AKP-Doshisha Joint Seminar
Prof. Maki Hubbard, 2010-2011 Resident Director
Prof. Susan Pavloska, 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.

Sights and Sites: A Pilgrim's History of Kyoto
Prof. Jamie Hubbard, Smith College
This course examines Buddhism and indigenous religion in Japan through the history of temples and images in the Kansai area (predominantly Kyoto). Topics include doctrinal development, church/state relations, and the diffusion of religious values in Japanese culture, particularly in the aesthetic realm (literature, gardens, tea, the martial arts, etc.). We will make extensive use of field trips during class time as well as day-trips to Nara, an overnight in a Buddhist temple on Mt. Koya (one of the world’s oldest and largest graveyards is fun round about midnight), and the like in order to appreciate the sheer density of religious life in Kyoto. Shrines, temples, festivals, Jizo statues in the streets, pilgrimage sites, memorial services, meditation groups, the Purple Sangha, graveyards, yoga groups, suicidal cults, Catholic churches, and much, much, more constitute the “sites and sights” of religious practice in Japan and at the same time tell a colorful historical and religious tale, and are the subject of this course.

Anthropology of Modernity: Japan in Regional Perspective
Prof. Mary Beth Mills, Colby College
Dramatic socio-economic and political changes, particularly in the latter half of the twentieth century, have transformed social and cultural expectations throughout Asia. Oftentimes these transformations are framed in terms of tensions between “modernity” and “tradition”, between “pursuing progress” and “preserving heritage”, between the demands of “globalization” and those of “national interests.” The Japanese case at once exemplifies a number of these broad processes, while also representing a standard of achievement against which other Asian experiences are often assessed. In this class we examine the contested cultural dynamics associated with Asian modernities in everyday life, with special attention to Japanese examples. What does it mean to be or to desire to be “modern”? What does it require to consider oneself a "modern citizen" in Japan (or by contrast, for example, in Thailand, Korea, or China)? How do people live, work, shop, and entertain themselves on a daily basis? What do their actions reveal about the ways that cultural beliefs and practices are changing (or not), and about how people imagine themselves, their societies, and desired forms of well-being? Using lectures, assigned readings, discussion, and ethnographic exercises, the course will explore these dynamic social and cultural processes as they are played out in Japan with occasional comparisons to a range of contemporary Asian societies.

Kyoto and the Visual Arts of Japan
Prof. Catherine Ludvik, Kyoto Sangyo University
This course explores the visual arts of Japan from the prehistoric period to the nineteenth century, highlighting representative art works including sculptures, paintings, textiles, woodblock prints, architecture, and gardens. Selected works will be studied in terms of their chronology, artistic medium, iconography, setting, and functions. We will examine such issues as the relationship of Japanese art to Chinese and Korean art, patronage, the ritual and visual functions of Buddhist icons, the translation of concepts into artistic forms, as well as the changing identities of sculptures and paintings. Drawing on Kyoto’s long history and tradition of magnificent visual arts, classes will be supplemented with organized field trips to museums, temples, and other sites.

The Other in Postwar Japanese Cinema
Prof. Noboru Tomonari, Carleton College
This course examines the depiction of "the Other" (foreigners, gays, and Zainichi Koreans in particular) that appears in post-WWII Japanese cinema, from the canonical films about WWII made during the 1950s to films about the gay community in the early 1990s, and finally to the films by Zainichi Koreans. Various minority groups in Japan and elsewhere will be discussed as well as their representations in films. The films themselves become subjects of study in their aesthetic, cultural, historical, and auteurist contexts. By the end of the course, we will come to an understanding of "the Other" as they are represented in Japanese cinema and the possible uses of such representations for the Japanese audience as well as minority communities of various time periods. Particular attention will be paid to the relationship of these films to the social circumstances of minority groups in postwar Japan.

SPRING SEMESTER 2011

Fashion Practices in East Asia
Prof. Paola Zamperini, Amherst College
This course will focus on both the historical and cultural development of fashion, clothing and consumption in Japan, in conversation, when appropriate, with other East Asian and global trends. Using a variety of sources, from fiction to art, from legal codes to advertisements, we will study both actual garments created and worn in society throughout history, as well as the ways in which they inform the social characterization of class, ethnicity, nationality, and gender attributed to fashion. Among the topics we will analyze in this sense will be hairstyle, bodily modification and, in a deeper sense, bodily practices that inform most fashion-related discourses in Japan, and, in a more general sense, in East Asia. We will also discuss the issue of fashion consumption as an often-contested site of modernity, especially in relationship to the issue of globalization and world-market. Thus we will also include a discussion of international fashion designers, along with analysis of phenomena such as sweatshops. 

