Japanese Studies Courses

Foundational Course

JS546 Introduction to Japanese Studies

Professor: Instructor of Japanese Studies
This is a compulsory two-credit course for all first-semester degree M.A. students in Japanese Studies. The course provides an overview of fundamental research methods and introduces students to key issues in Japanese studies. Continuing degree students who have not previously taken this course may register for the course with a permission of the instructor.

Japanese Language Courses

JS590 Japanese Language Course A

Professor: TOKUMARU Satoko
The purpose is to acquire Japanese listening and speaking skills necessary for studying at graduate school. To do so, learn how to write and make a presentation and then practice these skills. Students are required to make an academic report based on the presentation. Through peer-reviewing on reports, students review basic Japanese grammar and acquire Japanese listening and speaking skills. A teacher makes advices and facilitates these processes.Further details will be provided on the first day of the class. (More than N2 of JLPT or more than JPN321 of JPT is required.)
大学院で学ぶために必要な「聴くこと」「話すこと」のスキルを身につけることを目的とします。そのために、プレゼンテーションの書き方と作り方を学び、これらのスキルを練習します。プレゼンテーションに基づいたレポートの作成課題が課されます。レポートのピアレビューを通じ、基本的な日本語の文法を復習し、日本語の「聴くこと」「話すこと」のスキルを習得します。教師は助言を与え、これらのプロセスを促進します。詳細は初回授業で説明します。(JLPT のN2以上、または、JPTのJPN321以上が必要)

JS591 Japanese Language Course B

Professor: TOKUMARU Satoko
The purpose of the course is to improve reading skills necessary for studying at graduate school. Read articles written on various topics, learn vocabulary and grammar, and understand the intent of the author. Students also learn the skills to summarize content and express their opinions. Importance of reading aloud will be emphasized to improve Japanese proficiency comprehensively. Further details will be provided on the first day of the class. (More than N2 of JLPT or more than JPN321 of JPT is required.)
大学院で学ぶために必要な、日本語で「読むこと」のスキルを身につけることを目的とします。幅広い話題について書かれた読み物を読み、語彙、文法を学び、読解力を身につけます。内容を要約したり、意見を述べたりするスキルも学びます。音読を重視し、総合的な日本語力を高めます。詳細は初回授業で説明します。(JLPT のN2以上、または、JPTのJPN321以上が必要)

Arts and Culture

JS505 Modern Japanese Art History

Professor: MURAI Noriko
This course examines modernity in the Japanese visual arts from the mid-19th century to the 1970s. Students will study the many roles that “fine arts” (bijutsu) have played in modern Japanese society. Such roles have included the centrality of art in producing aesthetically exceptional forms, shaping national cultural identity, expressing individualism and subjectivity, and proposing social and cultural changes. Art came to function as a specific kind of commodity that values singularity, authenticity, and originality.

Building upon the historical and conceptual understanding provided in the class, each student will conduct an original research on a topic related to the course, which will culminate in a 15-page paper at the end of the semester.

JS508 Interpretations of Modernity 1

Professor: YIU Angela
This course examines selected works by the two Nobel Laureates in Japanese Literature: Kawabata Yasunari (1968) and Oe Kenzaburo (1994). What do their works say about the changing literary landscape of Japanese Literature and World Literature? What does the world seek in these two writers in selecting them as recipients for the Nobel Prize?
Students are expected to read the assigned stories and novels, and participate in class discussion 1) by responding in writing to Discussion Forums in Moodle; 2) join our class discussion. 3) Read selective texts in Japanese to the best of your ability. 4) Students are also expected to do up to two presentations in class.

JS509 Interpretations of Modernity 2

Professor: YIU Angela
This course examines selected works of representative Meiji and Taisho writers and trace the literary movements in the formation of modern Japanese literature. These includes the works by Natsume Soseki, Higuchi Ichiyo, Yosano Akiko, Izumi Kyoka, Mori Ogai, Shimazaki Toson, Tayama Katai, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, etc.
Students are expected to read the assigned stories and novels, and participate in class discussion 1) by responding in writing to Discussion Forums in Moodle; 2) join our class discussion. 3) Read selective texts in Japanese to the best of your ability. 4) Students are also expected to do up to two presentations in class.

JS518 Comparative Literature 1

Professor: KONO Shion
Comparative Literature courses introduce students to selected issues in comparative literature.

This year, we will consider theories of translation, world literature, and plurilingualism. Students will read theoretical texts in translation studies, world literature, and plurilingualism, keeping in mind implications in Japanese Studies. While the theoretical texts covered in the course are mostly literary and philosophical, students who specialize in disciplines other than literature are also welcome.

