HISTORY 118C                                                                        SPRING 2007

 

Empire and Alienation: the 20th Century in Japan        

 

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Andrew E. Barshay                                      Class hrs: Tu Th 11-12:30

2216 Dwinelle                                            Room: 110 Barrows

642-3121                                                   Office hrs: W 11-12, 1-2:30

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I.      Course Description

 

The general theme of this course is Japan's emergence as a world

power in its two phases, military and economic.  Our chief concern

will be with the experience within Japan of that emergence and its consequences: the impact on farming villages (including colonial villages sending labor migrants to Japan) of "late" industrialization; the emergence of a conflict, played out in actual lives, between notions of individuality vs. collective identity (based on class, nationality, and gender) and between different collective identities; the horror of total war; the transformation of values that came with defeat and occupation; the nature of postwar democracy and relation of society to state; the changing way(s) in which Japanese view and participate in the world outside Japan. 

 

 

II.  Course Texts

 

         A. Books for purchase

 

MISHIMA, Yukio.  Confessions of a Mask.  New Directions.  ISBN

081120118X 

 

MIYABE, Miyuki.  All She Was Worth.  Mariner/Houghton Mifflin,

1999.  ISBN 0395966582

 

PYLE, Kenneth.  The Making of Modern Japan, 2nd ed.  D.C. Heath, 1996. ISBN 0669200204

 

RUOFF, Kenneth.  The Peoples Emperor: Democracy and the Japanese Monarchy, 1945-1995.  Harvard University Asia Center, 2001.  ISBN 0674010884

 

TANIZAKI, Junichir.  Naomi, trans. by Anthony Chambers.   Vintage International.  ISBN 0865474575

 

         B.  Course reader, containing a number of important articles and primary documents, all required reading for course.   Available at Copy Central, 2560 Bancroft, 549-2527.   

 

         Items in Reader are indicated below with a double asterisk (**). 

 

         All course materials will be placed on 2-hr. reserve at Moffitt Undergraduate Library.

 

 

 

 

 

III.  Course requirements

 

Students are to attend all lectures as scheduled below.  Please note that the syllabus is subject to change.  Written assignments as follows:

 

         A.  Exams

                  1.  Mid-term: essay and text interpretation, 1 1/2 hrs.                         Date: 3/1 (Th).  (20% of grade.)

                  2.  Final exam: essays, text interpretation and other                            goodies, 3 hrs.  Date TBA.  Will cover entire course,                            but with emphasis on weeks 7-14.  (30% of grade.)

         B.  Papers (50% of grade)

                  1.  Option A:

                           Essay, 5 pp. maximum, due in class on or before 2/15                     (Th), on topic TBA.

                           Essay, 5 pp. maximum, due in class on or before                            4/19 (Th), on individually selected topic.

                  2.  Option B:

                           Essay, 10 pp. maximum, on individually selected

topic, due in class on or before 4/19 (Th).

 

 

IV.  Course Outline

 

Week#/Date                     Topic/Reading                                                    

 

1/      1-16  (Tu)            Administrative stuff; Course overview

 

         1-18   (Th)            Introduction to Japanese History (through 1868)

Reading: Pyle, Making of Modern Japan (MMJ), preface and chaps. 1-4 

                   

2/      1-23   (Tu)            Introduction to Japanese History (Meiji period)

Reading: Pyle, MMJ, chaps. 5-6

                                   

         1-25   (Th)            Video:  "The Meiji Revolution

                                    Reading: Pyle, MMJ, chap. 7

 

3/      1-30   (Tu)            Village as Community, Village as Internal

Colony                 

Reading: Fukutake, Japanese Rural Society, translators intro and chap. 1**

 

         2-1   (Th)            Family State: the Three Pillars

Reading: It, "Some Reminiscences of the Grant of the New Constitution and text of 1889 Constitution**; Hastings and Nolte, "The Meiji State's Policy Toward Women"**; Pyle, MMJ, chap. 8

