Sophia Magazine vol.7 / SUMMER 2018

8/36

Angela YiuProfessor at the Faculty of Liberal ArtsEstablished in 2006, the GPGS is an English-taught inter-disciplinary program that offers master’s degrees in Global Studies, International Business and Development Studies, and Japanese Studies, as well as doctorates in Global Studies and Japanese Studies. The M.A. and Ph.D. programs pro-vide an integrated, interdisciplinary approach to the study of Japanese history, literature, religion, art history, society, and culture. The GPGS’s diverse student body and faculty cross multiple national and linguistic borders, while its interdisci-plinary approach to global studies creates numerous oppor-tunities for collaborative international research. This focus on interdisciplinary global studies extends to the program’s literature courses, in which students from around the world bring diverse perspectives to the study of Japanese literature.The scope of GPGS’s Japanese literature courses covers ev-erything from Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji to Haruki Murakami’s latest novels. Of the eleven faculty members in the GPGS’s Japanese Studies section, four are professors of liter-ary studies with expertise in their respective fields of pre-mod-ern literature, modern literature, contemporary literature, and comparative literature studies. Faculty frequently change course content between terms, enabling students to explore a wide array of subjects by taking the same courses multiple times. “The lineup of faculty and their expertise in Japanese literature is extraordinary. In terms of English-language pro-grams for Japanese literature, there are few with this faculty’s breadth and depth,” says Professor Kono.Professor Kono’s specializations include comparative lit-erature and translation studies. One of his courses focuses on hihyō, a genre of literary criticism. Hihyō has long interested scholars of Japanese studies, but has received less attention than other genres due to the complexities of the social, po-litical, and artistic contexts in which the texts are written. An example of contemporary hihyō is critic Hiroki Azuma’s book Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals, co-translated by Professor Kono and offering a critical inquiry into the idio-syncrasies of otaku consumer subculture. Despite the den-sity of these texts, studies of hihyō have become increasingly accessible in recent years thanks to a proliferation of trans-lations and other English-language materials. “This is an ac-tive field in which many important debates and discussions take place. From modern to contemporary Japan, hihyō has been an important genre that was difficult for English speak-ers to approach, but we now have a critical mass of texts that provides us with a good overview and allows us to engage with it,” says Professor Kono. The study of hihyō is a window A Globally Oriented, InterdisciplinaryApproach to Japanese LiteratureLiterature as a Means of Exploration and ReflectionJapanese literature has the power to transcend na-tionality, culture, and language, and create meaning in the lives of readers around the world. When a work of literature departs its country of origin, often in the form of a translation, it spins a thread. Then as the number of translations expands, these threads multi-ply and stretch across the globe, forming a web that connects readers to each other and to the work’s coun-try of origin. Japanese literature is the common thread for many students at Sophia University’s Graduate Program in Global Studies (GPGS), and the program serves as a hub where they can cultivate ex-pertise while sharing their own perspectives on Japa-nese literature with classmates and faculty. We met with GPGS literature professors Angela Yiu and Shion Kono to discuss the program’s Japanese litera-ture courses, students, faculty, and international re-search collaborations.8Approach