Japanese Language

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2024
Japanese 1A is designed to develop basic Japanese language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Students will learn the Japanese writing system: hiragana, katakana and approximately 150 kanji. At the end of the course, students should be able to greet, invite, compare, and describe persons and things, activities, intensions, ability, experience, purposes, reasons, and wishes. Grades will be determined on the basis of attendance, quiz scores, homework and class participation.
Elementary Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2024
Japanese 1B is designed to develop basic skills acquired in Japanese 1A further. Students will learn approximately 150 new kanji. At the end of the course students should be able to express regret, positive and negative requirements, chronological order of events, conditions, giving and receiving of objects and favors, and to ask and give advice. Grades will be determined on the basis of attendance, quiz scores, homework and class participation.
Elementary Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2024
The arts of reading a text, summarizing its argument, questioning its suppositions, generating balanced opinions, and expressing those opinions with clarity and effectiveness lie at the center of university life and educated human endeavor. EA Lang R1B is designed to help inculcate those skills, paying particular attention to East Asian humanistic topics. This four-unit course focuses on how to formulate questions and hone observations into well reasoned, coherent, and convincing essays. Attention will be paid to the basic rules of grammar, logical construction, compelling rhetorical approaches, research techniques, library and database skills, and forms of citation.
Reading and Composition on topics in East Asian Humanities: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course is an overview of Japanese literature and culture, 7th- through 18th-centuries. 7A begins with Japan's early myth-history and its first poetry anthology, which show the transition from a preliterate, communal society to a courtly culture. Noblewomen's diaries, poetry anthologies, and selections from the Tale of Genji offer a window into that culture. We examine how oral culture and high literary art mix in Kamakura period tales and explore representations of heroism in military chronicles and medieval Noh drama. After considering the linked verse of late medieval times, we read vernacular literature from the urban culture of the Edo period. No previous course work in Japanese literature, history, or language is expected.
Introduction to Premodern Japanese Literature and Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2023
An introduction to Japanese literature in translation in a two-semester sequence. 7B provides a survey of important works of 19th- and 20th-century Japanese fiction, poetry, and cultural criticism. The course will explore the manner in which writers responded to the challenges of industrialization, internationalization, and war. Topics include the shifting notions of tradition and modernity, the impact of Westernization on the constructions of the self and gender, writers and the wartime state, literature of the atomic bomb, and postmodern fantasies and aesthetics. All readings are in English translation. Techniques of critical reading and writing will be introduced as an integral part of the course.
Introduction to Modern Japanese Literature and Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024
This course introduces students to the historical contexts and social forces shaping the production of Japanese texts and media.
Japanese Culture Across Texts and Media: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
The goal of this course is for the students to understand the language and culture required to communicate effectively in Japanese. Some of the cultural aspects covered are; geography, speech style, technology, sports, food, and religion. Through the final project, students will learn how to discuss social issues and their potential solutions. In order to achieve these goals, students will learn how to integrate the basic linguistics knowledge they acquired in J1, as well as study new structures and vocabulary. An increasing amount of reading and writing, including approximately 200 new kanji, will also be required.
Intermediate Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
The goal of this course is for the students to understand the more advanced language and culture required to communicate effectively in Japanese. Some of the cultural aspects covered are; pop-culture, traditional arts, education, convenient stores, haiku, and history. Through the final project, students will learn how to introduce their own cultures and their influences. In order to achieve these goals, students will learn how to integrate the basic structures and vocabulary they acquired in the previous semesters, as well as study new linguistic expressions. An increasing amount of more advanced reading and writing, including approximately 200 new kanji, will also be required.
Intermediate Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019
This course is intended to train students who wish to acquire reading
fluency in the Japanese language in a short time period and therefore
dispenses with all components not germane to that goal. Prior
knowledge of fundamental first-year grammar and vocabulary is required
as this course will start at the second-year level and run parallel
with our full-language second-year courses, covering the same reading
materials as used in J10A-B. The course will be conducted in English and
students’ comprehension will be examined and analyzed in terms of
Japanese-to-English translation. By completion of J10RB, students will
be functional readers of Japanese for general purposes.
Intermediate Reading in Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Spring 2020
This course is intended to train students who wish to acquire reading
fluency in the Japanese language in a short time period and therefore
dispenses with all components not germane to that goal. Prior
knowledge of fundamental first-year grammar and vocabulary is required
as this course will start at the second-year level and run parallel
with our full-language second-year courses, covering the same reading
materials as used in J10A-B. The course will be conducted in English and
students’ comprehension will be examined and analyzed in terms of
Japanese-to-English translation. By completion of J10RB, students will
be functional readers of Japanese for general purposes.
