Modern Japan: 1868 to Present

Calendar

SES #	TOPICS	KEY DUE DATES
Week 1
1	Introduction
2	Japanese Business History
Part I: From Samurai Government to a Modern Revolution
Week 2: Samurai Order and Disorder
3	Building Pax Tokugawa
4	Samurai Disorder
Week 3: The Decline of Tokugawa Shogunate
5	Troubles at Home, Dangers from Abroad
Week 4: Japan’s Modern Revolution?
6	Overthrowing the Shogunate
7	From “Restoration” to “Revolution”	Essay 1 due
Part II: Competing Modernities
Week 5: Building a Civilized Nation
8	The Politics of “Civilization and Enlightenment”
9	The Culture of Enlightenment
Week 6: Democracy and Empire I
10	Democracy and Constitutional Government
11	Meiji Imperialism
Week 7: Democracy and Empire II
12	Japan’s “Imperial Democracy”
Part III: Modernity’s Crisis and its Aftermath
Week 8: Japan’s Jazz Age and its Discontents
13	Sounds and Visions of Modernity
14	Ideologies of Crises	Essay 2 due
Week 9: War on Multiple Fronts
15	Japan’s “World War II”
16	War Abroad and at Home
Week 10: Occupation and Beyond
17	The Allied Occupation
Part IV: History, Memory, and Media in Postwar Japan
Week 11: Monsters, Imaginary and Real, in Postwar Japan
18	In-class Viewing: Gojira. Directed by Ishirô Honda. Color, 96 min. 1954.
19	Contextualizing “Gojira”
Week 12: Geopolitics and Democracy in Contemporary Japan
20	Japan as “No. 1”?
21	Democracy in Theory and Practice
Week 13: History and Memory in Contemporary Japan
22	In-class Viewing: The Wind Rises. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki.  Color, 126 min. 2013.
23	The Wind Rises, cont.
Week 14: Presentations on Essay 3
24	Student Presentations
25	Student Presentations	Essay 3 due