Japanese Studies Courses

Foundational Course

JS546 Introduction to Japanese Studies

Professor: KONO Shion
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

JS501 Modern Japanese Visual Culture

Professor: NISHIMURA Keiko
“Visual culture” is a deceptively common term. We participate in and experience visual cultures every day. Yet, for all the experiences we have with visual cultures, they are tricky things when we pause and reflect on them. What is culture? Why does visual culture matter? This course aims to provide students with a basic understanding of Japanese visual cultures through advertising and media. The course explores the social, economic, and cultural dynamics of popular visual cultures in Japan, along with providing fundamental theories from Cultural Studies and Media Studies as tools to analyze visual cultures in general.

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.

JS507 Critical Theory in Media and Cultural Studies

Professor:FEENEY Williams
This course will survey the critical approaches that under-gird studies of popular culture and explore their theoretical underpinnings. We will review several landmark theories and major approaches, situating theory in the historical context of its development and tracing the arc of concerns that have directed and shaped critical engagements with popular culture. The scope of the course is broad in order to highlight the ways that theoretical developments unfolded in relation to prior concerns. Beyond theoretical and historical content, this course will also emphasize methodological instruction. This reflects a recognition that theories serve as models for the analysis of complex social systems. Throughout the course students will be asked to apply the concepts, frameworks and methods reviewed in class to real-world popular cultural phenomena. The final project will task students with selecting a pop-cultural form and presenting a longer form analysis, making curated use of the authors and frameworks covered in the course.

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.

JS510 Contemporary Japanese Literature

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.

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

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

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.

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.

JS533 Modern Japanese History

Professor: SAALER Sven
This course 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.

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.

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.

JS542 Popular Culture

Professor: KODAKA Maiko
The course turns to anthropological perspectives on Japanese popular culture, with a focus on gender and sexuality, as well as consideration of ethnicity and class. Through the lens of Japanese popular culture, we examine the relationship between identity and participation in the changing landscape reflected in practices and attitudes of people in Japan. Topics include representations of gender/race, heteronormality, subculture of fashion/music, youth problems, performing/consuming gender and sexuality, the participatory culture of otaku/oshi-katsu, commodified intimate activities in host/hostess clubs, online communication of “virtual” relationships, and the new technology of humanoid robots. Emphasis will be on the critical analysis of the representations and practices of gender and sexuality alongside key concepts and theories related to gender and sexuality such as performativity, queer theory, and intersectionality. We will also employ a broad range of visual and ethnographic materials in order to sharpen analytical skills.

JS543 Urban Space Studies

Professor: DAHLBERG-SEARS Robert
There is no one experience of Tokyo, but the geographic limits of what we know as “Tokyo” are clearly mapped and defined. How do people come to know and experience this place then? This seminar approaches the idea of Tokyo as not simply situated in one area, but as often defined by everyday experiences, livelihoods, and particularities of emplacement. The city, its changing boundaries, and the ways that people acknowledge and live within those boundaries will play central roles to our reading and discussion. 

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.

Sophia University

For Others, With Others