AAAS 350Trauma/Storytelling in Mod JPN

Catalog

This course examines major works of Japanese prose fiction produced between the Meiji Restoration (1868) and the 50th anniversary of the end of the Asia Pacific War (1995). The primary aims are to use literary works to develop critical thinking about, and in-depth, nuanced understanding and appreciation of early modern, modern and contemporary Japanese worldviews, cultures, societies, values, experiences and interpersonal relationships. Through close reading, textual analysis and critical interpretation, the distinctive styles and thematic concerns of representative Japanese writers will be identified and discussed. Issues to be explored include: the experience and psychological effects of rapid modernization, the traumatic emergence of modern self-consciousness, ambivalence regarding tradition and modernity, crises in personal and collective identity, Asia Pacific War (1931-1945) experience, and the enduring legacies of this catastrophic international conflict. Students will be encouraged to develop their own informed analyses and interpretations of the artistic works under consideration, and articulate the relevance of the issues treated in Japanese literary texts to our own lives and times.