China in the Japanese Imagination: Translations of Identity

Undergraduate

China has profoundly influenced every formative element of identity in Japan: language, legal and political institutions, religion, philosophy, and the visual and literary arts. This course surveys key historical moments -- the Taika Reforms of the seventh century, mid-Heian appropriations of Tang court society, Tokugawa adaptations of Ming and Qing culture – to examine how the process of translating Chinese cultural forms radically reshaped Japanese society and impacted the vexed modern relationship between the two nations.