Intermediate Reading in Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024
The Freshman Seminar Program has been designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small seminar setting. Freshman seminars are offered in all campus departments and topics vary from department to department and semester to semester. Enrollment limited to fifteen freshmen.
Freshman Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2011, Spring 2010, Fall 2008
The Freshman Seminar Program has been designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small-seminar setting. Freshman seminars are offered in all campus departments, and topics vary from department to department and semester to semester.
Freshman Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.
Freshman/Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This introduction to the study of Buddhism will consider materials drawn from various Buddhist traditions of Asia, from ancient times down to the present day. However, the course is not intended to be a comprehensive or systematic survey; rather than aiming at breadth, the course is designed around key themes such as ritual, image veneration, mysticism, meditation, and death. The overarching emphasis throughout the course will be on the hermeneutic difficulties attendant upon the study of religion in general, and Buddhism in particular.
Introduction to the Study of Buddhism: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2020 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2020 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2020
Introduction to Japanese culture from its origins to the present: premodern historical, literary, artistic, and religious developments, modern economic growth, and the nature of contemporary society, education, and business. Class conducted in English.
Japanese Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Spring 2018, Fall 2012
Sophomore seminars are small interactive courses offered by faculty members in departments all across the campus. Sophomore seminars offer opportunity for close, regular intellectual contact between faculty members and students in the crucial second year. The topics vary from department to department and semester to semester. Enrollment limited to 15 sophomores.
Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2015
Sophomore seminars are small interactive courses offered by faculty members in departments all across the campus. Sophomore seminars offer opportunity for close, regular intellectual contact between faculty members and students in the crucial second year. The topics vary from department to department and semester to semester. Enrollment limited to 15 sophomores.
Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2021
This course will develop further context-specific skills in speaking, listening, reading and writing. It concentrates on students using acquired grammar and vocabulary with more confidence in order to express functional meanings, while increasing overall linguistic competence. Students will learn approximately 200 new Kanji. There will be a group or individual project. Course materials include the textbook supplemented by newspapers, magazine articles, short stories, and video clips which will provide insight into Japanese culture and society.
Advanced Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2020
This course aims to develop further context-specific skills in speaking, listening, reading and writing. It concentrates on students using acquired grammar and vocabulary with more confidence in order to express functional meanings, while increasing overall linguistic competence. Students will learn approximately 200 new Kanji. There will be a group or individual project. Course materials include the textbook supplemented by newspapers, magazine articles, short stories, essays, and video clips which will provide insight into Japanese culture and society.
Advanced Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2017, Spring 2015
Students will be trained to read, analyze, and translate modern Japanese scholarship on Chinese subjects. A major purpose of the course is to prepare students to take reading examinations in Japanese. The areas of scholarship to be covered are: politics, popular culture, religion, sociology and history as well as areas suggested by students who are actively engaged in research projects. Two readings in selected areas will be assigned, one by the instructor and the second by a student participant.
Japanese for Sinologists: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2020, Summer 2015 First 6 Week Session
This course will examine comparative responses to and representations of violent conflict. We will pay attention to how catastrophic events are productive of new forms of expression--oral, written, and visual--as well as destructive of familiar ones. We will examine the ways in which experience and its representation interact during and in the aftermath of extreme violence. Our empirical cases will be drawn from our research on responses to WWII atrocities, and on the post-Cold War civil wars in Africa.
Catastrophe, Memory, and Narrative: Comparative Responses to Atrocity in the Twentieth Century: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2021, Fall 2019
Students develop their reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills further to think critically, to express their points of view, and to understand Japanese culture and society in depth The readings are mainly articles on current social issues from Japanese newspapers, magazines, and professional books as sources of discussions. Students are required to write short essays on topics related to the reading materials.
Fourth-Year Japanese: Aspects of Japanese Society: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2020, Spring 2018
This course provides students an opportunity to develop their reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills in order to express their opinions in argumentative discourse. Students read and discuss a variety of Japanese texts to deepen their understanding of Japanese society and people and to improve their intercultural communicative competence.
Fourth-Year Readings: Japanese Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2018, Fall 2016
This course provides students an opportunity to develop their reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills, thereby enabling them to express their points of view and to engage in argumentative discourse. In addition to Japanese literature, readings include academic essays and other texts, which provide a variety of writing styles and serve as sources for classroom discussion. Also, Japanese films are used for various activities in order to broaden students’ cultural awareness and knowledge of Japanese society.
Fourth-Year Readings: Japanese Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2015, Spring 2014
Students develop their reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills further while examining Japanese historical figures, events, background, stories, etc. Students read a variety of texts and watch videos related to Japanese history as sources for discussions to deepen their understanding of Japanese society, culture, and people from historical perspectives. Students conduct individual research on a topic in Japanese history, and write a short research paper.