JS519 Comparative Literature 2

Professor: KONO Shion　　
Comparative Literature 1 and 2 introduce students to selected issues in comparative literature. Comparative Literature 2 focuses upon reading of selected primary and secondary texts related to reading Japanese literature in comparative perspective. All readings are available in English. This year, we will consider the issues of plurilingualism in modern and contemporary Japanese literature. We will discuss the crucial role of translation in the development of modern Japanese literature (both from Japanese and to Japanese); the allure of foreign languages; foreign languages and modern authors; languages in postwar Japan; and plurilingualism and “literature in Japanese.”

JS520 Pre-Modern Japanese Literature 1

Professor: THOMPSON Mathew
This course is a graduate seminar in pre-modern Japanese literature. The content will be designed around the research needs of the students interested in taking the class. Past topics have included the following: general surveys of pre-modern Japanese literature; literary representations of gender and sexuality; warriors and warrior culture; imperial court poetry and prose.

JS523 Pre-Modern Japanese Literature 2

JS526 Pre-Modern Japanese Art History

Professor: CHAN Yen-Yi
This class examines representations of divine and human bodies in Japanese visual and material cultures from the ancient to early modern period. We will explore how the notions of self, gender, and sexuality were constructed through the visual performances of the body and its adornment. We will also discuss the bodies of holy figures and the visual culture of the dead in Japanese religions, as well as the body of the rulers, commoners, and “others”. Images to be covered in this class include relics and reliquaries, bijinga (pictures of beauty), portraitures, hair embroideries, shunga (“spring pictures”), genre paintings, hell images, blood texts, emakimono (handscroll paintings) of diseases, and Nanban (Southern barbarians) art. Although this class focuses on materials from the premodern periods, students will connect issues under discussion to those in their daily life and modern/contemporary society through class activities and writing assignments. They will be also expected to view images in the collections of some museums in Tokyo.

JS527 Contemporary Japanese Literature 1

Professor: STRECHER Matthew
Contemporary Japanese Literature, as the title suggests, is a course dealing with Japanese literary texts produced by writers who are living, or at least were living in the recent past. In historical terms, however, it might be considered a course in literature written in the post-postwar era, i.e., after 1970. In principle, our focus is on writing from the past four decades or so. Each year the seminar centers on a particular theme or idea. This year’s theme is the “quest for other worlds and other selves.” That means that we will examine a wide range of texts that deal with alternate realities, metaphysical spaces, depictions of the unconscious, the world of the dead, and so on. This will lead us into a variety of theoretical discussions, from the psychological to the mythological; and to various artistic and literary frames, including magical realism, postmodernism, feminism, and new historicism. All texts in this course will be read in the original Japanese. While English translations do exist for some, and might be consulted for occasional reference or critique, students are expected to work with the original materials.
NOTE: PhD students will follow the curriculum assigned to the MA students in the affiliated class; however, PhD students will be given supplementary readings and assignments appropriate to the requirements for students in the PhD degree program.

JS528 Contemporary Japanese Literature 2

Professor: STRECHER Matthew
Contemporary Japanese Literature, as the title suggests, is a course dealing with Japanese literary texts produced by writers who are living, or at least were living in the recent past. In historical terms, however, it might be considered a course in literature written in the post-postwar era, i.e., after 1970. In principle, our focus is on writing from the past four decades or so. Each term, the seminar centers on a particular theme or idea. This semester’s theme is the “quest for the Other World.” That means that we will examine a wide range of texts that deal with alternate realities, metaphysical spaces, depictions of the unconscious, the world of the dead, and so on. This will lead us into a variety of theoretical discussions, from the psychological to the mythological; and to various artistic and literary frames, including magical realism, postmodernism, feminism, and new historicism. All texts in this course will be read in the original Japanese. While English translations do exist for some, and might be consulted for occasional reference or critique, students are expected to work with the original materials.
NOTE: PhD students will follow the curriculum assigned to the MA students in the affiliated class; however, PhD students will be given supplementary readings and assignments appropriate to the requirements for students in the PhD degree program.

