| AsiaPop: A look at cultures across the sea Fun in any language by Ben Freund |
| These days, a lot of kids around the world are playing video games from Japan. But children have been playing games with Asian origins for centuries before Mario saved the Mushroom Kingdom. Cat's Cradle, for example, is a simple string game that originated somewhere in southeast Asia and reached Europe with the growing tea trade in the 17th century. The simple game of jump rope also arrived from China in the 1930s, just in time to become the most popular toy of the Great Depression. Rock, scissors, paper has its origins in Japan as 'jan-ken-pon.' But while these games were simple and had a universal appeal across all cultures, some required a bit of adaptation. "Chutes and Ladders," for example, was originally a game called "Snakes and Ladders" which was used to educate young Hindus about moral values. Boards were illustrated with virtuous acts that allowed a game piece to ultimately ascend to an incarnation of ultimate perfection -- but beware of acts of vice which lead down sinful serpent-backed slides to lower animal reincarnation! Early European and American adaptations of the game removed much of the religious symbolism, but kept the implied moral tone of the game. 'Snakes' were depicted by stealing cookies, bullying siblings, and the like, while 'ladders' were depicted by doing chores, picking up toys, and other considerate acts. Ultimately, "Chutes and Ladders" by Milton Bradley and other popular variants removed the snakes and sermons entirely. But it was hardly the strangest board game to be imported from India. That honor might go to Parcheesi. Many modern Parcheesi sets still carry the classic subtitle, "A Royal Game of India." Indeed, the game was played by Indian emperors in the 16th century on a board quite similar to the modern version -- except that it was made of marble and scaled to the size of the 'pieces' -- slave girls wearing saris colored to indicate their team. These giant-sized 'pachisi' boards can still be seen at several Indian palaces, such as Allahabad. But while Parcheesi is still essentially the same game once the board has been shrunk and the slaves have been emancipated, one popular Asian toy was originally used as a deadly weapon. The modern yo-yo originated in the Philippines, where sharpened chunks of flint were tied with string to create a quick, reusable long-range weapon. No, there was never a tribe of Filipino yo-yo warriors conquering the wilds with around-the-world sleepers and lindy loops. But the similar-looking string weapons no doubt had something to do with the popularity and subsequent refinement of the ancient yo-yo, which has been around since at least 500 B.C. when fun-loving Greeks used heavy terra-cotta yo-yos. The Filipino toys were the first known to use the 'looped slip-string' that is the hallmark of the modern yo-yo. The Filipinos also used lighter materials like mahogany and water buffalo horn for their non-deadly toys, and in 1928 an immigrant named Pedro Flores started the Yo-Yo Manufacturing Company in California with just a dozen handmade toys. By the end of 1929, he was operating three factories producing 300,000 yo-yos a day! An entrepreneur named Donald Duncan took note of Flores' speedy success and bought the entire operation from him for a quarter of a million dollars, an astronomical sum during the depression era. Even today, Asian games are still crossing oceans to delight new western audiences. The logic game "sudoku" has been sweeping newspapers since it premiered in the British newspaper "The Times" in 2004. As the name implies, it has a Japanese origin. A popular puzzle publisher, Nikoli, first began publishing "suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru" in 1984. An expatriate New Zealander in Hong Kong discovered a partly completed Nikoli puzzle at a book shop and devoted six years to creating a computer program that could generate sudoku puzzles, making daily newspaper puzzles alongside the crossword a simple but effective tool for raising circulation. Today, sudoku is the second most popular type of puzzle in Japan, Great Britain, and the United States, just as other eastern diversions like yo-yos, jump ropes and yes, even that Chinese original, kites, have become a part of global culture. But don't worry, America, we've still got the patent on frisbees! |
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| Pop culture isn't just what's new -- it's old stuff too, like things you never knew came from Asia but have an impact on fashion and entertainment at home and across the sea. |
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