Japan is a member of East Asia, and we cannot live without relations with China, Taiwan, Korea and other East Asian countries. Let’s think about ourselves, our interests and questions, and our future on an East Asian scale.
For example, how are your favorite authors’ novels and characters accepted in East Asia? What kind of education do young East Asians of your generation receive and grow up with, what do they love and worry about, and what do they aspire to? What kind of businesses are the companies you would like to work for in the future developing in East Asia, and what about their East Asian competitors?
In this seminar, you will identify your own issues regarding literature, culture, education, media, and various other phenomena in East Asia since the 20th century, collect materials from newspapers, magazines, the Internet, and other sources, and study them concretely while referring to previous research in literature, sociology, history, and other fields, in order to write your graduation thesis.
Students will learn about gender-related issues in various regions of the world through a variety of methodologies. Gender refers to socially and culturally defined masculinity and femininity.
By using this concept of gender, we will learn about the situations and issues in various regions of the world. In the first semester, we will read a textbook on various themes related to gender (marriage, education, labor, sexual minority, etc.) in Japan, China, France, Germany, and other regions of the world, approaching them from the methodologies of cultural anthropology and sociology.
Each class will have a presenter, and we will discuss and examine their reports together. In the second semester, we will report and discuss papers on topics of interest to each student as a preparation for writing a thesis.
In the field of cultural anthropology, “comparison” does not refer to superiority or inferiority, but rather to the intellectual process of learning more about self and others.
In this seminar, we will study various issues and events in contemporary society from a cultural anthropological perspective. Cultural anthropology focuses on understanding things from the perspective of the people involved and the locale.
Subjects range from the familiar, such as family and relatives, to religion, medicine, law, development, economics, and science and technology. Cultural anthropology is a discipline that cultivates the ability to look at everyday life from a different perspective.
Through the reading of literature and articles, discussion and exchange of opinions with the participants, we will try to reconsider what may seem to be “natural” and cultivate a flexible perspective of understanding that is not self-centered.
In this seminar, we will discuss the Japan-Korea relationship by starting from examining the histories of individuals. It is our goal to overcome the simplistic binaries of intimacy and hatred, and good and evil in understanding others, with a more multifaceted approach on their historical and cultural backgrounds.
We will look at and read Chinese and Japanese facial fortune-telling manuals side by side, and use the differences to examine the cultural differences between China and Japan. Chinese face reading has a long history, and was already very popular in the 3rd century BC.
Chinese face reading is a condensation of the traditional Chinese view of the body and nature. In Japan, facial fortune-telling manuals were imported from China during the Edo period (1603-1868) and were widely read. How did they accept the Chinese view of the body and nature, and what influence did it have on the way we think today?
And what does it mean to “divine”? As we read the original texts, let’s consider the logic and philosophy of face divination that continues to this day.
Asia’s presence in the world has become so large that it is now being called the Asian Century. However, there has been insufficient discussion about what Asia (China) and Asia (Japan), Asia and the world should be, and a distorted image of Asia is still rampant.
Therefore, let’s reconsider the mutual understanding between Asia (China) and Asia (Japan), Asia and the West, and think about what Asia means to Japan. In the first semester, we will subscribe to materials and ask what multiculturalism and cultural relativism are. We will also examine the historical background, related issues, and relevant figures from the three perspectives of “Asia looking at Asia,” “Asia looking at Asia,” and “Asia looking at the West,” and discuss the significance of these issues.
In the second semester, each student will list his or her interests in China and Japan and explore each other’s interests and awareness of the issues.
