Week 1: Introduction
Session 1: Introduction
Part I: Before Samurai
Week 2: Origins
Session 2: History and Mythology
Session 3: Overseas Influence and the Imperial State
Week 3: Classical Japan
Session 4: Heian, the Era of “Peace and Tranquility”(?)
Session 5: Court Culture and Spirituality
Reading response due: The World of Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shōnagon
Part II: Historical Samurai in Three Eras (1185–1700)
Week 4: The Shogun’s Government in Kamakura (1185–1300CE)
Session 6: The First Samurai Wars
Reading response due: Close Reading: “The Battle of Dan no Ura”
Session 7: The First Samurai Government
Week 5: From the Second Shogunate to Warring States (1300–1500)
Session 8: The Ashikaga Shogunate and the Era of Rival Imperial Courts
Session 9: From Fires in Kyoto to “Warring States”
Reading response due: Your Favorite Sengoku Samurai Rule
Week 6: Reunification
Session 10: The Unifiers: Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi
Week 7: Global Samurai and the Pax Tokugawa
Session 11: An Elizabethan Account of Hideyoshi’s Nephew
Session 12: The Last (and Best?) Samurai Government
Class annotation exercise due: “Part IV, The Tokugawa Peace,” pp. 12–18
Part III: Alternative Visions of Samurai and their World (1700–Present)
Week 8: Heroes, Villains, and Consumers
Session 13: The “Forty-Seven Rōnin” Incident as History and Myth
Reading response due: Historical Perspectives on the Akō Incident
Session 14: Pictures and Stories of the Floating World
Week 9: Women in a Samurai World
Session 15: Tsuneno’s Journey
Session 16: Tsuneno’s Edo
In-class activity: Mapping and Visualizing Tsuneno’s Edo
Reading response due: Locating Tsuneno’s Edo
Week 10: Bureaucrats and Ne’er-Do-Wells
Session 17: Samurai Corruption
Session 18: “Dream-Besotted” Musui
Week 11: The End of Samurai
Session 19: The Fall of Tokugawa and Aizu
Session 20: A Samurai Prince in 19th-Century Massachusetts
Group annotation due: The Autobiography of Baron Chōkichi Kikkawa (1917)
Week 12: Modern Samurai
Session 21: “Bushidō”
Week 13: Are We All Samurai Now?
Session 22: A Contemporary Samurai Film
In-class viewing: The Hidden Blade (2004, Yōji Yamada, dir.)
Session 23: “Samurai” Today
In-class viewing: The Hidden Blade (2004, Yōji Yamada, dir.)