JS555 Film and Media

Professor: HOLTZMAN Hannah
This course will examine how Japan is engaged in global cinema. Alongside a focus on the production and reception of Japanese cinema abroad we will consider how Japan has been envisioned by filmmakers from abroad since the early days of cinema. Defining “Japanese cinema” itself can be difficult as the art form has been transnational since its emergence in the late nineteenth century. Through national and transnational cinema frameworks, we will engage with questions of influence and collaboration, essentialism and hybridity, Orientalism and Japaneseness, and the provocative claim of the “end of Japanese cinema” alongside pronouncements of the “death of cinema” more broadly with the aim of better understanding Japanese cinema and visions of Japan by filmmakers from elsewhere.
This course will include field trips to film institutions and festivals in and around Tokyo. Students who are not able to commit to watching one film per week (and to fees associated with renting some of the films) should not take this class. Students are encouraged to form study groups to watch films together. Please be advised that some of the films include violence, sexual content, and strong language.

JS560 Studies in Japanese Media and Popular Culture

Professor: KODAKA Maiko
This course critically examines Japanese popular culture through the lens of media and visual culture, emphasizing the ways in which representation, identity, and participation are constructed, negotiated, and contested within Japan’s evolving sociocultural landscape. Through the analysis of diverse media forms—such as film, television, advertising, digital platforms, and fan practices—we explore how gender, sexuality, race, and class are mediated, performed, and consumed. Key topics include the politics of representation, heteronormativity, subcultural aesthetics in fashion and music, youth and affective labor, the performativity of gender and sexuality, participatory fan cultures (otaku and oshi-katsu), virtual intimacy in online communication, and the techno-social imaginaries of humanoid robots. The course is grounded in theoretical frameworks including representation, semiotics, performativity, fan studies, intertextuality, affect theory, and posthumanism. A broad range of visual, textual, and ethnographic materials will be used to develop critical analytical skills, fostering a deeper understanding of the ideological and affective dimensions of Japanese popular culture.

JS750 Reading in Japanese Sources

Professor: NAKAI Maki
This language-intensive seminar will provide students with an opportunity to read and engage with a variety of primary and secondary sources in Japanese history and literature. Through reading texts written before the early 20th century, it will introduce students to the basic methodologies of reading Japanese texts in accordance with their historical contexts and linguistic milieus. Any student who wants to read Japanese texts written between the Nara and early Shōwa periods is welcome.

Thought and Society

JS524 Religion and Japanese Society 1

Professor: DROTT Edward
JS524 and JS525 must be taken together.
This course explores the religious traditions of Japan and their social and cultural impact. One of the most important developments in the field of religious studies in recent decades has been the so-called “somatic turn”—an increased attention to the role of the human body in religion and the role that religious ideas, practices, and institutions have had in shaping knowledge about and experiences of the body. Accordingly, this course will devote special attention to the question of how Japanese religion has affected perceptions of the body and the role of the body in Japanese religion.
Possible topics include the effects of religiously-informed perceptions of the body on the development of folk medical knowledge, bioethical reasoning, attitudes toward death and dying, the construction of gender, the formation of outcast groups, and various other social practices.

JS525 Religion and Japanese Society 2

Professor: DROTT Edward
This course explores the religious traditions of Japan and their social and cultural impact. One of the most important developments in the field of religious studies in recent decades has been the so-called “somatic turn”—an increased attention to the role of the human body in religion and the role that religious ideas, practices, and institutions have had in shaping knowledge about and experiences of the body. Accordingly, this course will devote special attention to the question of how Japanese religion has affected perceptions of the body and the role of the body in Japanese religion. It will trace the effects of religiously-informed perceptions of the body on the development of folk medical knowledge, bioethical reasoning, attitudes toward death and dying, the construction of gender, the formation of outcast groups, and various other social practices.

JS532 Japanese History

Professor: GRAMLICH-OKA Bettina
The course is on Confucianism and gender in East Asia with particular focus on Japan. In the first section we consider the Chinese classics. With this background we then explore the political and ideological ramifications in texts and practices throughout the East Asian sphere.

JS534 Modern East Asian History

Professor: HESS Christian
This seminar will focus on the history and aftermath of imperialist projects in East Asia. The course will focus on the emergence of imperial power in the 19th and 20th centuries with a particular emphasis on the East Asia region. We will approach this subject through thematic topics rather than through more standard chronological or placed based narrative. Topics and issues to be covered will include: can we meaningfully compare empires across space and time? How do we understand decolonization and the end of empire in comparative and historical terms? What are some of the major controversies in evaluating the legacies of empire? Whenever possible we will be open to interdisciplinary coverage of these issues.

