you can find recipes for something similar in, say, French newspapers and army records? I don't see any reason why something well known to individual fur traders would have broad recognition in continental France, especially more than a hundred years after they'd lost the vast majority of their North American territories. It's also really important to keep in mind the prevailing pre-war public opinion: the French by and large thought they would win. Not just an optimistic timeline for any involvement of Paris, but a truly unrealistic optimism about the viability of fighting the war in the first place.
 * And let's say you're a Frenchman who knows how to make vast quantities of pemmican, who sees the starvation risk coming, and who is close enough to government to get the idea into a meeting or a journal. Who would you be proposing to feed with this stuff, anyway? Rich people aren't likely to believe they might be at risk of starvation, and they're not typically motivated by concern for the poor, either. How would you manage to convince anyone else? -- asilvering (talk) 23:15, 29 November 2022 (UTC)


 * It is also important to note that the subject matter of painting changed drastically with Impressionists and others during the 19th century. It wasn't just their techniques that set them apart, it was the choice of subject matter.  Just as historians began to look at history as something other than great man history, and began to look at how average people came to shape, and be shaped by, historical forces, the art world also began to look at common, every day scenes as the source of their subject matter rather than prior generations.It's part of a general change in the zeitgeist of the times; not just art, but also science, philosophy, history, etc. began to look at the world differently.  I mean, if we want to get down to it, is there any reason why Hay Harvest at Éragny or The Potato Eaters or A Bar at the Folies-Bergère are any less documents of history than would have been The Battle of Gettysburg.  Battles and war are not the only aspects of history, and the impressionists were documenting their world as they saw.  -- Jayron 32 18:56, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
 * The French academic art world at that time was designed as and considered an instrument of state policy. If the Impressionists had documented these conflicts, they could have quickly come up against state-sanctioned opprobrium, doubly so, since they were already facing this in the first place for challenging the boundaries of what was acceptable to the Salon. Viriditas (talk) 22:55, 30 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Until Covid-19 arrived, many people had never heard of the 1918-20 Spanish flu pandemic. They knew about the First World War, which killed 22 million people, and they knew about the Weimar Republic, about hyperinflation in Europe, about the Great Depression that started in 1929, and the rise of Hitler. But the Spanish flu? What was that? Oh, it only killed at least 50 million people, possibly as many as 100 million. It dwarfed both the first and second world wars in terms of casualties, but it became something people didn't talk about. Or remember. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:48, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Half-remembered Paris painting
I dimly recall seeing a painting of the slums in front of the Thiers Wall being burned prior to the Siege, in order to clear the defenders' fields of fire. It was a bit reminiscent of Turner's The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, with great billows of smoke and flames. Can anyone find it for me? Alansplodge (talk) 13:37, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
 * This one by Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier is quite famous, but it's not likely to be the one you remember. Looking for "peintures siège de Paris 1870" on google images comes up with a number of interesting images, although none jumps out to match your description. Xuxl (talk) 13:50, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
 * There are several noted here that might be the one you remember. -- Jayron 32 18:44, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you both, but not the one. The search continues but I'm hoping it wasn't a false memory! Alansplodge (talk) 13:24, 30 November 2022 (UTC)