ANTH 443 A: Anthropology of Modern Japan

Winter 2022
Meeting:
TTh 11:30am - 1:20pm / THO 135
SLN:
10325
Section Type:
Lecture
Joint Sections:
JSIS A 449 A
Instructor:
Andrea Gevurtz Arai
Syllabus Description (from Canvas):

 

In-person class begins on Tuesday Feb. 22th!

See you all in Thomson 135 at 11:30-1:20

Please see Word Doc 12 for details 

 

 

 

The Anthropology of Modern Japan, Winter, 2022

T, TH 11:30-1:20, Thomson 135

JSIS 449A/ANTH 443A

Office: Thomson 423, Zoom OH’s T, Th 1:30-2:30pm

Andrea Gevurtz Arai, Instructor

Email: araia2@uw.edu

 

 

Course Description:  This course begins in the mid-19th century with the new nation of Japan's adoption of and indoctrination into capitalist and colonial modernity's temporalities, social evolutionary ideologies, new forms of power, and early forms of environmental and people's rights activism. By WWII's end, and with it the U.S. Occupation of Japan, the demise of the Japanese empire and its colonial holdings throughout Asia, we will see how co-existing and often conflicting through lines continue: in mid-20th century "homogeneous" discourses of identity; high growth economic’s forms of control, post-bubble period’s neoliberalization, alongside women's, environmental, local and young people’s individual and collective efforts for change. 

    The course is composed of 3 sections. Section one familiarizes students with the creation of an “emperor system” and the “synchronization” of the archipelago with western notions of temporality and value during the Meiji period (1868-1912). This section looks at how these historically new systems affected ordinary people’s lives, sense of identification, and consciousness of the costs of capitalist modernity.  Section 2 engages with the aftermath of empire; the American Occupation of Japan (1945-52, (-1972 in Okinawa); shifts in postwar society and new identify formations linked to high growth economics and discourses of homogeneous society.  In this section we pay close attention to how early American cultural anthropology’s notion of “relative cultures,” led to the “patterning of cultures” and what this meant for the focus on homogeneity in Japanese postwar discourses of national identity and the “forgetting” of Japan’s multi-ethnic empire (1895-1945).  

       In Section 3, we closely read and discuss recent ethnographies that represent a shift in the anthropology of Japan to long term in-depth fieldwork, and historically, discursively and conceptually informed studies these have produced. In this section we focus on the ongoing effects of the political economic reforms that followed the bursting of the property and financial “bubble” of the early 1990s in Japan. The effects of the neoliberalization of education and the labor market coupled with the triple disasters of Fukushima, and more recently the Covid pandemic, have created “conditions of impossibility” causing many in Japan, particularly the young and young women, to rethink notions of natural and social reproduction; the relation of center, periphery and environmental costs, and to take different actions regarding the how, what and where of their lives, livelihoods and identifications.  

     Learning about the anthropology of modern Japan also means learning about the approaches, methods and critical tools of socio-cultural anthropologists. While we work in class to answer critical questions about Japan through our readings, discussions and postings, we will learn to develop new questions and denaturalize ideas of our own and others. Throughout, we will be concerned to see how the global, national and the local intermingle and how the directions of this intermingling shifts over time.

 

 

Texts and pdfs:   Our 3 texts below are available as E-books through UW Library. All other readings are available as pdfs in our course Canvas Files. For those who would like, books are also available for purchase (as e-books or print volumes) through the University bookstore.

Andrea Gevurtz Arai, The Strange Child: Education and Psychology of Patriotism in Recessionary Japan (Stanford U Press, 2016)

Yukiko Koga, Inheritance of Loss: China, Japan and the Political Economy of Redemption After Empire. (UChicago Press, 2016)   

*Miri Yu, Tokyo Ueno Station (Riverhead Books, 2020)

Films: See the Weekly Schedule below for film viewing

“BattleRoyale" https://digitalcampus.swankmp.net/uwashington303229/play/421bdfebaff2354c

 

"Shoplifters" https://digitalcampus.swankmp.net/uwashington303229/play/d8db1e7aca9361a2

 

Tokyo Sonata (available to individuals on Amazon for $3.99, or free with commercials on Tubi: https://tubitv.com/movies/543974?utm_source=justwatch-feed&tracking=justwatch-feed)

 

The Land of Hope = Kibô no kuni (available with ads on AsianCrush: https://www.asiancrush.com/video/000042v/the-land-of-hope)

 

Assignments, Expectations, Assessments:

 

Reading Responses:

    Students are expected to complete all assigned readings for the course by class time on the day they are assigned. (See weekly schedule below) Students will also complete one “reading response” per week. Students may choose the day and reading to which they want to respond. Responses should be two paragraphs in length.