 

                           [NB: Begin reading Tanizaki, Naomi]          

 

 

 

4/      2-6     (Tu)            Wars of Empire

Reading: Lifton et al., Six Lives Six Deaths (SLSD), chap. on Nogi Maresuke**; Uchimura, Justification of the Corean War**;

Jansen, Japanese Imperialism: Late Meiji Perspectives**; Pyle, MMJ, chap. 9

 

2-8     (Th)            Thinking (Beyond) the Nation

Reading:  Uchimura, other selections from The Complete Works**; Uchimura Kanz, in Sources of Japanese Tradition (SJT), 2nd ed., pp. 447-52; Socialism and the Left, in SJT, pp. 212-35**

 

5/      2-13   (Tu)            Japanese Modern (1): Do Japanese Have Selves?

Reading: Rubin, Sseki on Individualism and Natsume Sseki, "My Individualism"**

                                   

2-15   (Th)            Japanese Modern (2): Solidarities Lost and

Found

Reading: Smith, "The Right to Benevolence: Dignity and Japanese Workers, 1890-1920"**; Women and Labor and Hiratsuka Raich and the Bluestocking Society in SJT, pp. 482-88**

                          

6/      2-20   (Tu)            Japanese Modern (3): Colonial Society

Reading: Kublin, The Evolution of Japanese Colonialism**; Duus, Defining the Koreans**

 

         2-22   (Th)            Japanese Modern (4): (En)gendering Modernity

                                    Film: "Sisters of Gion" (Mizoguchi)

Reading: Tanizaki, Naomi; Kaneko Fumiko in SJT, pp. 235-39** 

 

                           [NB: Option A, paper #1 due in class]

 

7/      2-27   (Tu)            Midterm Review

 

3-1     (Th)            Midterm Exam

 

8/      3-6     (Tu)            Liberal Japan: High Tide, Strange Death

Reading: The High Tide of Prewar Liberalism, in SJT, pp. 148-99**

                                              

         3-8     (Th)            Japanese Marxism                             

Reading: SLSD, chap. on Kawakami Hajime**; Marxism, in SJT, pp. 239-55**; Beckmann, The Radical Left and the Failure of Communism**

 

                  [NB: Begin reading Mishima, Confessions of a Mask]

 

9/      3-13   (Tu)            The "National Community" in Crisis  

Reading: The Tenk Phenomenon, in SJT, pp. 255-59; Nakano, The House in the Village**

 

         3-15   (Th)            Japan in China: the War before the War

Reading: Pyle, MMJ, chap. 11; Louise Young, Colonizing Manchuria, in Stephen Vlastos, ed., Mirror of Modernity**

 

10/     3-20   (Tu)            The Pacific War

Reading: The Conservative Reaffirmation and Watsuji Tetsur, and The Greater East Asia War, in SJT, pp. 276-87, 308-19**

 

         3-22   (Th)            1945: Japan in extremis

                                    Reading: Pyle, MMJ, chap. 12 (through. p. 213)

 

[NB: 3-26 through 3-30   Spring break]

 

11/     4-3     (Tu)            The Meaning of Defeat

Reading: Maruyama, "Theory and Psychology of Ultranationalism**

 

4-5     (Th)            The Meaning of Postwar

Video: (TBA)

                                    Reading: Mishima, Confessions of a Mask                               

[NB: Begin reading Ruoff, Peoples Emperor]

 

12/     4-10   (Tu)            The Occupation

Reading: Ruoff, The Peoples Emperor, introduction-chap. 2; Text of 1947 Constitution**; Regaining Sovereignty in a Bipolar World, in SJT, pp. 366-72**; The Movement against the Separate Treaty, in SJT, pp. 385-89**; Pyle, MMJ, chap. 12 (pp. 213-26)

 

         4-12   (Th)            Japan in the 1950s: The Politics and Culture of                                              Modernization

Reading: The Postwar is Over in SJT, pp. 389-91**; Ruoff, Peoples, chap. 3; Pyle, MMJ, chap. 13

 

13/     4-17   (Tu)            The ANPO Watershed, 1960

Reading: Two Views of the Security Treaty Crisis, in SJT, pp. 393-400**; Mishima, "Patriotism"**; SLSD, chap. on Mishima Yukio**

 

4-19   (Th)            Japan since the 1960s: "The Pluralization of                                          Values"?

