Japanese Asia Pacific War Exp.

Catalog description

This course examines literary and cinematic texts treating Japanese experience during and after the Asia Pacific War (1931-1945). After studying the ideological, political and historical context of the war and trauma/PTSD studies theory, we will analyze and interpret major Japanese writers’ and directors’ artistic representations of battlefield, homefront, defeat, occupation and postwar experience. Issues to be explored include: war-related personal and collective trauma, perpetrator and survivor psychology, victimization, dissociation, psychic numbing, psychological defense mechanisms/fantasies, failed mourning, traumatic vs. narrative memory, triggered behavioral reenactment, sacrifice, guilt, responsibility, memorialization and posttraumatic identity (re)formation.