[SJT] = William Theodore de Bary, ed., Sources of Japanese Tradition, Volume 1: From Earliest Times to 1600 (Second Edition) (Columbia University Press, 2001). ISBN: 9780231518055. [Preview with Google Books]
[SWCJ] = Thomas Conlan, ed., Samurai and the Warrior Culture of Japan, 471–1877 (Hackett Publishing Co., 2022). ISBN: 9781647920579. [Preview with Google Books]
[JE] = Karl F. Friday, ed., Japan Emerging: Premodern History to 1850 (Westview Press, 2012). ISBN: 9780429979163. [Preview with Google Books]
Week 1: Introduction
Session 1: Introduction
No readings assigned.
Part I: Before Samurai
Week 2: Origins
Session 2: History and Mythology
[SJT] Ch. 1, “The Earliest Records of Japan,” pp. 3–16; Ch. 2, “Early Shinto,” pp. 17–31. [Preview with Google Books]
[SWCJ] “Section I. The Story of Swords: Understanding the Warriors of Ancient Japan (471-900),” pp. 1–7. [Preview with Google Books]
[JE] Ch. 6, “Origins of the Japanese People,” pp. 55–65; Ch. 7, “What Used to be Called Shinto,” pp. 66–76.
Session 3: Overseas Influence and the Imperial State
[SJT] Ch. 3, “Prince Shōtoku and His Constitution,” pp. 40–55; “Chinese-Style History and the Imperial Concept,” “The Reform Era,” pp. 70–84.
[JE] Ch. 8, “The Emergence of Political Rulership and the State in Early Japan,” pp. 77–88; Ch. 10, “Centralization and State Formation in Sixth- and Seventh-Century Japan,” pp. 98–109.
Optional:
[JE] Ch. 9, “Early Japan and the Continent.”
Week 3: Classical Japan
Session 4: Heian, the Era of “Peace and Tranquility”(?)
Ch. 4, “Rise of Feudal Institutions,” pp. 81–104, in David Lu, Japan: A Documentary History (M.E. Sharpe, 2005). ISBN: 9781563249075. [Preview with Google Books]
[JE] Ch. 12, “Oligarchy, Shared Rulership, and Power Blocks,” pp. 122–134; Ch. 16, “The Shōen System,” pp. 167–177.
Optional:
[JE] Ch. 11, “Emperor, Aristocracy, and the Ritsuryō State,” pp. 111–121; Ch. 15, “The Provinces and the Public Economy, 700–1100,” pp. 157–166.
Session 5: Court Culture and Spirituality
“Yūgao” and “The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon,” pp. 106–144, in Donald Keene, ed. Anthology of Japanese Literature (Grove Press, 1955). ISBN: 9780802198655. [Preview with Google Books]
[JE] Ch. 13, “Aristocratic Buddhism,” pp. 135–145; Ch. 14, “The Canons of Courtly Taste,” pp.146–156.
Optional (other writings by Heian court ladies):
“The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu,” pp. 145–155; “The Sarashina Diary,” pp. 156–161, in Donald Keene, ed. Anthology of Japanese Literature (Grove Press, 1955). ISBN: 9780802198655. [Preview with Google Books]
Optional video:
“Tale of Genji Scroll - Facsimile Editions and Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts.” YouTube.
Optional video (a video tour of a Tale of Genji exhibit at the NYC Metropolitan Museum of Art):
“The Tale of Genji, Part One | Ancient Art Links.” YouTube.
“The Tale of Genji, Part Two | Ancient Art Links.” YouTube.
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
[SJT] Ch. 12, “The Way of the Warrior,” pp. 265–280.
“The Fight at Dan No Ura,” pp. 180–184, in Donald Keene, ed. Anthology of Japanese Literature (Grove Press, 1955). ISBN: 9780802198655.
[JE] Ch. 17, “The Dawn of the Samurai,” and Ch. 18, “The Kamakura Shogunate and the Beginnings of Warrior Power,” pp. 178–199.
Optional video:
“Heiji Monogatari E - Facsimile Editions and Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts.” YouTube.
Session 7: The First Samurai Government
[SWCJ] Section IV: “9. The Formulary of Adjudication/Jōei Code (1232),” “10. Letter from Hōjō Yasutoki Concerning the Formulary,” “11. Kamakura Amendments,” “12. Bakufu Justice: A Case Study,” pp. 42–69. [Preview with Google Books]
[SWCJ] Section IV: “14. Excerpt from Takezaki Suenaga’s Scrolls of the Mongol Invasions,” “15. Legal Amendment (Tsuikahō) Concerning Rewards,” “16. Suenaga’s Audience with Adachi Yasumori,” pp. 81–86.
