TuTh 4:00-5:15pm
HU 217

An enchanted land sundered by feudal warfare and brightened by
colorful woodblock prints:  Such is the reputation 19th-century
Japan had to overcome when Yankee traders broke it open to overseas
trade after 1853.  By century’s end Japan had carved out a small
empire of its own.  This seminar will focus on Japan’s fate 1905-
1995, treating this long era as an extended case of transition to
modernity.

The history of Japan in the 20th century is usually viewed as a
series of discontinuous stages, leaping abruptly from WWI to WWII,
then to the “postwar” years (since 1945).  We will instead borrow a
phrase from John Dower, who calls recent Japanese history
a “transwar” phenomenon—an era bridging and sharing features across
one or more wars.  Spanning the divide between Japan’s long conflict
in Asia (1931-45) and the present are common themes of modern social
and capitalist development in a maturing democratic society.  Such
an approach will allow us to recast Japanese chronology as a case of
continuity (rather than discontinuity) connecting “prewar”
and “postwar” Japan.  Finally, we will take a look at the colorful
(postmodern?) flowering of culture in the postwar Tokyo boom.

Required reading for H204 will come from 5 books, all paperbacks.
One is the course textbook:  A Modern History of Japan (2nd ed.,
2008) by Andrew Gordon.  The others are Ienaga Saburô’s narrative of
Japan’s wartime history, The Pacific War; Miriam Silverberg’s
incandescent evocation of Japan in the Roaring Twenties, Erotic
Grotesque Nonsense; John Dower’s portrayal of a vanquished Japan
under U.S. Occupation, Embracing Defeat; and In the Realm of a Dying
Emperor, Norma Field’s period piece on the late 1980s.  The class
will also read 3 short paperback Japanese novels chosen for the way
they reflect social change in different eras:  Some Prefer Nettles
(1929) by Tanizaki Jun’ichirô, Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956)
by Mishima Yukio, and A Personal Matter (1964) by Ôe Kenzaburô.
Two midterm exams plus a 12-page term paper.  (No final exam.)