MA Modern Languages and Cultures / Course details

This is an MA-level course based in Japanese Studies and East Asian Studies tracing the emergence and specific symbolism and genres of popular culture in twentieth century Japan culminating in the proliferation of various expressions of literature, fashion, and animation character culture, establishing regional Asian cultural forms in the twenty first century. The course will trace the movement of gendered and class-based cultural modes and resistant and critical fashion and art of the 2010s. The increasingly contiguous regional and hegemonic presence of the ambivalent popular aesthetics in visual culture and social media online is heavily embedded in K-pop and East Asian animation-character-based animation, digital games, and fashion.  In this course we will include exploration of how popular cultural styles are also informed and contextualised by economic and demographic shifts, social and labour precarity, and low fertility social environments. 

The unit aims to:

• Foster postgraduate levels of detailed knowledge and critical understanding of the multiple elements of the culture, aesthetics and logic in Japan and East Asia. The course will discuss and sample most major cultural moments and genres in the twentieth century building up layers of understanding the evolution of aesthetics and meaning underlying contemporary popular culture and style, with a focus on the contemporary period from 1970 to the present. Students will develop an analytical approach and knowledge of the dominant popular cultural aesthetics of popular cultural forms in Japan, and more widely across East Asia and South-East Asia in the contemporary period.

• Students will learn to appreciate and apply historical political and cultural insights to deepen an understanding of contemporary cultural and political sentiments and meanings in general and in popular animated, digital and fashion culture in Japan and East Asia today.

• Students will learn to write and speak about these ideas on contemporary culture and its sociological contexts effectively.

The course will develop a range of abilities that are essential for higher-level and professional employment skills. These include gathering, critically selecting, and organizing information and ideas; analytical, critical thinking; interpreting and assessing sources; articulating coherent, logical and convincing arguments and supporting them by relevant evidence; articulate participation in oral discussion; working independently and to deadlines. In addition, it will develop critical understanding of different societies and cultural histories and contexts, highly valuable for employment with an international dimension. It will develop an understanding of key genres and events, personae, and literary and filmic cultural refences in the recent history of postwar Chinese and Japanese societies. The above will also be invaluable for those seeking employment in these countries or seeking employment where engagement with them is important. 

This syllabus provides representative examples of the topics covered. Please note that the exact topics covered, and their order may change.

Week 1: Privilege, Secondary Education and emergent youth cultures and identities.

Week 2: Youth Labour, Employment Migration and Extending Youth Cultures

Week 3: Literature, Romance, and Camaraderie in the prewar period

Week 4: Youth Style and Pop Idols  

Week 5: Alienation, fashion and performance

Week 6: Fan Culture and attachment to idols and characters

Week 7: Popular culture inspired Art Movements of the 1990s and 2000s

Week 8: Style on the Streets in the 1980s and 1990s

Week 9: Online and visual cultural Play in East Asia  

Week 10: Popular Culture in Low Fertility / Low Relationship Society

Week 11: Resistant Culture and Style within East Asia 

• Three weekly hours in the class (90m mins lecture, 90 mins seminar) for 11 weeks.
• Two consultation hours per week.
• Further consultation on demand. 

Demonstrate  advanced knowledge and critical understanding of major aspects of class and gender responsive styles in social context

Apply the theories covered by this unit to complex historical and contemporary debates, demonstrating originality in interpretation and argumentation

Demonstrate an in-depth awareness and critical understanding of the gendered forms of popular cultural movements, and the regional popular cultural system in East Asia, especially as they apply to contemporary China, Korea and Japan.

Demonstrate advanced critical thinking by synthesising complex theoretical perspectives, critically assessing competing arguments, and formulating independent, original interpretations in response to historical and intellectual debates with special reference to gender and popular culture genres and media in Japan and East Asia.

Evaluate methodologies and develop critiques of them and, where appropriate, propose new hypotheses.

Deal with complex issues both systematically and creatively, make sound judgements in the absence of complete data, and communicate their conclusions clearly to specialist and non-specialist audiences

Demonstrate self-direction and originality in tackling and solving problems, and act autonomously in planning and implementing tasks at a postgraduate level.

Prepare to discuss and debate key topics in a live context.

Exercise initiative and personal responsibility as global citizens and as possible participants of related popular culture and entertainment.

Develop ability to learn independently. as required for continuing professional development

Discussion Board responses to questions set on reading. (Based on the currently used DB assessment in JAPA20132, in which students post comments to specific questions with a focus on responding to peer’s comments which can be read, ie in the mode of interactive discussion.) Completed and posted online via BB, no less than 24 hours before the related seminar, for 5 seminars (400 words each), compiled into a final portfolio of 5 Discussion board texts, submitted as a single document to Turnitin Week 12. Oral feedback in class, peer feedback during seminar discuss

Miriam Silverberg 2007 Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times  

Maud Lavin and Yang Ling (eds) Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols: Queer fan cultures in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. University of Chicago Press  

Allison, Anne (2013) Precarious Japan. Duke University Press Books.

Hsin-Yen Yang 2023 ‘Cute politics!: articulating the kawaii aesthetic, fandom and political participation’ in Popular Communication, 21:2, 85-97

Sharon Kinsella 1995 ‘Cuties in Japan’, in Moeran and Skov eds. Women, Media and Consumption in Japan, T&L

Sianne Ngai 2005 ‘The Cuteness of the Avant‐Garde’ in Critical Enquiry