Fourth-Year Readings: Japanese History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2020 First 6 Week Session, Fall 2019, Summer 2019 Second 6 Week Session
This course explores representation of romantic love in East Asian cultures in premodern and post-modern contexts. Students develop a better understanding of the similarities and differences in traditional values in three East Asian cultures by comparing how canonical texts of premodern China, Japan and Korea represent romantic relationship. This is followed by the study of several contemporary East Asian films, giving the student the opportunity to explore how traditional values persist, change, or become nexus points of resistance.
Dynamics of Romantic Core Values in East Asian Premodern Literature and Contemporary Film: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Spring 2021, Spring 2019
In this course, students will practice various techniques to read articles in Japanese on current issues in Japan, and they will learn about Japanese conceptions of the world and how Japanese society functions. They may want to compare what they have learned with similar issues in their own countries to deepen their understanding of the issues and develop their critical thinking ability. They will also learn more advanced Japanese grammar and increase their vocabulary.
Fourth-Year Japanese: Current Issues in Japan: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2012, Spring 2010
This course will explore how the Chinese and English-language literary traditions (broadly defined) delineate the realm of the ineffable, and how cultural notions of the inexpressible shape the writing and reading of poems, songs, and a selection of prose pieces, from the uses of figurative language and prosody to genre and canon formation. In addition, in order to deepen our understanding of how writing achieves its aims, some attention will be given to nonverbal modes of expression, including calligraphy and painting--and attempts to render them in writing. Over this course of study, students will not only refine their sensitivity to the power of artistic modes of indirection, but will also hone their skills in close reading, analytical writing, and oral expression. All readings will be in English.
Expressing the Ineffable in China and Beyond: The Making of Meaning in Poetic Writing: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Fall 2013, Fall 2008
This course will examine war, empire, and the writing and memorialization of history through an eclectic group of literary, graphic, and cinematic texts from China, Japan, Europe, and the U.S.
War, Empire, and Literature in East Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2015, Fall 2006, Spring 2006
This course will explore poetic translation, across languages, across cultures, and across historical ages, not merely from the perspective of the "accuracy" with which a classic text is represented in the translation, but as a window into the nature of poetic tradition and poetic writing itself. Works will be primarily drawn from the Chinese tradition, but in the interest of allowing a comparative discussion of the course's central themes, a significant amount of reading from ancient and modern Greek poetry will be included as well. The goal of the class is not simply to gain familiarity with Chinese poetry and poets, but more fundamentally to gain skill and sophistication in reading, responding to, and thinking about poetry.
Revising the Classics: Chinese and Greek Poetry in Translation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2020, Spring 2019
In this course we compare the cultural traditions of tea in China and Japan. In addition, using tea as the case study, we analyze the mechanics of the flow of culture across both national boundaries and social practices (such as between poetry and the tea ceremony). Understanding the tea culture of these countries informs students of important and enduring aspects of both cultures, provides an opportunity to discuss the role of religion and art in social practice, provides a forum for cultural comparison, and provides as well an example of the relationship between the two countries and Japanese methods of importing and naturalizing another country's social practice. Korean tea traditions are also briefly considered.
History of the Culture of Tea in China and Japan: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2020, Spring 2017
This course will explore some of the most difficult bioethical issues confronting the world today from the perspective of traditional values embedded in the cultural history of India, China, and Japan as evidenced in their religions, legal codes, and political history. Possible topics include population control, abortion, sex-selection, euthanasia, suicide, genetic manipulation, brain-death, and organ transplants.
Bio-Ethical Issues in East Asian Thought: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
In this course, students will explore social issues of multicultural Japan through participating in community service activities in order to develop a more critical and nuanced understanding of contemporary Japan. This four-week course begins on Berkeley campus with one-week instruction in basic Japanese and lectures on contemporary issues in Japan. The next two weeks will be spent in a rural area outside of Tokyo where students will be involved in volunteering activities needed in the community. The last week will be spent with a host family in the urban Tokyo area, where students will participate in community service activities in their neighborhood. Students will attend morning classes for language instruction throughout the four weeks.
Learning Japanese through Community Service in Japan: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016
This class examines the global dynamics and local distinction of literary writings from contemporary East Asia. Beginning with the colonial connections among Tokyo, Shanghai and Seoul during the 1920s-1940s, and moving on to texts composed since 2000 in Manila, Hong Kong, India and elsewhere, the course considers how literary writers have grappled with an increasingly integrated global marketplace in which culture, ideas and people circulate alongside (and as) capital. Discussions will reflect on the confluence of culture and politics in literary writings that treat race tension, ecological crisis, capitalist catastrophe and other themes. Primary readings will be supplemented by iconic essays of cultural criticism and recent films.
