BA Film Studies and East Asian Studies / Course details

This course investigates the different political registers from 1820s-to-1920s in Japan, in which the details of women’s lives become the material substratum for intervention or new modes of self-regulation.  

Sexual relations are the most primary of social relations and a key socializing force. But in moments of rapid change, there is the danger that they will become unstable and fragile. This is the problem Japanese society encountered as it metamorphosed from a loose association of disparate feudal domains into a centralised polity with all the trappings of a modern nation state. The rapid transformation of Japanese society marked a significant transformation in body politics. Sexual relations between men and women and the status of women in the family became the target of politics, life processes that need to be administrated and regulated.  

There is no linguistic requirement, and all the materials are accessible in English.

Discuss the history of Japan’s transition in the 19th century from a feudal society to a modern nation state and the critical role the body plays in constructions of sexuality and gendered differences.  

• Analyse the changing ways in which the relationship between nation, family, and gender were conceptualised and transformed.  
• Understand the importance of context in the interpretation, critique, and analysis of primary sources.
• Understand the transnational dimensions in Japanese history.

• Three weekly hours in the class for 11 weeks (week 12 - revision for the exam).
• Two consultation hours per week.
• Further consultation on demand.

On successful completion of this course unit, students will be able to:

• Systematically demonstrate understanding of how specific cultural, political, and social conditions shaped the perception of bodies, sexuality, and gender performance in modern and contemporary Japan.
• Show how different understandings of bodies, gender and sexuality have existed in history, thus critically assess Euro-centric views.

On successful completion of this course unit, students will be able to:

• have an intellectual interests and cultural awareness for areas beyond English-speaking countries
• debate critically about modern history of Japan.  

On successful completion of this course unit, students will be able to:

• Contextualise primary sources about Japan, the important first step that proceeds analysis
• Learn the skill of Socratic ignorance: the radical self-questioning of cultural presuppositions.  

On successful completion of this course unit, students will:

• Demonstrate skills for reasoned presentation, discussion, and argument
• Apply independent thinking to reach ethical judgments
• Demonstrate advanced communication and presentation skills appropriate for professional and vocational work
• Have skills to assess their own values as global citizens. 

Resit Assessment:

Essay

M. Teeuwen and K Wildman Nakai (eds.), Lust, Commerce, and Corruption: An Account of What I Have Seen and Heard, by an Edo Samurai, New York: Columbia University Press, 2014, pp. 309-327.

C. Ueno, Urbanism and Transformation of Sexuality: Edo to Tokyo, Columbia Documents of Architecture and Theory, New York: Graduate School of Architecture, Columbia University, 1996, pp.121-142.

H. Harootunian, “Cultural Politics in Tokugawa Japan” and “Late Tokugawa Culture and Thought” in Uneven Moments: Reflections on Japan's Modern History, Asia Perspectives: History, Society, and Culture, New York: Columbia University Press, 2019, pp. 73-94 & 95-174.

S. Sekiguchi, “Confucian Morals and the Making of a ‘Good Wife and Wise Mother’: From ‘Between Husband and Wife there is Distinction’ to ‘As Husbands and Wives be Harmonious,’” Social Science Japan Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1 (January 2010), pp. 95–113.

M.L. Nagata, “Mistress or Wife? Fukui Sakuzaemon vs. Iwa, 1819–1833,” Continuity and Change, Vol. 18, No. 2 (August 2003), pp. 287-309.

S. Frühstück, “Erecting a Modern Health Regime” in Colonizing Sex: Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2003.

Yuki Fujime, The Licensed Prostitution System and the Prostitution Abolition Movement in Modern Japan,” positions, vol. 5, no.1, (1997), pp.135-169.

Miriam Silverberg, “The modern girl as militant,” in G. L. Bernstein (ed.), Recreating Japanese women, 1600-1945, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, pp. .239-266.