[JE] Ch. 19, “Kamakura and the Challenges of Governance,” pp. 203–212.
Optional:
“Scrolls of the Mongol Invasion.” Princeton University.
Week 5: From the Second Shogunate to Warring States (1300–1500)
Session 8: The Ashikaga Shogunate and the Era of Rival Imperial Courts
[SJT] Ch. 18, “The Law of the Muromachi Shogunate,” pp. 417–420.
[SJT] Ch. 12, “Chronicle of Great Peace: The Loyalist Heroes,” pp. 284–291.
[JE] Ch. 20, “Go-Daigō, Takauji, and the Muromachi Shogunate,” pp. 213–223; Ch. 24, “Medieval Arts and Aesthetics,” pp. 254–266.
Optional:
[JE] Ch. 21, “Medieval Religion,” pp. 224–232.
Session 9: From Fires in Kyoto to “Warring States”
[SWCJ] Section VII: “3. The Ōnin War (1467–77),” “4. The Process of Praise and Rewards: A Case Study,” pp. 181–186.
[SJT] Ch. 18, “The Law of the Warrior Houses in the Age of War in the Provinces,” “Precepts of the Warrior Houses,” and “House Precepts in the Sengoku Age,” pp. 420–432.
“Takeda Shingen (1521–1573), Warlord,” pp. 43–49, in Morgan Pitelka, et al. eds., Letters from Japan’s Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Correspondence of Warlords, Tea Masters, Zen Priests, and Aristocrats (Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 2021). ISBN: 9781557291950.
[JE] Ch. 22, “Warriors, Warlords, and Domains,” Ch. 23, “Medieval Warfare,” pp. 233–253.
Optional (a cool animated map of the Ōnin War):
“THE ŌNIN WAR: Visualizing 12 Years of War in Japan, 1465–78.” Princeton University.
Week 6: Reunification
Session 10: The Unifiers: Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi
[SJT] Ch. 19, “The Regime of the Unifiers,” pp. 433–465; “The Korean War,” pp. 465–472.
[JE] Ch. 29, “The Sixteenth-Century Reunification,” pp. 311–320.
Week 7: Global Samurai and the Pax Tokugawa
Session 11: An Elizabethan Account of Hideyoshi’s Nephew
“The Tragedy of Quabacondono: An Elizabethan Account of the Last Days of Toyotomi Hidetsugi,” Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 76.1 (2021) pp. 1–64.
[JE] Ch. 31, “A Whole New World (Order),” pp. 333–343.
Optional:
[JE] Ch. 28, “Diplomacy, Piracy, and the Space Between,” pp. 299–308.
“The Amboyna Conspiracy Trial.” (“Amboyna Introduction” video; “Your Verdict” modules (including videos); all modules within the “Japanese Mercenaries” exhibit.)
Optional video:
“The Unique Beliefs of Japan’s Clandestine Christians.” YouTube.
Session 12: The Last (and Best?) Samurai Government
“Part IV, The Tokugawa Peace,” pp. 1–27, in William Theodore de Bary, ed., Sources of Japanese Tradition, Volume 2: 1600 To 2000 (Second Edition) (Columbia University Press, 2001). ISBN: 9780231129848.
[Preview with Google Books]
[JE] Ch. 30, “The Political Order,” pp. 321–332.
Optional video:
“Battle of Sanada Maru (4–5 December 1614).” YouTube. (A contemporary Japanese TV drama recreating an episode from the Osaka Winter Campaign of 1614.)
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
Ch. 31, “The Way of the Warrior II,” pp. 437–480, in William Theodore de Bary, ed., Sources of Japanese Tradition, Volume 2: 1600 To 2000 (Second Edition) (Columbia University Press, 2001). ISBN: 9780231129848.
“Akô Incident,” pp. 3–9, in Constantine Nomikos Vaporis, Samurai: An Encyclopedia of Japan’s Cultured Warriors (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). ISBN: 9781440842702.
[JE] Ch. 32, “The New Warriors: Samurai in Early Modern Japan,” pp. 344–355.
Optional:
Eiko Ikegami, “The Vendetta of the Forty seven Samurai,” in The Taming of the Samurai, pp. 223–240, (Harvard University Press, 1997). ISBN: 9780674868090.