Reading Global Politics in Contemporary East Asian Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2014, Fall 2013, Fall 2012
This course is designed for students who have studied Japanese for at least four years (540 hours). It aims to develop further their reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills enabling them to utilize Japanese materials for research and job-related purposes, to present orally the results of their researches, and/or to pursue college-level courses taught in Japanese. Although much of class time will be devoted to reading- and writing-oriented activities, students are expected to participate actively in oral presentations, discussions, and debates in class.
Fifth-Year Readings: Reading and Analysis of Advanced Japanese Texts: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2017, Spring 2014
The 1960s were a time of historical transformation and upheaval in East Asia. It saw the overthrow of political regimes, the consolidation of communism, unprecedented capitalist expansion, and the emergence of new technologies that affected aesthetic production and consumption. This course explores the multiple aspects of culture, aesthetics, and politics that defined this moment. It asks how and why we can define the 1960s as a period, while considering the significance of defining East Asia (a term which denotes an imagined space of relations) as a particular region at this time.
The East Asian Sixties: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2015, Spring 2014, Spring 2013
This course is designed for students who have studied Japanese for at least four years (540 hours). It aims to develop further their reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills with special emphasis on essay and research paper writing on topics relevant not only to the student’s interest but also to the student's major or intended career. Part of this written work will become the material on which the student will give an end-of-the-term oral presentation. Students are expected to fully prepare for and dynamically participate in the discussions and debates that occur in class.
Fifth-Year Readings: Japanese for Research and Professional Use: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Fall 2018, Fall 2017
The course will introduce students to narratives about illness, disease and healing written by patients, physicians, caretakers, and others. These narratives report an experience. They reveal the interactions between the unfolding life of the patient and the shifting social meanings attached to illness. We will study the relationships between illness and society through readings of fiction, memoir, films, essays and graphic novels in order to understand how these varied forms of storytelling organize and give meaning to crucial questions about embodiment, disability and emergent forms of sociality enabled by our bodily vulnerabilities.
Illness Narratives, Vulnerable Bodies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2017
What does it mean to use the medium of writing to “know” a person, and precisely how does one avail oneself of that medium to make oneself—or someone else— “known”? This course will guide students in writing about one of the most challenging of subjects: people. Students will have the opportunity to (a) read deeply in a selection of writings drawn from a range of genres and cultures, to acquaint themselves with a range of rhetorical tools employed in the portrayal of human lives and character, (b) identify the aims of their own writings, and (c) develop competency in applying what they have learned as readers to their own writing.
Knowing Others, and Being Known: The Art of Writing People: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2021
This course provides a critical survey of prominent and other noteworthy expressions of Buddhist thought and culture in Japanese history. The Japanese experience of Buddhist teachings, practices and institutions, as well as aesthetic expressions in painting, sculpture, architecture, garden design, literature, and theatre will be examined against the backdrop of the transmission of all these forms of Buddhist culture from India to China to Korea to Japan. Special attention will also be given to the fusion of Buddhist and “native” Japanese sensibilities in theater (Noh, Kabuki, and Bunraku) and popular art such as ukiyo-e prints and manga.
Buddhism and its Culture in Japan: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2017
Comparative analysis of modern literature from China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan), Korea, and Japan with an emphasis on the short story and the novel. We will think about both the specificities of the literatures of the region as well as shared and interconnected experiences of modernity that broadly connect the cultures of East Asia during the twentieth century. Thematic concerns will include: modernism and modernity; nostalgia and homesickness; empire and its aftermath; and the cultures of globalization.
Modern East Asian Fiction: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2021, Fall 2019
An introductory look at the culture, values, and history of religious traditions in Japan, covering the Japanese sense of the world physically and culturally, its native religious culture called Shinto, the imported continental traditions of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, the arrival and impact of Christianity in the 16th century and the New Religions of the 19th and 20th centuries. Focus will be on how the internal structure of Buddhist and Confucian values were negotiated with long-established views of mankind and society in Japan, how Japan has been changed by these foreign notions of the individual’s place in the world, particularly Buddhism, and why many see contemporary Japan as a post-religious society.
Introduction to the Religions of Japan: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2018
This course provides a forum for reading and discussing East Asia’s greatest and most iconic modern writers, Lu Xun. We will closely read Lu Xun’s major works , discuss his role in the reinvention of the Chinese language and literary tradition, explore the global literary and intellectual currents with which he was deeply engaged, as well as situating him within the tumultuous era of colonialism, modernization, and revolution. All readings will be available in English translation.
