21A.142

Japanese Literature and Cinema

Undergraduate · Historical course

Fall 2013

This course surveys both cinematic and literary representations of diverse eras and aspects of Japanese culture such as the classical era, the samurai age, wartime Japan and the atomic bombings, social change in the postwar period, and the appropriation of foreign cultural themes, with an emphasis on the modern period. Directors include Akira Kurosawa and Hiroshi Teshigahara. Authors include Kobo Abe and Yukio Mishima. Films shown have subtitles in English. Taught in English.

Readings

[Kirino] = Kirino, Natsuo. Out . Vintage, 2005. ISBN: 9781400078370.
Required
[Abe] = Abe, Kobo. The Woman in the Dunes . Vintage, 1991. ISBN: 9780679733782.
Required
Keene, Donald. “Japanese Aesthetics.” In The Pleasures of Japanese Literature . Columbia University Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780231067379.
Required
Akutagawa, Ryunosuke. “In a Grove.” In Rashomon and Other Stories . Liveright, 1999. ISBN: 9780871401731.
Required
———. “Rashomon.” In Rashomon and Other Stories . Liveright, 1999. ISBN: 9780871401731.
Required
J. Geiger, R. L. Rutsky, ed. “A Search for a National Community.” In Film Analysis: A Norton Reader . W. W. Nortan & Company, 2005, pp. 495-508. ISBN: 9780393979831.
Required
Condry, Ian. Chapters 1–2 in The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story . Duke University Press Books, 2013. ISBN: 9780822353942.
Required
Jenkins, Henry. “ Seven Core Principles of Transmedia Storytelling .” (2009) ↗
Required
WEEKS #: 3 · TOPICS: Rakugo: The Art of Storytelling · READINGS: Brau, Lorie. “Rakugo: The Comic Storytelling Art.” In Rakugo: Performing Comedy and Cultural Heritage in Contemporary Tokyo . Lexington Books, 2008. ISBN: 9780739122464. [Preview with Google Books ] ↗
Reading assignment
Lee, Soo-Im. “Koreans—A Mistreated Minority in Japan: Hopes and Challenges for Japan’s True Internationalization.” In Transcultural Japan: At the Borderlands of Race, Gender and Identity . Routledge, 2008. ISBN: 9780415368902. [Preview with Google Books ] ↗
Required
WEEKS #: 5 · TOPICS: Small Group Projects · READINGS: [Kirino] Ongoing
Reading assignment
WEEKS #: 6 · TOPICS: Small Group Projects and Film Viewing · READINGS: [Kirino] Ongoing
Reading assignment
WEEKS #: 7 · TOPICS: Out · READINGS: No readings.
Reading assignment
WEEKS #: 8 · TOPICS: Discuss Readings and Films · READINGS: No readings.
Reading assignment
Bolitho, Harold. “The Myth of the Samurai.” (PDF) 1984. ↗
Required
Tsunetomo, Yamamoto. Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai . Shambhala, 2012. ISBN: 9781590309858.
Required
Chikamatsu, Monzaemon. The Love Suicides at Amajima . The University of Michigan Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780939512515.
Required
Tanizaki, Junichiro. Shadows on the Screen: Tanizaki Jun’ichiro on Cinema “Oriental” Aesthetics . University of Michigan Centre for, 2005. ISBN: 9781929280339.
Required
Kawabata, Yasunari. The Izu Dancer and Other Stories . Tuttle Publishing, 2001. ISBN: 9780804811415.
Required
Condry, Ian. “ Post-3/11 Japan and the Radical Recontextualization of Value: Music, Social Media, and End-Around Strategies for Cultural Action .” International Journal of Japanese Sociology 20, no. 1 (2011): 4–17. ↗
Required
Murakami, Haruki. “UFO in Kushiro.” In After the Quake . Vintage, 2003. ISBN: 9780375713279.
Required
Shikibu, Murasaki. The Tale of Genji . Penguin Classics, 2006. ISBN: 9780143039495.
Required
U, Mel. “’ Onnagata” by Yukio Mishima ." The Reading Life . August 30, 2011. ↗
Required
WEEKS #: 11 · TOPICS: Discuss Readings and Films · READINGS: No readings.
Reading assignment

Sources

Course catalogue ↗Historical OpenCourseWare
MIT OCW readings ↗
MIT OCW syllabus ↗
Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.