    The first paragraph should include a short discussion of the argument of the reading, including one to two key terms, explained to the best of your ability. If there is more than one reading on the day you choose, you should focus on one of the readings in depth and draw a connection to the other.

    The second paragraph is for questions about the reading. Questions should be specific and refer directly to parts of the text. Please include page numbers, and paragraph on the page if the question refers to a quote, expression, etc..  These weekly responses should be posted in the Canvas Discussion forum for the particular reading by 9am on the day of class in which we are discussing the reading. Completion of the reading response, along with active participation in class discussions on the day of the response (which means I can call on you to explain your posting) will be worth 20% of the course grade.

Midterm and Final Exam: There will be two exams in this course. The midterm exam will be a short response key idea in-class exam. The ideas will come directly from our class readings and discussions. There will be review list of key ideas posted prior to the exam. You will be expected on this exam to explain key ideas we’ve covered, explain quotes from the readings and make connections between readings. The midterm will be worth 40% of your grade.  The final exam will be an essay take-home exam. You will be given two prompts to respond to in essay format. Possible essay prompts for this exam will be discussed during a review session prior to posting of the exam. The final exam will also be do-at-home and will be worth 40% of your grade.

Remote and in-person formats:

This course will most likely be remote for the first month until Jan. 31st. I will confirm this at our meeting on Thursday Jan 6. This decision is based on input from students, on the President’s recommendation that we take this input seriously so as to safeguard everyone’s health, for Covid testing to get up to speed, boosters and good masks easily available to all. Following these public health measures are our best way of bringing case counts down and having a full, healthy and productive quarter.

Weekly Schedule:

 Readings marked as “optional” below will not be included in either exam, with the exception of how they may be used to bring out parts of the required readings.

              Week 1

                 Tues. Jan. 4

                 Syllabus: Q & A; Breakout room discussion and Introductions

                 Preview of Fujitani Reading

 

                 Thurs. Jan. 6

                 Takashi Fujitani, “Inventing, Forgetting, Remembering: Toward a Historical Ethnography

                  of the Nation-State” (pdf in Canvas Files)

                 (Optional: M. Goswami, “Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities”)

 *Preview of Tanaka Reading for 1/11

 

                  Week 2

                  Tues. Jan 11

                  Stefan Tanaka, Preface to New Times in Modern Japan, (pdf in Files)

  1. Delaney: “All We Have is Time” (pdf in Files)

                  (Optional: Y. Kawai: The Politics of “Jinshu or Minzoku”)

 

                  Thurs Jan 13

  1. Stolz, “Introduction” to Bad Water: Nature, Pollution and Politics in Japan (1870-1950)

 (Optional: H. Teruhisa, “The Ideological Conflict over Scholarship and Education During the Meiji Enlightenment” (“Freedom and People’s Rights Movement”)

                 

                 Week 3:

Tues. Jan. 18

                 Yoshikuni Igarashi, Bodies of Memory, Chapter 1 (pdf in Files)

  1. Watt, Repatriation, “Decolonization and the Transformations of Postwar Japan” (pdf in Files)

 

Thurs Jan. 20

  1. Pierpont “Measure of America” (pdf in Files)

 

 

Week 4

                Tues. Jan. 25th

  1. Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture,

                Chapts. 1 & 2 (pdf in Files)

                Sonia Ryang, “Benedictian Myth” (pdf in Files)

                (Optional reading: M. Ivy, “Benedict’s Shame” (pdf in Files)

 

 

 

               Thurs. Jan 27th

                William Kelly, “Finding a Place in Metropolitan Japan” (pdf in Files)

                (Optional: M. Ivy, “National Phantasms…” in Discourses of the Vanishing..Japan

(See Y. Morita (dir.1983) “Family Game” trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=308ozh1YkOE)Y

 

 

                Week 5:

                Tues. Feb 1

  1. Ishimure, “Reborn From the Scarred Earth of Modernity: Minamata Disease…” (pdf in Files)
  2. Shigematsu, “68’ and the Japanese Feminism’s Liberation Movement” (pdf in Files)