Lu Xun and his Worlds: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2021, Fall 2019
This course explores Chinese cultures of sex and gender from antiquity to the seventeenth century. We concentrate on three interconnected issues: women’s status, homoeroticism, and the human body. Our discussion will be informed by cross-cultural comparisons with ancient Greece, Renaissance England, and Contemporary America. In contrast to our modern regime of sexuality, which collapses all the three aforementioned issues into the issues of desire and identity intrinsic to the body, we will see how the early Chinese regime of sexual act evolved into the early modern regime of emotion that concerned less inherent identities than a media culture of life-style performance.
Sex and Gender in Premodern Chinese Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
Higher Learning begins with the study of heaven. As the source of orientation in space and time, heaven provides humanity the foundation for its knowledge and political order. To understand what knowledge is or how politics function, we need a basic understanding of the ways of heaven. This course examines the function heaven serves in the founding of order against the void in nature through the formation of conventional systems of time and space and the role heaven has played in the promulgation of governments. From a cross-cultural, interdisciplinary perspective that covers the course of Eurasian history and using primary sources in translation, we will see heaven unfold through the developments that leave us with the world we know today.
The History of Heaven: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
An introduction to classical Japanese (bungo), the premodern vernacular, which was used as Japan's literary language until well into the 20th century and remains essential for a thorough grounding in Japanese literature and culture.
Introduction to Classical Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
This course will discuss the social, economic, and cultural aspects of Buddhism as it moved along the ancient Eurasian trading network referred to as the “Silk Road”. Instead of relying solely on textual sources, the course will focus on material culture as it offers evidence concerning the spread of Buddhism. Through an examination of the Buddhist archaeological remains of the Silk Road, the course will address specific topics, such as the symbiotic relationship between Buddhism and commerce; doctrinal divergence; ideological shifts in the iconography of the Buddha; patronage (royal, religious and lay); Buddhism and political power; and art and conversion. All readings will be in English.
Buddhism on the Silk Road: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2021
How far can we go into the minds and bodies of others? How strongly can we sense their presence? When, and why, do we hit a wall separating us from the world beyond us? In this course we will experiment, through a number of genres and media, with the art of writing (and thinking and feeling) empathetically. These genres and media include diary, fiction, poetry, editorial, letter writing, reportage, description (of nature, art, emotions, psychic states, etc.), film, video, and photography.
The Art of Writing: Writing the Limits of Empathy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2011, Fall 2009, Spring 2008
A thematic course on Buddhist perspectives on nature and Buddhist responses to environmental issues. The first half of the course focuses on East Asian Buddhist cosmological and doctrinal perspectives on the place of the human in nature and the relationship between the salvific goals of Buddhism and nature. The second half of the course examines Buddhist ethics, economics, and activism in relation to environmental issues in contemporary Southeast Asia, East Asia, and America.
Buddhism and the Environment: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
A study of the Buddhist tradition as it is found today in Asia. The course will focus on specific living traditions of East, South, and/or Southeast Asia. Themes to be addressed may include contemporary Buddhist ritual practices; funerary and mortuary customs; the relationship between Buddhism and other local religious traditions; the relationship between Buddhist institutions and the state; Buddhist monasticism and its relationship to the laity; Buddhist ethics; Buddhist "modernism," and so on.
Buddhism in Contemporary Society: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2021
An introduction to the critical analysis and translation of traditional Japanese poetry, a genre that reaches from early declarative work redolent of an even earlier oral tradition to medieval and Early Modern verses evoking exquisitely differentiated emotional states via complex rhetoric and literary allusion. Topics may include examples of Japan's earliest poetry in Man'yoshu, Heian courtly verse in Kokinshu, lines from Shinkokinshu with its medieval mystery and depth, linked verse (renga), and the haikai of Basho and his circle.
Classical Japanese Poetry: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2013, Spring 2010
This course will introduce students to the Zen Buddhist traditions of China and Japan, drawing on a variety of disciplinary perspectives (history, anthropology, philosophy, and so on). The course will also explore a range of hermeneutic problems (problems involved in interpretation) entailed in understanding a sophisticated religious tradition that emerged in a time and culture very different from our own.
Zen Buddhism: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2015, Spring 2011, Spring 2009
The tradition of Japanese self-reflective literature, composed by both men and women, is long and rich. Topics for this course include highly personal memoirs by court women and poetic travel diaries.