Session 14: Pictures and Stories of the Floating World
“Introduction” in Julie Nelson Davis, Picturing the Floating World: Ukiyo-e in Context (University of Hawai’i Press, 2021) pp. 1–21. ISBN: 9780824889333. [Preview with Google Books]
[JE] Ch. 34, “Ukiyo asobi,” pp. 366–377.
Optional:
Jippensha Ikku, “The Monster Takes a Bride,” in An Edo Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Mega-City, 1750–1850 (University of Hawai’i Press, 2013), pp. 137–167. ISBN: 9780824836290.
Week 9: Women in a Samurai World
Session 15: Tsuneno’s Journey
“The People in Tsuneno’s World,” “Maps,” “A Note on Translations,” “Prologue,” “Chapter One: Faraway Places,” and “Chapter Two: Half a Lifetime in the Countryside,” pp. ix–58 in Amy Stanley, Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World (Scribner, 2020). ISBN: 9781501188534. [Preview with Google Books]
Optional:
[JE] Ch. 25, “Gender Relations in the Age of Violence,” pp. 267–277; JE, Ch. 37, “Family, Gender, and Sex in Early Modern Japan,” pp. 402–412.
Session 16: Tsuneno’s Edo
“Chapter Three: To Edo,” “Chapter Four: A View from the Tenement,” “Chapter Five: Samurai Winter,” “Chapter Six: Costumes for Urban Life,” pp. 59–160 in Amy Stanley, Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World (Scribner, 2020). ISBN: 9781501188534.
Stanley, Amy. “Writing the History of Sexual Assault in the Age of #MeToo.” Perspectives on History, September 24, 2018.
Week 10: Bureaucrats and Ne’er-Do-Wells
Session 17: Samurai Corruption
“Chapter Seven: Troubles at Home,” pp. 161–194, in Amy Stanley, Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World (Scribner, 2020). ISBN: 9781501188534.
“Decay of the Tokugawa System,” pp. 273–281, in Lu, Japan: A Documentary History, Vol. 2 (M.E. Sharpe, 1997). ISBN: 9780765600363.
Optional:
[JE] Ch. 33, “Urbanization, Trade, and Merchants,” pp.344–365.
“Warriors,” pp. 42–94, in Mark Teeuwen and Kate Wildman Nakai, eds., Lust, Commerce, and Corruption: An Account of What I have Seen and Heard, by an Edo Samurai (Columbia University Press, 2017). ISBN: 9780231544351. [Preview with Google Books]
Session 18: “Dream-Besotted” Musui
“Introduction,” and “Adult Years,” in Musui’s Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai (University of Arizona Press, 1988) pp. ix–xxi, 71–108. ISBN: 9780816512560. [Preview with Google Books]
Optional:
Musui’s Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai (University of Arizona Press, 1988). ISBN: 9780816512560. [Preview with Google Books] (Read the entire book.)
Optional video:
“A day in the life of a teenage samurai - Constantine N. Vaporis.” TEDEd.
Week 11: The End of Samurai
Session 19: The Fall of Tokugawa and Aizu
“Introduction,” “Preface,” “Childhood,” “Beginning of the Tragedy,” “Reaction in Aizu,” “A Fight to the Death,” “A Sea of Fire,” “A Night of Despair,” and “Last Days of the Bakufu, pp. 1-62, in Teruko Craig, trans., Remembering Aizu: The Testament of Shiba Goro (University of Hawai’i Press, 1999). ISBN: 9780824821579. [Preview with Google Books]
Session 20: A Samurai Prince in 19th-Century Massachusetts
The Autobiography of Baron Chōkichi Kikkawa (Yutaka Ibara, 1918), pp. 1–59.
Week 12: Modern Samurai
Session 21: “Bushidō”
No readings assigned.
Week 13: Are We All Samurai Now?
Session 22: A Contemporary Samurai Film
No readings assigned.
Session 23: “Samurai” Today
“Introduction,” pp. 1–14, in Oleg Benesch, Inventing the Way of the Samurai: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Bushidō in Modern Japan (University of Oxford Press, 2014). ISBN: 9780198706625. [Preview with Google Books]
Week 14: Final Essay Prep Week
Session 24: Final Essay Workshop I: Discussion of Individual Sources
No readings assigned.
Session 25: Final Essay Workshop II: Discussion of Historical Contexts
No readings assigned.
Week 15: Presentation Week
Session 26: Final Presentations
No readings assigned.
