Geisha, Kabuki, Power Rangers! Sushi, Tempura, Curry Rice! Samurai, Soldiers, Salarymen! Shoguns, Emperors, Politicians! Tea Ceremony, Pokemon, Seppuku! Isolation, Imperialism, Globalization! Miracle Growth and Lost Decades! Change! Stability!

This course covers Japanese history and culture from the 18th century to the present. We will discuss: the Tokugawa Shogunate and its warrior bureaucrats; the artificial class system, political change in an era of stability, economic growth and social tensions; urban and rural evolution; popular culture and literature. We will also discuss Japan’s relative isolation and violent reopening, which comes with the collapse of the Tokugawa system; the Meiji Restoration, whatever that means. The dissolution of the samurai class, social reorganization and rapid modernization, including the Meiji Constitution and new Imperial state as well as intellectual and cultural conflicts and experiments will lead into Japan’s first modern constitutional system. From that point, Japan has played a substantial — sometimes central — role in world history. It has played a role in the fall of empires, gained and lost and empire of its own. Japan has gone from a growing nation from which people emigrated to a rapidly aging society in need of an influx of immigrants. “Made in Japan” used to mean “cheap junk” and Japanese society was rapidly absorbing western influences; Japanese products now dominate most markets they occupy and Japanese culture — high and pop — is World culture. Japan is not a monolithic society, though: there’s considerable diversity of opinion and lifestyle at any point over the last century, and the Japanese people, like people everywhere, have contributed to and resisted the changes they experienced.

Textbook and lecture will be heavily supplemented by primary sources — literature, autobiography, Constitutions, oral histories – and secondary scholarship. Class discussion will be central to the course. The exams will cover the readings and lecture material, as well as geography.

Major Readings for Purchase

  • Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present, Oxford University Press, 2nd edition (2008).
  • Yukichi Fukuzawa, The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa, Columbia University Press, Revised edition, 2006.
  • Cook, Haruko Taya and Theodore F. Cook, Japan at War: An Oral History, The New Press, 1992.
  • Donald Keene, trans., Chushingura: The Treasury of Loyal Retainers, Columbia UP, 1971.

Major Readings For Purchase Or Available Through ACLS E-BOOK collection at Axe Library