JS535 Philosophy in Japan

Professor: FRISCHHUT Akiko
This course provides an introduction to key figures and ideas in Japanese philosophy. Among these figures are Dōgen, renowned as the originator of Soto Zen, who introduced the notion of “being-time”; Nishida Kitarō, the progenitor of the Kyoto School, who expounded upon the concept of “pure experience”; along with two disciples of Nishida, Watsuji Tetsurō, who introduced the idea of “betweenness”, and Kuki Shūzō, who articulated the notion of “detachment”. Additionally, the course acquaints students with other prominent figures in Japanese philosophy, spanning from established members of the Japanese philosophical canon to emerging thinkers gaining prominence both domestically and internationally. A word of warning: this is not an exegetical course but rather a course where we will focus on thinking about the ideas, rather than who said what when.

JS536 Modern Japanese History 1

Professor: SAALER Sven
Overview over the history of regional integration in East Asia and theories of East Asian solidarity. We will read primary sources from writers embracing or criticizing the idea of an “East Asian world” or “pan-Asian unity” and discuss these readings in class. East Asian integration will be analyzed from a comparative viewpoint, taking into consideration historical parallels as well as differences with regional integration in other areas, particularly Europe and the Americas.
PhD students will follow the curriculum assigned to the MA students in the affiliated class; however, PhD students will be given supplementary readings and assignments appropriate to the requirements for students in the PhD degree program.

JS537 Modern Japanese History 2

Professor: SAALER Sven
In this course, we will explore issues of memory-making and memory-shaping in modern Japan. After a survey of theories of historical and social memory, we will analyze the main institutions of memory and commemoration in modern Japan, their functions and historical development, as well as important Japanese “realms of memory”, their representation in Japanese culture and controversies surrounding memorialization projects in Japanese society and politics. Apart from examining case studies of Japanese memory institutions, we will also take a comparative look at controversies about historical memory in other countries, above all in Germany, South Korea, Spain, France and Italy.

JS542 Popular Culture

Professor: FEENEY William
This course explores contemporary Japanese popular culture from an anthropological perspective. We approach various sites of ‘popular culture’ not simply as entertaining windows through which to explore a broader ‘Japanese culture’, but as heterogeneous sites of cultural action, aesthetics, and political economy. In this way, the course will force students to think beyond familiar models of ‘cultures’ as fixed unchanging structures anchored in an enduring ‘tradition.’ Rather, we will consider the existing socio-historical conditions, aesthetic traditions, and structures of power that condition emblematic forms of media and social action in ways that described as ‘popular culture.’　
This course will survey a range of analytic approaches to popular culture, emphasizing relevant topics, theories and methods as analytic tools. Weekly readings will alternate between theory pieces and case studies of Japanese popular culture, and in-class discussion will seek to open Japanese popular culture to critical inquiry and ground critical theory with concrete examples to work through. Students are expected to not only read and prepare for class discussion each week, but also introduce experiences drawn from outside the classroom into group discussions.

JS543 Urban Space Studies

Professor: GOLANI-SOLOMOM Erez
This course aims to introduce what is arguably the most complex product of society and Japanese society in particular — the city, and to concentrate on the city of Tokyo. Our study will encompass a range of issues concerning the city and the consequences of urban development under modern and contemporary conditions. We will observe how the city has defined, and has been defined by, a particular reality at a particular time, beginning in Edo period and concluding in the present. Such approach emphasizes a need to examine the city within a certain context, particularly its social, cultural, and political circumstances. Thus, we will look at the creation and recreation of the city’s physical texture, at architecture, urban landscape, infrastructure, and technology, and at the same time observe the city as a social product determined by everyday life and habitual practices, organization of the immediate surrounding, personal rites and the micro-politics of life in the city. In the same manner, we will look at buildings and neighborhoods per-se, as a material construct guided by geometry and legal code, but at the same time recognize how the pragmatics of this built environment interrelate with cultural expressions such as literature and film, and thus examine the mechanisms that relate the city to culture. Also, we will see how the city is not merely a reflection or expression of politics, but rather an intricate political apparatus in and of itself, influencing relationships and encouraging change.

JS547 Social Issues in Contemporary Japan

Professor: HORIGUCHI Sachiko
In this course, we will critically examine diversity in contemporary Japan from anthropological perspective. We will approach a variety of topics related to ethnicity, gender/sexuality, and disability and will historically contextualize the present state surrounding issues of diversity in Japan, through exploring ways in which diversity has been represented/articulated, masked, and/or problematized in textual and visual forms in modern Japan.

JS551 Japan Ethnography

Professor: SLATER David
We are in one of the largest, most diverse and most exciting field sites in the world: Tokyo. We will exploit this fact to explore urban space and place, society and sociality, people and practices through direct ethnographic fieldwork. Based on our readings, your will develop a theme that your group will purse over the course of the term. Collect and synthesize data, and put it together into a website on Shinjuku.

Japanese Studies Courses