Japan Today: Japanese Culture, Literature, Cinema, Society and Language

Japan is a vital, energetic, and dynamic society that is constantly reinventing itself even while struggling to maintain a semblance of cultural and social continuity from its past. Meanwhile, the concept and image of Japan, both in Japan and the West, has varied widely over time. In the late 19th century when Japan re-emerged in Westerners' consciousness, Lafcadio Hearn, the Greek-Irish-American writer who later became a Japanese national, thought of Japanese society and its people as quaintly charming and adorable, whereas Americans in the 1940s viewed Japan as frighteningly militaristic and irrational. The French semiotician Roland Barthes was bewitched and liberated by Japan’s "charmingly mystifying otherness" during his visit to Japan in 1966. But when Japan began to show signs of recovery from the devastation of WWII, Japanese economic power was viewed as threatening to existing international power relations. As these and other examples make clear, the concept and image of Japan is highly dependent on the observer's point of view.

“Japan Today” is a full-time interdisciplinary program devoted to understanding contemporary Japan, its culture and its people, from a balanced point of view. This program combines the study of Japanese culture, literature, cinema, and society through lectures, books, films, seminars and workshops, with a study of Japanese language, which is embedded in the program. Two levels of language study (1st and 2nd-year Japanese) will be offered for 4 credits each during the fall and winter quarters.

In fall quarter we will study Japan up to the end of American occupation. We will emphasize cultural legacies of the historical past. In winter quarter, we will examine Japan after 1952. Special emphasis will be placed on the examination of contemporary Japanese popular culture and its influence on globalization. In spring quarter, students will engage in individual research/study projects of their own choice. The projects may take the form of study abroad in Japan, where students will conduct their own research or projects while attending a Japanese language school. Or, projects may take the form of individual research into Japanese literature, culture or history on the Olympia campus. In either case, the faculty will guide students in the creation of their individual projects. The students who choose to stay in Olympia will have an option of continuing their Japanese language study in an Evening and Weekend course.