                           Reading: Ruoff, Peoples, chaps. 4-5        

 

[NB: Option A, paper #2, Option B paper due]

[NB: begin reading Miyabe, All She Was Worth]

 

14/     4-24   (Tu)            Japan, Inc.

         Video: Inside Japan, Inc.

Reading: Pyle, MMJ, chaps. 14-end

 

4-26   (Th)            The Bubble Years

 

15/     5-1   (Tu)            The Heisei Malaise

Reading: Miyabe, All She Was Worth

 

5-3     (Th)            Fin-de-sicle Memory: Politics and Poetics

 

Reading: The Asia-Pacific War in History and Memory, in SJT, pp. 553-75**; Ruoff, Peoples Emperor, chap. 6

 

16/     5-8     (Tu)            Course review

 

 

History 118C

Spring 2007

 

Course Reader: Table of Contents

 

1-3.  Robert Lifton et al., Six Lives Six Deaths (Yale University Press, 1979), chapters on Nogi Maresuke, Kawakami Hajime, and Mishima Yukio.

 

4. Fukutake Tadashi, Japanese Rural Society, trans. R. P. Dore (Cornell University Press, 1972), translators introduction and chapter 1.

 

5. It Hirobumi, "Some Reminiscences of the Grant of the New Constitution," from Okuma Shigenobu, ed. Fifty Years of New Japan (Dutton, 1909).

 

6. Sally Hastings and Sharon Nolte, "The Meiji State's Policy Toward Women" in Gail Bernstein, ed., Recreating Japanese Women (University of California Press, 1991).

 

7. Uchimura Kanz, selections from The Complete Works of Kanzo Uchimura (Kyobunkwan, 1973).

 

8. Wm. Theodore de Bary et al., comps., Sources of Japanese Tradition, 2nd ed., vol. 2, abridged, part 2 (Columbia University Press, 2006), selections.

 

9. Marius Jansen, "Japanese Imperialism: Late Meiji Perspectives," in Mark Peattie and Ramon Myers, eds. The Japanese Colonial Empire (Princeton University Press, 1986).

 

10. Hyman Kublin, The Evolution of Japanese Colonialism, Comparative Studies in Society and History II no. 1 (October 1959): 67-84.

 

11. Peter Duus, Defining the Koreans, chap. 11 of id., The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910 (University of California Press, 1998), pp. 397-423.

 

12. Thomas C. Smith, "The Right to Benevolence: Dignity and Japanese Workers, 1890-1920," from Smith, Native Sources of Japanese Industrialization (University of California Press, 1988).

 

13. Jay Rubin, "Sseki on Individualism" and Natsume Sseki, "My Individualism," Monumenta Nipponica 34, no. 1 (Spring 1979).

 

14. George M. Beckmann, "The Radical Left and the Failure of Communism," in James W. Morley, ed., Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan (Princeton University Press, 1974).

 

15. Nakano Shigeharu, The House in the Village (1935), in Brett de Bary, tr., Three Works by Nakano Shigeharu (China-Japan Program, Cornell University, 1979). 

 

16.  Louise Young, Colonizing Manchuria, in Stephen Vlastos, ed., Mirror of Modernity (University of California Press, 1998).

 

 

17. Mishima Yukio, "Patriotism," from id., Death in Midsummer and Other Stories (New Directions, 1966). 

 

18. Maruyama Masao, "Theory and Psychology of Ultranationalism," in id., Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics (Oxford University Press, 1969).

 

19. Texts of Japan's two Constitutions (1889 and 1947).