30 November 2008
Reality Program "The Edwardian Country House"
That was DVD of the reality program broadcasted in U.K.
Ordinary people experience early 20th century life of rich family who owns a very big country house and their servants for 3 months.
They live exactly the same style as the old days wearing the same clothes.
The gap between the family and the servants was very obvious. The servants have to work all day long without day-off.
The family never know how hard their life is. That is like working poor of present days. They had work in such terrible condition with meager pay. Not only that, in those days there was no law to prohibite such slave-like treatment. Even if servants got sick, their masters can easily lay them off.
The other interesting thing is that how the relationship of Britons and colonial Indians in those days. It was imperialist time.
Great Britain colonized India. Indians seem to have had very hard time by British imperialism. But interesting thing is some Indian people admired British Empire. Some of the parliament members were Indian at that time.
Exploring old times is really fun thing. It is like doing time-travelling.
My interests in history inspired me to write some interesting novels such as below.
I am planning to write novel which a story takes place in 1930's Germany when Nazi came into power. A young Japanese woman and a Jewish man met in Berlin. They fell in love but Nazism got in their way. What do they do?
Or I may be writing a story that takes place in 1950's America. Young Japanese Fulbright exchange student rent a room in a middle class American couple. He was treated well by them. But the couple had some problems. He tried to help them out.
Or two young Japanese men came to London in late 19th century to study very sophisticated western science and culture. One was a big admirer of Western civilization and the other was very samurai-minded man who prided himself as Japanese but at the same time he thinks he should learn great things from the West for modernization of Japan. They met a British man who was Western supremacist who looked down upon other civilizations. They had to deal with him.
Wouldn't that be interesting?
21:43 Posted in Britain, Culture, Film | Permalink | Comments (2) | Tags: history, documentary