History of Kyoto: Community, Conflict and Engagement
Prof. Suzanne Gay, Oberlin College
This course will trace the 1200-year history of the city of Kyoto, with special emphasis on social and economic factors.  We will explore the role of great temples and shrines, their commercial guilds, as well as aristocratic, imperial, and warrior contributions during the centuries that Kyoto was the political and economic center of Japan.  Kyoto’s intellectual and artistic importance in early modern times will also be explored, as well as the city’s important contributions to the intellectual and industrial development of modern Japan.  We will consider the city’s transition in modern times from imperial capital to regional metropolis, aided by its strong mercantile base.  Kyoto’s unusual status as Finally, late twentieth century issues will be examined including the preservation movement, the city’s leftist politics, and the diversity of the population including Korean and burakumin residents.

Masks of Japanese Literature
Prof. Christopher Bolton, Williams College
From the masks of the nô theater to science fiction fantasies of plastic surgery and cyborg identity, this course examines the device of the mask in modern Japanese fiction, as well as some of its premodern antecedents. The fictional masks we will look at range from the traditional to the technological, from the actual to the metaphorical, from the physical to the purely psychological. But all of them are used by the authors to explore the nature of identity, and the significance of concealing or revealing the self, either in fiction or face to face. Readings will include modern novels and short stories by authors like Abe Kôbô, Enchi Fumiko, Endô Shûsaku, Kurahashi Yumiko, Mishima Yukio, Tanizaki Jun'ichirô, and Oscar Wilde. Visual texts will include nô and puppet theater, avant-garde film by Teshigahara Hiroshi, comics by Tezuka Osamu, and animation by Oshii Mamoru. The class and the readings are in English. Many of the works we will read have particular connections to the Kyôto area, so as time permits, we will also get out the classroom to visit cultural events or sites related to the class texts.

Minorities and Immigrants in Contemporary Japan
Emeritus Prof. Terry MacDougall, Standford University
The tenacity of the image of Japan as a homogeneous nation stands in contrast to a nation-building process that perpetuated and racialized an underclass of segregated people (burakumin), incorporated peoples of different languages and cultures on its northern (Ainu) and western (Okinawans) “frontiers,” and brought large numbers of colonial or semi-colonial subjects from Korea, Taiwan, and China to the Japanese islands. While postwar social change seemed to “homogenize” Japanese society or hide its underlying diversity, by the 1980s new waves of foreign workers transformed Japan into a “new country of immigration.” At the same time, Japan's population has begun to decline and age. These changes raise critical issues of labor markets and economic vitality, citizenship, identity, and human rights. A study of minorities and immigrants in contemporary Japan unveils much about Japanese society, its historical development, social transformation and challenges in an age of globalization.  The living conditions, life chances, and identities of Japan’s minorities and immigrants in Japan have changed significantly in recent years, as has Japanese society itself.  In this period, while national authorities barely began debating critical issues raised by the multi-ethnic dimensions of the nation, local governments, NGOs, lawyers, and minority group activists pioneered ameliorative policies.  Globalization, demographic changes and an historic alternation of political power nationally have put human rights issues and immigration and integration policies on the front burner of Japanese politics.  This class combines lectures and discussions with visits to minority communities and individual and group field research on the lives of Japan's domestic and foreign minorities, policy initiatives, and issues of individual, group and national identity.  Site visits, film and discussions with Japanese and foreign residents are used to provide a tangible sense of the people and issues involved.

Japanese Antiquity and its Political Uses in the Modern Era
Prof. Walter Edwards, Tenri University
The arbitrary nature of tradition, and its attendant susceptibility to political manipulation, have been increasingly recognized since the 1980s. The Japanese case is no exception in this regard, and considerable attention has indeed been paid to the political uses of the imperial house – as a uniquely ancient institution, marshaled in support of claims for Japan’s moral superiority among nations of the world – from the start of the Meiji era through the end of the Pacific War. But political uses of the past constitute a broader topic of inquiry, both in terms of what has been taken from the realm of antiquity, and when and how it has been utilized.  The purpose of this course is to explore the full range of such political re-definition and re-presentation of Japanese heritage. To this end, our inquiries will have a dual focus. We will examine on the one hand the materials of antiquity themselves, including the archaeological and historical records, and the body of ancient Japanese myth, and evaluate on the other how these materials have been mobilized, since the end of the Tokugawa period up to the present day, to project specific images of Japan and the Japanese. Observations made outside the classroom, on two day-long field trips, will constitute an integral part of the course. 

Kyoto and the History of its Architecture and Urban Space
Prof. Bettina Langner-Teramoto, Architekturraeume
This course will be an introduction of the culture of Kyoto and the Kansai area by looking at the built environment with a focus on architecture and its historical and cultural background. Especially Japanese housing architecture made a distinct contribution to the world history of building styles, reflecting the status and culture of different members of the society. An overview of the mayor periods of Japanese history and the development of original styles will deal for example with palaces of the Heian period, the teahouse of the Muromachi period and modern housing styles in the present. This provides the framework to look at characteristics of Japanese architecture: asymmetry versus symmetry, relation of inside and outside, ambiguity of space, living with the seasons. These design features are reflected in contemporary housing projects as well. The classes will be in a seminar style combined with excursions, providing first hand experience of the architecture discussed in the textbook. Direct exploration of the city is also encouraged by creative projects.