FALL SEMESTER 2008

AKP-Doshisha Joint Seminar
Professor Erik R. Lofgren, AKP Resident Director
Professor Masami Izumi, Doshisha University

The Joint Seminar represents a unique opportunity to explore issues in comparative culture in a class comprised of both AKP and Doshisha students. The class format includes panel presentations, discussions, joint projects, and a series of guest lectures by Japanese and foreign experts from the Kyoto environs who will address various aspects of American and Japanese culture from a multi-disciplinary perspective.

One of the main purposes of the course is to promote discussion between Doshisha and AKP students on issues related to the course topics. Strategies for promoting good class discussion, including pairs and small groups, will take precedence over organizational purity and continuity. There will be a course packet of readings, but no required texts for this course. Students will complete fieldwork and give a presentation in small groups, and also write a final paper.

Japanese Language and Popular Media
Professor Nobuo Ogawa, Middlebury College

This course investigates the use of Japanese in songs, movies, and television. It is open to students who have completed at least two years, preferably three years of Japanese language study. We will investigate: pronunciation, use of pronouns, spech levels and honorifics, sentence ending particles, and other topics. We will also read articles in Japanese (with glossaries) and we will use Japanese as much as possible in class.

Japanese Animation
Professor Carole Cavanaugh, Middlebury College

Among several topics, this course will investigate the following questions about Japanese Anime:

• What is the relationship between animation (the "bringing to life" of things that are not "real") and realism (the representation of the actual world)
• Animated films tend to experiment with the conditions of our existence, such as the physical laws that govern human life. What ideas can we draw from this experimentation?
• Animation seems preoccupied with machines on one hand and animals on the other, that is: with extremes of mechanization and nature. How are these preoccupations related to the question of what it means to be human in the modern world?
• How are archetypes (an ideal or classic example of something) and stereotypes (oversimplified or standardized ideas and images) woven into the fabric of animated films?

 

Japanese Landscape Gardens: Sources in the Natural World and Human Nature
Professor David Slawson, Landscape Artist

Students will make a first-hand study of gardens in the Kyoto area. During the weekly field study students will develop their powers of observation and their ability to describe the special ambiance of each garden. Using the inductive method (deriving general principles from particular facts or instances) the studenst will gradually internalize the universal and timeless design principles of Japanese gardens by experiencing these principles at work in a variety of actual examples. This multidimensional form of affective learning will develop within each individual a reservoir of experiential knowledge tha the/she can draw upon in new situations to use either creatively or critically as the situation demands. This open-ended approach engages the whole person and shares an important aspect with the scientific method—that of setting aside one's preconceptions and beliefs to let the actual phenomena speak for themselves.

 

The History of Kyoto

Professor David Boggett, Seika University

This course will trace the history of Kyoto through successive Japanese historical periods, including such topics as the transfer of the capital from Nara to Kyoto, Muromachi and Momoyama era trade with China and South-East Asia, and cultural exchanges with Korea. The colonial era and Pacific War will be illustrated through the life of the poet Yun Dong-ju, a former Korean student at Doshisha. Making use of an extensive slide collection accumulated over years of research in Kyoto, course lectures will focus on a selected place (shrine, temple, city, area etc.), literary work, important event or historical figure from each period of history, and will also tend to emphasize "foreign" influences on the development of Japanese society. In addition, Kyoto's famous festivals, both grand and small, will be investigated through slides, historical documents, and field excursions to actual sites and events in order to understand how the Japanese past is being "re-imagined." We will also try to include various literary, religious and political sites on these local field excursions. The course will likely make connections with related material presented in other courses, as well as various homestay experiences, to enhance the students' understanding of Kyoto and its past.

 

Japanese Economics
Professor Shigeyuki Abe, Doshisha University

Japan has been transforming from the old to the new economy. To fully understand the current economy one needs to study how Japan has transformed. In this regard this lecture covers various aspects of the "Japan Inc." such as lifetime employment, bonus system, high savings, food protectionism, welfare system, income distribution, Keiretsu, industrial policy, US-Japan economic conflicts, and so on. Since the early 1990s when the asset bubble burst, Japan has suffered a slow and even negative growth coupled with price deflation. The 1990s is sometimes called the Lost Decade for Japan. Japan is now the most indebted economy among OECD countries. Japan needs to minimize budget deficits at the government level and to raise productivity at the private level. This brings various confrontations in such areas as pension, health insurance, FURIHTAH and enlarging income disparity, industrial hollowing, ageing, environment deterioration, deficit-ridden local governments, and the like. This lecture provides a systematic explanation of the above fundamental issues.

 

SPRING SEMESTER 2009

Desire in Japanese Cinema
Professor Erik R. Lofgren, AKP Resident Director

In this course we will study numerous films that portray desire in its myriad manifestations and try to discover what those historical, cultural, and ideological forces were and how they influenced the production of the representations on film, as well as how the technical aspects of the films further that representation Concomitant with this task will be the exploration of how our consumption of these films is also determined by a different set of imperatives and forces. In the process, we will gain an understanding of the force of, effect, and response to these films and, by extension, insights into broader issues of Japanese film and ourselves. Parallel readings in critical materials about films, desire, sexuality, and other related topics will be used to help move our discussion from a simple affirmation of likes or dislikes to a consideration of those filmic and extra-filmic concerns that have produced the movies we have before us.

