OK, trivia question. What was the first mention in literature of metallic female robots?

The answer will be somewhere in today’s post, so now you’ll have to read the whole thing and not just look at the pictures.

Today we visited the Tropenmuseum.

The collection started out to investigate the best ways to exploit Dutch overseas conquests in the tropics, but these days it is an extended apology for Dutch colonial history. The ethnographic artifacts are mostly from Indonesia, South East Asia, and New Guinea. They also have special exhibitions on child labor in chocolate farming, the muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, slavery, religion, and Japanese art.

I will say this for the muslims, haj and haji are great scrabble words. I was already familiar with islamic ceramics…

and islamic calligraphy…

… but I was blown away be islamic embroidery.

Is it time to talk about skulls?

No, not those, real skulls.

That’s better. They even have an ancestor skull, decorated with feathers and shells.

OK, some other goodies, in no particular order.

Yes, it’s a gold fez. Do you have a problem with that?

OK, hold it right there. This is cultural relativism gone too far. A society in which people don’t go around killing and eating each other is not allegedly superior, it is genuinely superior. Not that I’m in favor of colonialism. Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

I do think it’s reasonable that when two cultures meet, each one gets to learn and borrow the best features of the other.

There is a whole room at the museum devoted to a discussion of cultural appropriation.

I’m uncomfortable with the concept that it is wrong to copy something from another culture if that culture does something better than you do. What if something of deep spiritual meaning is trivialized? I’m actually fine with that, too. You can still have your deep spiritual meaning, just don’t expect everyone else to take you seriously when you decorate your grandfather’s skull or take a vow of celibacy. I think it’s fine to borrow whatever ideas you like from other cultures, so long as you don’t expect that culture to change. (Apart from the cannibalism. Cannibalism is right out. Cannibalism and genocide. Cannibalism, genocide, and a fanatical devotion to the pope. Among the things that are right out are…)

Look, tacos are Native American, chess is Indian, pizza is Italian (though they got the tomatoes from America), and shiny metal female robots first appear in Homer’s Iliad. Please don’t tell me it’s wrong for me to enjoy a Hawaiian pizza every now and then, or admire Magnus Carlsen’s chess playing.

The British occupation of India was every bit as bad as the Dutch occupation of Indonesia, but at the end of it, the British had curry, and the Indians had democracy. I think the British came off best.

OK, back to the museum. I think you need something cheery after that rant, so here are Lady Gaga’s Hello Kitty shoes.

There were lots of other fun things in the Japan exhibit. It showed how Manga and Anime had drawn from traditional Japanese illustration and legends as well as western art and comics.

It’s an easy leap from samurai to Pikachu (if you have ninja training).

Let’s not overlook the Japanese talent for sexual objectification, because the exhibition certainly doesn’t.

I’ll spare you the tentacle porn this time though.

You’re welcome.