You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Modern Japan (Spring 2009)' category.
The answer to a question we had about drinking habits. According to the WHO, the US and Japan are roughly equal in per capita alcohol consumption.
Japan Focus has a long discussion of differing views of the Japanese economic slowdown and our own. My own, shorter, take on this from a year ago is here.
Japan Focus also has a long discussion of Japanese discourses on WWII and the US-Japan relationship. It’s fairly raw stuff, and very long. If you do read it, make sure you get through the whole thing: just reading the first parts without the rest would be too depressing (also a false impression).
As I mentioned in the email, I’m shifting the last few weeks to accomodate our not having class today: see the schedule here. We’ll do the second midterm like the first one: you design questions for the second half material, and fold that discussion in with the biography presentation day.
Turns out that I was wrong: I’d heard reports of Japanese soldiers in the 80s and 90s, but none of them have turned out to be authentic. The last confirmed surrenders were in 1974 and 1980.
This article on the decision to drop the bomb was just published in Japan Focus
As we discussed, the midterm will be a little different this semester.
Due Monday, March 9th: you will create 5 essay prompts to cover the material in the first half of the course, including Gordon (chaps. 1-8), Saikaku and Fukuzawa. Assume a roughly 1000-2000 word essay response as appropriate. For each one, write a short description (100-300 words) of the material you’d expect a student to cover in answering the question well, both in terms of the readings as well as any thematic or theoretical issues that should be addressed.
Albert Craig, my Ph.D. advisor, has a brand new book coming out about the thought of Fukuzawa Yukichi. You can see it here, including a PDF Excerpt of the introduction and first chapter.
These are the books on order at the bookstore. There may be additional readings on reserve, but these are the core of the course. Feel free to purchase them in advance from any source.
- Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present, Oxford University Press, 2nd edition (2008), ISBN 0195339223.
- Ihara Saikaku, Life of an Amorous Woman and Other Writings (UNESCO Collection of Contemporary Works) Ivan Morris (editor/translator) ; New Directions Publishing Corporation (June 1969), ISBN 978-0811201872
- Yukichi Fukuzawa, The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa, Columbia University Press, Revised edition, 2006. ISBN: 023113987X
- Cook, Haruko Taya and Theodore F. Cook, Japan at War: An Oral History, The New Press, 1992.
- Gail Lee Bernstein, Haruko’s World: A Japanese Farm Woman and Her Community, Stanford University Press, 1983.
- Elisabeth Bumiller, The Secrets of Mariko: A Year in the Life of a Japanese Woman and her Family, Vintage Books, 1995.
