- Japanese Stories: Retelling Culture in Film, Drama, and Fiction

Catalog description

This course introduces students to 1000 years of Japanese storytelling tradition in diverse mediums: epic tales, drama (bunraku/kabuki, and noh), fiction, and film. Students will engage with such representations of Japanese culture as: - Imperial court life of the 10th century, the role of spirit possession as women's "weapon," and a 20th-century novel that builds on these traditions. - A war between two clans in the 12th century that is the setting for a key duel between unevenly matched opponents retold over the centuries in three different mediums: epic tale, bunraku/kabuki theater, and noh drama. - In the same war, the tragic defeat of one of the clans is reimagined as the source of a famous ghost story written in the 19th century...by a European with connections to Cincinnati! - Postwar short stories that retell Japanese fairy tales to situate them in a Japan struggling to cope with the devastation of the Pacific War. - A mystery novel about government corruption, and a master director’s film from the same period that treats the same subject - The possibilities – and horrors – of dreams as depicted by a 20th-century novelist, a master director, and an animator.