Premodern Japanese Diary (Nikki) Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2019, Fall 2017
This course will discuss the historical development of the Pure Land school of East Asian Buddhism, the largest form of Buddhism practiced today in China and Japan. The curriculum is divided into India, China, and Japan sections, with the second half of the course focusing exclusively on Japan where this form of religious culture blossomed most dramatically, covering the ancient, medieval, and modern periods. The curriculum will begin with a reading of the core scriptures that form the basis of the belief system and then move into areas of cultural expression. The course will follow two basic trajectories over the centuries: doctrine/philosophy and culture/society.
Pure Land Buddhism: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Spring 2020
This course offers a cultural history of encounters between Russia and Asia in literature, film and visual art. The lenses of Orientalism, Eurasianism and Internationalism will be used to analyze Russian interactions with three spaces: the Caucasus, Central Asia, and East Asia. We will discuss works by classic Russian writers and artists (including Tolstoy, Blok and Platonov) that address the question of Russia’s engagement with Asia and consider Russia’s ambiguous spatial identity between Europe and Asia. We will also examine responses to Russian culture and the Russian/Soviet state in the literature and culture of China (Lu Xun, Xiao Hong), Japan (Kurosawa), Central Asia (Aitmatov) and the Caucasus (Sadulaev). All readings in English.
Russia and Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Spring 2013, Spring 2010
The emergence of the tantras in seventh and eighth-century India marked a watershed for religious practice throughout Asia. These esoteric scriptures introduced complex new ritual technologies that transformed the religious traditions of India, from Brahmanism to Jainism and Buddhism, as well as those of Southeast Asia, Tibet, Mongolia, China, Korea, and Japan. This course provides an overview of tantric religion across these regions.
Tantric Traditions of Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2010, Spring 2000, Spring 1999
The course focuses on select masterpieces from the Japanese narrative tradition, including Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari) and Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book (Makura no soshi).
Heian Prose: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Fall 2020, Fall 2018
Introductory reading class focusing on premodern texts written in Kanbun, the Japanese way of reading and writing Classical Chinese. The first half focuses on the orthography and syntax of Kanbun, primarily using examples from military texts from the medieval period. The second half focuses on writings considered artistic, religious (Buddhist), literary, historical, biographical, or ritualistic in nature, including snapshots of doctrinal statements by influential thinkers in the Buddhist tradition. In that Kanbun is Chinese in format but was nearly always read in Classical Japanese word order, this fulfills the Japanese-major requirement of a second semester of Classical Japanese.
Introductory Readings in Kanbun: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Fall 2021
Through the prism of psychoanalytical theories, early and contemporary, this course explores a variety of pre-modern and modern East Asian texts—literary, artistic, religious, and theoretical. We will be asking both how these theories enrich our reading of the texts, and how the texts enrich our understanding of the theories. Through close readings of all the material we will begin to discern how theory and text reshape one another, where they mesh productively, and where they insistently stay apart. Topics include: the unconscious, selfhood, repression, attachment, beauty, dreams, ritual, ghosts and haunting, madness, meditative states, mystical experience, mourning, healing, therapeutic method and cure. No prerequisites.

Psychoanalytic Theory, Asian Texts: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2018, Spring 2013, Spring 2012
Critical reading and translation of important literary texts from the Edo period, including poetic diaries, merchant fiction, and (joruri) drama.
Edo Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2014, Spring 2012, Fall 2009
Writings in the Japanese vernacular constitute only one part of the total premodern Japanese written corpus. Until the 20th century, the preferred medium for most historical texts and male diaries was Sino-Japanese (kanbun). Familiarity with the grammar of this extraordinarily rich tradition is therefore essential for all students of premodern Japanese disciplines
Japanese Historical Documents: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
This course studies the purview of astral science under Buddhist dominion. Here it is at once promoted for promulgating Buddhist world order and repudiated for begetting the suffering-inducing physical universe, a warped vessel of ceaselessly turning stars that the Buddhist dharma must transcend. The course begins with the part astral science plays in genesis, the creation of Buddhist world order. It then covers the science’s central aspects, celestial systems, spatial orientation, time reckoning, the making of a calendar, and publication of an almanac. Thereafter, it treats the science’s outgrowth into interrelated forms of Buddhist propaganda manifest as divination, magic, medicine, ritual, scripture, and iconography.

Buddhist Astral Science: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course is an introduction to Japanese modernism through the reading and discussion of representative short stories, poetry, and criticism of the Taisho and early Showa periods. We will examine the aesthetic bases of modernist writing and confront the challenge posed by their use of poetic language. The question of literary form and the relationship between poetry and prose in the works will receive special attention.
Modern Japanese Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
This course examines the historical production and reception of key Japanese literary and film texts; how issues of gender, ethnicity, social roles, and national identity specific to each text address changing economic and social conditions in postwar Japan.
