EALC E350 Self and State in Modern Japan

EALC E350
Self and State in Modern Japan

This course follows the shifting relationship between state and self in Japan from the formation of a national citizenry in the late nineteenth century through the current concern with the "Japaneseness" of the Japanese.

What images and ideologies of the individual has the state sought to project? How have these been received and reworked by the populace? And how, in turn, have Japanese come to conceive of the nation and their relationship to it?

We will attend, therefore, to the state's attempts to shape its subjects and with people's responses to that effort. We'll explore alternative conceptions of the state and the individual by radicals of both the right and the left, by democrats and artists. We'll examine, as well, how gender roles have been defined and promulgated. The course closes in the postwar years, with the social dislocations of the fifties and sixties and the realization of affluence in the seventies. Throughout the course, our concern will be to reflect on how the Japanese have constructed their society and themselves, to see what alternative visions have been rejected and gauge what possibilities lie ahead.

Prof Thomas Keirstead
245 Goodbody
ph 855-5619
T/Th 11-12.30
tkeirste@indiana.edu