Modern Japan
Spring 2010
This course is an introduction to the politics, culture, and ideologies of Modern Japan from roughly 1800 to the 1990s. It investigates the processes of Japan’s experience as a modern nation-state and its historical consequences. We will pay special attention to the complex interplay between Japan’s aggressive participation in global modernity and its simultaneous assertion of cultural particularity— the tension between a modernity based on constant change and the lure of a timeless cultural essence, especially in relation to Asia and “the West”.