Contemporary Japanese Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2022 Second 6 Week Session
This course investigates how neurotypical and neurodivergent authors (those with neurological conditions) depict and discuss "neurodiversity". We pay particular attention to how the autistic community embraces this idea. The course emphasizes two Japanese authors, Oe Kenzaburô and autistic author Higashida Naoki (both read in English). We also read other fiction and poetry dealing with themes of autism. To better contextualize the Japanese authors, we read nonfiction work on neurodiversity as well. Taking a comparative, cross-cultural approach brings into relief the ways in which neurodiversity is understood, depicted, and expressed; and the unique difficulties with representation. Satisfies Arts & Letters (AL) breadth requirements.
Neurodiversity in Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
This course deals with issues of the structure of the Japanese language and how they have been treated in the field of linguistics. It focuses on phonetics/phonology, morphology, writing systems, dialects, lexicon, and syntax/semantics, historical changes, and genetic origins. Students are required to have intermediate knowledge of Japanese. No previous linguistics training is required.
Introduction to Japanese Linguistics: Grammar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course deals with issues of the usage of the Japanese language and how they have been treated in the field of linguistics. It concentrates on pragmatics, modality/evidentiality, deixis, speech varieties (politeness, gender, written vs. spoken), conversation management, and rhetorical structure. Students are required to have intermediate knowledge of Japanese. No previous linguistics training is required.
Introduction to Japanese Linguistics: Usage: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This course comprises an immersive survey of science fiction - historically the only literary genre fully devoted to imagining the alterity of the future - as it takes on a unique and pressing relevance in contemporary East Asian culture and society. Providing students with both comprehensive training in literary analysis and critical thinking as well as a substantive sociohistorical introduction to contemporary East Asian societies and politics, the course will constitute a solid foundation for the East Asian humanities major. All readings will be in English; no prior knowledge of Asian languages and/or cultures expected.

Science Fiction in East Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
An overview of the concepts of theoretical, contrastive, and practical linguistics which form the basis for work in translation between Japanese and English through hands-on experience. Topics include translatability, various kinds of meaning, analysis of the text, process of translating, translation techniques, and theoretical background.
Translation: Theory and Practice: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course is designed for those at high-intermediate to low-advanced level of fluency in Japanese to further develop their reading proficiency through detailed grammatical analyses of selected texts. Although adequate knowledge of both vocabulary and grammar is essential for understanding the text, often in foreign-language learning, vocabulary typically receives more emphasis than grammar.
Through assigned texts, students learn through a hands-on approach how words are combined to form a phrase, how phrases are combined to form a clause, how clauses are combined to form a sentence, how sentences are combined to form a text. Readings are selected from modern Japanese writing on current affairs, social sciences, history, and literature.
Reading Japanese Texts Using Advanced Grammatical Analysis: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2014, Fall 2010
This course surveys Japanese poetry and/or prose written predominantly in or before the Heian Period (794-1185). Topics will vary.
Classical Japanese Literature in Translation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2020
This course surveys modern Japanese fiction and poetry in the first half of the 20th century. Topics will vary.
Modern Japanese Literature in Translation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2020
Prehistoric and protohistoric archaeology in China, Japan, and Korea.
Archaeology of East Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2007
Course explores stereotypical images of traditional Japanese culture and people through archaeological analysis. Particular emphasis will be placed on changing lifeways of past residents of the Japanese islands, including commoners, samurai, and nobles. Consideration will be given to the implications of these archaeological studies for our understanding of Japanese identities.
Archaeology and Japanese Identities: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Fall 2018, Fall 2017

Urami (rancor, resentment) has an enduring presence in Japanese literature. Figures overburdened with urami become demons, vengeful ghosts, or other transformed, dangerous, scheming characters. They appear in many different genre and eras. The course's topic enables discussion on concepts important for understanding Japanese literary works such as hyper-attentiveness to shifting social status, the role of groupness in targeting victims, the imperatives of shame, secrets, the circumscribed agency of women, and the reach of Buddhist teachings into behavioral norms. For those interested in comparative literature, the course offers an opportunity to take a measure of what Japanese narratives offer as legitimate causes of rancor and revenge.
Urami: Rancor and Revenge in Japanese Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Spring 2022, Fall 2019
This course will examine the works of the novelist Murakami Haruki and the animator Miyazaki Hayao within the context of contemporary Japanese aesthetics and history. Both Murakami and Miyazaki debuted in 1979 and their work has very much defined Japan’s cultural experience from the tail end of the Era of High Growth Economics through the Bubble Era, the Lost Decade, and into the twenty-first century. Students will explore the works of these two figures in the context of the history of Japanese literature and film and its relation to larger political, social, and cultural trends of Japan from the 1980s to the present.