 

Translation: Practice and Theory
Professor Elizabeth Armstrong, Bucknell University

This course will have two major components: actual translation exercises and projects, as well as the study of translation theory. Students will be asked to translate and peer-critique short selections from Japanese literature, ad copy, newspapers, and poetry, etc., discussing translation choices and procedure in class. In addition, students will be introduced to the field of translation studies, reading about approches to tranlsation from historical, cultural, and theoretical perspectives. The course will be conducted in both Japanese and English as is necessary to facilitate discussion and treatment of the Japanese texts with which we work. Students in the upper levels of Japanese are encouraged to enroll.

Conservation and Ecology in Japan
Professor Robert Askins, Connecticut College

Japan has been described as both a model for sustainable use of natural resources and an object lesson in the tragic consequences of environmental destruction. In this class we discuss the distinctive history of Japan's natural environment, learning how the Japanese have used and managed the natural environment and confronted environmental problems. In addition to learning some basic natural history and ecology, students also study the history of forestry, wildlife conservation, and environmental protection in Japan, with a special emphasis on the role of environmental movements in the development of democratic institutions. We also compare Japanese and North American attitudes about nature, wilderness, and environmental health, and assess the impact of Japan on the global environment. The class is organized around a diverse mix of lectures, class discussions, and field trips. Field trips to rivers, marshes, temple forests, and wildlife preserves in and around Kyoto emphasize basic natural history and ecology. In order to develop an understanding of biological diversity, students are required to learn common birds and some of the most ecologically and culturally important species of trees. Ornithology is a good vehicle for appreciating the importance of biological diversity because birds are relatively easy to observe and identify. Students also learn about the ecology of different types of Japanese forests. First-hand experience with the animals and plants of natural environments will make the classroom discussions of conservation and environmental protection more meaningful.

 

Nature and Place in Pre-Modern Japanese Literature: Kansai Paradigms
Professor Sarah Strong, Bates College

Japanese culture has long been associated with a valuing of nature, but the cultural construction of what nature is and means is multi-pronged, subject to change, and involves diverse and at times competing traditions. This course gives substance to the often vague notion of a Japanese "view of nature" by examining four key nature-related traditions in Japanese literature: 1) season and seasonality in waka poetry; 2) the garden as a simulacrum of remote nature; 2) utamakura (poem pillows) and the concept of enhanced poetic landscapes; and 4) zoka (natural process) and the idea of "the natural" in haikai literature. In examining each topic, particular attention is paid to the formative role of the Kansai area--its particular climate, seasons, plants, animals and landscapes--in shaping and informing these nature paradigms. The focus of the course is on a close reading of texts within the context of the historical and natural setting their production. It is designed to increase students' critical skills as readers of literature in general and of pre-modern Japanese texts in particular and to extend their knowledge of pre-modern Japanese cultural history. Students with sufficient Japanese language study background are encouraged to read selected texts in the original. All students conduct a short fieldwork project in Kyoto and join in at least two organized fieldtrips in the area. Course requirements include writing two short papers and completing a final exam.

 

Japanese Religion
Professor Cynthia Ludvik, Kobe University

Course description pending.

 

Minorities and Immigration in Contemporary Japan

Professor Terry MacDougall, Stanford Center for Technology and Innovation

Massive waves of immigration in the past half century have touched, even transformed, every region and nearly every country of the world. A result of many factors, this "global migration crisis" has linked developed and developing countries, challenged the ability of nations to control their borders, activated international organizations, NGOs and other advocates of human rights, and brought into question many of the premises and policies of the modern nation-state and liberal democracy. Today, formerly "homogeneous" countries find themselves with significant minorities of diverse national, ethnic and religious origin. The new, or newly recognized, reality of diversity has resulted in a questioning of prevailing notions of citizenship based on ethnicity or a community of closely held values. Liberal democracies (including Japan) in particular discuss and debate, often in highly contentious terms, how to respond to these challenges.

This course examines the Japanese immigration case in the context of broader changes in the world, especially in North America and Europe, and examines both immigration and immigrant (integration) policy. This broad perspective on the Japanese case is essential because shaping forces are not confined within Japanese borders; and the experiences of other nations inform the debate within Japan. In addition to introducing some critical questions regarding immigration and immigrant policy more generally, this course seeks to inform the students of the specific challenges facing Japan, issues as perceived by various institutional and group actors, the obstacles and opportunities for change, what progress has already been made, and what factors most critically affect the policy options and choices for Japanese authorities, national and local.

The course will include several field trips and guest speakers. Among places we might visit are a major human rights center, Korea Town, other communities of both Japanese and foreign minorities, and a NGO that assist migrant laborers, trafficked persons, etc. Osaka is home to the largest concentration of Koreans in Japan, the largest concentration of Okinawans outside of Okinawa, and the largest number day laborers and burakumin. Hence, nearby Osaka provides particularly useful opportunities for group observation and individual research.