Information, Technology, and Society in Asia 134

Issues and Methods in Japanese Studies (To be taught online via zoom)

This course examines the issues and methods that constitute Japanese Studies as a field of study. We do so by reading and discussing a series of major, primarily historical, works on Japan written in English since 1945. What makes (and/or unmakes) Japanese Studies, which takes a country as the subject of study, an academic field and a form of knowledge? What is “Japan” in Japanese Studies? We will trace the history of Japanese Studies, its problematics, goals, methodologies, from 1945 to the present, in the post-1945 context of transformations of geopolitical configurations in East Asia, and changes in modes of intellectual inquiry (from modernization theory to postcolonial and postmodern studies, and then to post-postmodern modes of globalization). We follow Foucault’s observation that knowledge is power but that does not mean Japanese studies has always served simply political purposes, i.e., particular goals and concerns of governments and states. We look at Japanese Studies as necessarily shaped by political interests but more importantly as a dynamic and creative form of humanistic knowledge.

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SCHEDULE Week I: Course introduction and self-introduction PART 1: Making Sense of the Enemy (the 1940s) Week II-III: Ruth benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. (Chaps.1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 13) C. Douglas Lummis, “Ruth Benedict’s Obituary for Japanese Culture” Japan Focus (July 3, 2007) PART 2: Modernization and Japan (the 1960s) Week IV-V: -Nils Gilman. “Modernization Theory and American Modernism,” Mandarins of the future: modernization theory in cold war America (John Hopkins 2003), 1-23. -John W. Hall. “Changing Conceptions of the Modernization of Japan” Marius B. Jansen, ed., Changing Japanese Attitudes toward Modernization. 1965. pp.7-98. -The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars Statement of Purpose (1969) -John Dower. “E. H. Norman, Japan and the Uses of History” (introduction to Origins of the Modern Japanese State, Selected Writings of E. H. Norman) (Pantheon Books 1975), pp.31-65. PART 3: Critical Study of the Nation, the 1980s-1990s Week VI-VIII: -Eric Hobsbawm. Nations and Nationalism. selected chapters. -Tessa Morris-Suzuki. Reinventing Japan (1998) (Intro, Chaps 1, 2). -Sharon Minichiello. Japan's Competing Modernities. selected chapters. First response paper due PART 4: Postcolonial History of Empire Week IX-XI: -Andre Schmid. "Colonialism and the 'Korean Problem' in the Historiography of Modern Japan" Journal of Asian Studies (2000). 951-976. -Louise Young. Japan's Total Empire (1998). Second response paper due PART 5: New Directions of Japanese Studies? Week XII-XIV (1/10, 1/17): -Jolyon Thomas. Faking Liberties. selected chapters. Final paper due.