                (Optional: G. Walker: “Revolution and Retrospection in The Red Years: Theory, Politics and

                 Aesthetics in the Japanese 68’)

                

                Thurs . Feb 3

                Midterm, Preview of The Strange Child, Intro & Chapts 1-2

                (See “Tokyo Sonata” for 2/6. “Battle Royale, optional)

 

Week 6

                Tues. Feb 8

Arai, The Strange Child. Chapts. Intro and Chapters 1-3

                (Optional: Rogers, “Uses and Abuses of Neoliberalism” (in Files)

                (Optional: Peck and Tickell “Neoliberalizing Space” (in Files)

                 

                Thurs. Feb 10

         Arai, The Strange Child, Chapt. 4-5

         (Optional: A.Arai “Killing Kids: Recession and Survival in 21st Century Japan” (in Files)

                           Ibid. “Notes to the Heart: National Lessons in Sentiment and Sacrifice” (in Files)

 

                  Week 7:

                 Tues. Feb 15

  1. Koga, Inheritance of Loss, Prologue and Chapt 2

 

                 Thurs., Feb 17

  1. Koga, Chapt 3

(Optional: A. Arai, “When is a Prison Like a Folk Art Museum? Movement, Affect and the After-Colonial in Seoul and Tokyo” (in Files)

              

                 (For Week 8: See “Land of Hope,” and if possible, Hitomi Kamanaka, “3 Little Voices of

                 Fukushima”)

 

                 Week 8

                Tues.  Feb 22

  1. Yu, Tokyo Ueno Station (UW Ebook)
  2. Bhowmik, “Unruly Subjects in M. Shun’s Walking a Street Named Peace and Y. Miri’s Tokyo Ueno Station” (in Files)

 

Thursday Feb 24th

  1. Kohso, “Disaster, Catastrophe, Revelation” (in Files)
  2. Kamanaka, “Media, Democracy, Documentary Film” (in Files)

(See “Shoplifters” for March 1st)

              

                Week 9

                Tues.  March 1st

  1. Shirahase, “Marriage as an Association of Social Classes in a Low Birth Society” (in Files)
  2. Qiao, “Love in a Time of Korono” (in Files)

                “A Society With No One To Turn To”

https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d00763/a-society-with-no-one-to-turn-to.html?fbclid=IwAR1ja2zVsICvI-1fbxVtmXK7lJs1risd_12uI6aC60ZAfAaJ0RS5muGZImw

(Optional: G Lukacs, “Women, Photography and Everyday Patriarchy” (in Files)

 

                 Thurs. March 3rd

  1. Huang, “New Feminist Biopolitics and Low Birth Society in East Asia” (in Files)
  2. Sakamoto, “Local Energy Initiatives in Japan”

 

                 Week 10

                 Tues. March 8th

  1. Mori, “New Collectivism: Participation and Politics After the Great East Japan Earthquake” (in Files)
  2. Arai, “Recessionary Generation: Times and Spaces” (in Files)

(Optional: Susan Buck-Morss and Nancy Fraser Essays (in Files)

 

                 Thursday March 10th

                  Review for Final Exam

 

                Final Exam Posted March 14th Assignments:

‘              Due March 17th by 9pm posted to Assignments or emailed to araia2@uw.edu

------

Preview of First Reading for Jan. 6: Takeshi Fujitani, “Inventing, Forgetting, Remembering: Toward a Historical Ethnography of the Nation-State”

Splendid Monarchy

  1. Historicizing the details of everyday culture…and the naturalness or timelessness of the nation
  2. Genesis amnesia
  3. Learned to forget invented quality of the nation (not only in Japan)
  4. Proposing we remember the moment of historical rupture
  5. Mnemonic sites: pageants, rituals, ceremonies, statues
  6. “New conception of rule unleashed a torrent of policies…” pg. 99
  7. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities
  8. Michel Foucault, “history of the present”

 

 

 

 

Catalog Description:
Examines the problem of modernity in Japan since the late nineteenth century, with emphasis on contemporary Japan. Critically addresses previous anthropological work concerning patterns of Japanese "culture." Particular focus on the influence of modern forms of power, media, and exchange in the construction of present-day Japan. Offered: jointly with JSIS A 449.
GE Requirements Met:
Social Sciences (SSc)
Credits:
5.0
Status:
Active
Last updated:
March 28, 2024 - 7:11 pm