Japan's Global Modernisms: 1880–1980

Graduate / Professional

This course is an introduction to Japanese literature from the 1880s to 1980s. Our reading is guided by a different “ism” each week, from 19th-century eroticism and exoticism, through mid-century cosmopolitanism and colonialism, to second-wave feminism and existentialism in the wake of World War II. These distinct moments in the development of Japanese modernism (modanizumu) are shaped by encounters with foreign cultures and by the importing of foreign ideas and vogues. All the same, we question—along with modernist writer Yū Ryūtanji—the “critique that says modanizumu is nothing more than the latest display of imported cosmetics” (1930). We seek to develop a correspondingly nuanced picture of the specific and changing ways in which Japan understood and figured its relationship to the rest of the world through the course of a century. Creative and comparative perspectives are especially welcome, and assignments can accommodate a range of media and presentation formats to suit. There are no prerequisites for this course, beyond an enthusiasm for reading literature. All readings are in translation, however there is an opportunity to read short stories in the original language. To facilitate this, our second class each week is structured around break-out groups that allow students to focus on one of the following: (a) comparative works of Western literature, (b) works of Japanese literary theory, and (c) original-language short stories. M 4pm-5:55pm