My history textbook claims the Silk Road was more than a trade route—it was also a channel for cultural and intellectual exchange between East and West. But after reading Marco Polo’s account, which covers a time when the Silk Road had already existed for a millennium, I’m doubtful. The geographic and linguistic barriers seem too great for ideas to travel effectively, and even Polo’s descriptions of the East are vague. Wikipedia mentions things like Buddhist temples along the Silk Roa...| Recent Questions - History Stack Exchange
Ian Buruma (Inventing Japan: 1853–1964, 2003): The Ginza in Tokyo, that Europeanized center of “Civilization and Enlightenment,” had changed a great deal since the dark days of late Meiji. Longhaired young men in roido (from Harold Lloyd) glasses, bell-bottom trousers, colored shirts, and floppy ties would stroll down the willow-lined avenue with young women in bobbed hairdos. The more earnest ones, who gathered in “milk bars” to discuss German philosophy or Russian novels, were kno...| Recent Questions - History Stack Exchange