BA History and Italian / Course details

This course introduces Japanese Studies majors to the history of Japan. You will acquire knowledge and understanding of Japanese history from prehistoric times to the end of World War Two. You will engage in more in-depth study of early modern and modern Japan, gaining a more detailed and analytical understanding of the foundations and process of Japan’s modernization and empire-building. The course deals with political, social, and cultural history, including the introduction of key literary texts in their historical context.  The information you will learn will provide a contextual background for the understanding of Japan in historical and contemporary contexts. There is no linguistic requirement and all the materials are accessible in English. 

Available on: Japanese Studies (Single Honours) and Joint Honours programmes including Japanese. 

• To provide students with an understanding of Japan’s historical development from prehistoric times to the twentieth century;
• To enable students to gain an analytic understanding of major features of Japan’s political, social, and cultural history;  
• To develop students’ abilities to engage critically with historical analysis and formulate cogent, well-structured arguments in answer to historical questions.  

The course will cover the following major periods of Japanese history:

Prehistoric and ancient Japan (Jomon to Nara periods)

Medieval Japan (Heian to Muromachi periods)

Early Modern Japan (Azuchi-Momoyama and Tokugawa periods)

Modern Japan (Meiji, Taisho, and Showa periods)

Modern Japan will be dealt with in more depth than other sections.

Lecture classes will set out the key issues and provide fundamental information, while indicating means of understanding and interpreting the subjects treated. Seminars will be used to consider key issues and reading in greater depth. Students are expected to come to class prepared to discuss the assigned readings.  

The course unit will provide information and guidance to at least Blackboard minimum requirements. PowerPoint slides used in lectures and as many readings for seminars and essays as copyright law allows will be made available via Blackboard.

• Understand the outlines of Japan’s historical development;
• Know and understand the major features of early modern and modern Japan’s political, social, and cultural history.

• Engage in informed critical analysis of the early modern and modern history of Japan;
• Read and think critically;
• Write analytically.

• Use library, electronic, and online resources;
• Organise notes derived from lectures, seminars, and reading.

• Hone oral and written skills of reasoned thinking, discussion and argument.

Resit Assessment:

Essay

Friday, Karl. (Ed.) (2012) Japan Emerging: Premodern History to 1850. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. 

Totman, Conrad (2005). A History of Japan, Second Edition (Blackwell). 

Kinmonth, Earl H. (1981). The Self-Made Man in Meiji Japanese Thought: From Samurai to Salary Man. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 

Partner, Simon (2004). Toshie: A Story of Village Life in Twentieth-Century Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 

Mason, Michele, and Helen J.S. Lee (2012) Reading Colonial Japan: Text, context, and critique. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 

Young, Louise (1998). Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 

Katō, Shūichi. (1997). A history of Japanese literature : From the Man'yōshū to modern times / Shuichi Kato ; translated & edited by Don Sanderson. (New ed.). Richmond: Japan Library.