Subject Area: Japanese Studies

This course focuses on key themes in Japanese culture from the pre-modern to the modern periods. It emphasises the relationship between cultural continuity and change and also highlights key areas of debate in Japanese studies. The course is structured thematically and chronologically, with topics including Japanese myths as well as scholarly debates over Japanese mythology; rejection of the “Chinese model” of governance and retention of feudal political structures; the mutual impact of folk and elite culture in religious syncretism; the role of key concepts such as impermanence/insufficiency and the “pity of things” in Japanese intellectual life; the impact of urbanisation, increasing literacy and social satire; the contested meaning of Shinto in relation to “national learning” scholarship of the 17th to 19th centuries and the rise of Japanese nationalism and imperialism; socio-cultural transformation through the implementation of modern education in the 19th century; and the consequences of war from the 19th through the 20th centuries. The course concludes with a critical examination of the malleability of culture as an idea and how this is reflected in scholarship on Japanese culture.