| 学習目標 |
| To gain a greater understanding of Japan's role in the newly globalized word of the 21st Century, and to dramatically increase students’ English language skills. |
| 授業概要 |
| What's really at the roots of the global fascination with Japanese pop culture? How are anime films, manga comics, Japanese visions and narratives cultural channeling zones, opened by the horrors of war and disaster and animated by the desire to assemble a world of new looks, feelings and identities? We will address the movement of Japanese culture into the West as sign and symptom of broader reanimations. With uncertainty now the norm, style may be trumping identity, partly explaining the success of Japanese pop and fashion, design and cuisine in the West. As Western mindsets encounter a rapid decline in longstanding binaries−− good/evil, woman/man, black/white−− Japan's cultural narratives evolve in borderless, unstable worlds where characters transform, morality is multifaceted, and endings inconclusive. Animation itself allows an aesthetic freedom wherein these transformations and gender ambiguity may be given fuller play than in live action films. Nothing appears fixed. No surprise, perhaps, coming from the only people to have suffered the immediate transformations of two atomic bombs and the instant denigration of their supreme polar father: the Japanese Emperor. |
| テキスト |
| Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the US (paperback edition) Palgrave Macmillan, handouts, videos, others |
| 参考文献・課題図書 |
| Will be introduced in class. You will need to make in-class presentations, work with groups, and speak actively in English. |
| 受講生への要望 |
| Students are expected to improve their critical-thinking skills, and take notes in English. They are also required to ACTIVELY participate in class discussions. |
| 評価方法 |
| Students will be evaluated on their attendance, class participation, final report scores and group work, depending on class size |
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| 授業計画 |
１．World War II and Japan's lost father, the Emperor, and new son: Tezuka Osamu.
２．Humiliation and Emasculation; Essentialism vs. Universalism in Japanese Pop.
３．Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies and the reconstruction of gender in Post WWII Japan: Feminization?
４．Japan as America's "Little Boy;" Takashi Murakami.
５．Takayuki Tatsumi's "servant class" theories; today's Japan and the "hakken" class. Tests.
６．Models of masculinity vs. femininity; cosplay and transformations of gender and self via the Internet.
７．Overseas manifestations of J-Pop constructs. Who is an otaku?
What are moe and yaoi?
What IS Akiba, really?
８．Japan's problem with Intellectual Property--the power of ’monozukuri’ and the failure of Japan's Internet age.
９．The Doujinshi phenomenon: Is interactivity an essential part of Japan? And what is the myth of originality vs. the love of reproductions/copies?
10．Participation and cross-cultural longing and desire. The love of the "other." Tests.
11．Japan and America as outsourcers: Can culture survive if it has no center? Who is a ’freeter,’ ’arubaito,’ ’maniac,’ ’makegumi?’
12．Life in a decentralized world. Are subcultures becoming "cultures?"
13．Review of principal themes. Discussion of key tropes. Tests. Final paper announcement.
14．China, India, Japan and the US: How can we co-exist and prosper?
15．Final test; papers due. Review of key ideas and dismissal. |
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