Murakami Haruki and Miyazaki Hayao: the Politics of Japanese Culture from the Bubble to the Present: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2011, Spring 2008
A close analysis of the oeuvre of an East Asian director in its aesthetic, cultural, and political contexts.
East Asian Film: Directors and their Contexts: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2013, Fall 2008, Spring 2008
The course examines the complex meanings of the ghost in modern Japanese literature and culture. Tracing the representations of the supernatural in drama, fiction, ethnography, and the visual arts, we explore how ghosts provide the basis for remarkable flights of imaginative speculation and literary experimentation. Topics include: storytelling and the loss of cultural identity, horror and its conversion into aesthetic pleasure, fantasy, and the transformation of the commonplace. We will consider historical, visual, anthropological, and literary approaches to the supernatural and raise cultural and philosophical questions crucial to an understanding of the figure and its role in the greater transformation of modern Japan (18th century to the present).
Ghosts and the Modern Literary Imagination: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
The study of East Asian films as categorized either by industry-identified genres (westerns, horror films, musicals, film noir, etc.) or broader interpretive modes (melodrama, realism, fantasy, etc).
East Asian Film: Special Topics in Genre: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Spring 2018, Fall 2016
The course considers the different literary, social and ethical formations that arise or are destroyed in disaster. It explores how Japanese literature and media, before and after 3:11, attempt to translate the un-representable, and in so doing, to create a new type of literacy about 1) trauma and the temporality of disaster, 2) precarity, community and the public sphere and 3) sustainability and ecological scale. The course will pay particular attention to a range of works that explicitly or obliquely reframe iconic or popular representations of disasters in cinema, literature and other media, taking into account of the readiness with which certain cultural forms lend themselves to vistas of disaster.
Reframing Disasters: Fukushima, Before and After: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2018, Fall 2015, Spring 2013
This course will offer a survey of Japanese cinema from its earliest days to contemporary anime (animated film). Providing the basic tools for analyzing film language, the course begins by analyzing the interactions between early Japanese film and early Hollywood. We then consider the development of Japanese film, discussing style and structures of connotation, figurative meaning and political critique, the uses of the historical past and ideology, and the roles of youth culture and views of the family. We consider the place of important individual directors. We also discuss current critical debates about broader trends in Japanese film and culture, as they illuminate the construction and ruptures in notions of Japanese identity.
Introduction to Japanese Cinema: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2019, Spring 2017
This course is an introduction to Japanese animation, or anime, from its earliest forms (in relationship to manga) to recent digital culture, art, and games. We will analyze and study mainly animated feature films and read the critical work they inspired. We will address such issues as cultural memory and apocalyptic imagination, robots and the post-human, cities, nature, and the transnational; gender, shojo, and the aesthetics of "cute," as well as consider specific issues in the theoretical understanding of anime within technology and media theory.
Japanese Visual Culture: Introduction to Anime: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Summer 2018 Second 6 Week Session, Fall 2013
Selected topics in the study of Japanese film.
Topics in Japanese Film: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
This course is a capstone experience that centers on the philosophies and religions of East Asia examined from multiple theoretical perspectives. It comprises several thematic units within which a short set of readings about theory are followed by chronologically arranged readings about East Asia. Themes will alternate from year to year but may include: ritual and performance studies; religion and evolution; definitions of religion and theories of its origins; and the role of sacrifice.
Tools and Methods in the Study of East Asian Philosophy and Religion: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Fall 2018
Directed independent study and preparation of senior honors thesis. Limited to senior honors candidates in the East Asian Religion, Thought, and Culture major (for description of Honors Program, see Index).
Honors Course: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
Directed independent study and preparation of senior honors thesis. Limited to senior honors candidates in East Asian Languages (for description of Honors Program, see Index).
Honors Course: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023
Directed independent study and preparation of senior honors thesis. Limited to senior honors candidates in the East Asian Religion, Thought, and Culture major (for description of Honors Program, see Index).
Honors Course: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Spring 2019, Fall 2015
Directed independent study and preparation of senior honors thesis. Limited to senior honors candidates in East Asian Languages (for description of Honors Program, see Index).
Honors Course: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2010, Fall 2009, Spring 2009
Small group instruction in topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses.
Directed Group Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2015, Fall 2014
Small group instruction in topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses.
Directed Group Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2007, Spring 2007
Independent study in topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses.
Independent Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Fall 2015, Fall 2014
Independent study in topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses.
Independent Study: Read More [+]