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IGS/SCT 530

Studies in Identities and Subjectivities:  Japanese WWII Narratives

Instructor:  Alwyn Spies

Course Description:

Using short stories, film, documentaries, manga. anime, and contemporary visual art, this course will examine representations of national identity in Japanese Second World War narratives (in English). Changes over time and across media format will be explored in order for students to critique the relationship between structure and content, with particular regard to visual culture and hybrid media forms. By the end of the course students will be able to:

1. discuss the applicability of “Western” Trauma theory for “Asian” texts
2. place primary and secondary textual analyses within the context of (neo-)nationalism and the resurgence of the right-wing and emperor worship in Japan
   
3. apply theoretical concepts about the use of truth, fantasy and the “semi” autobiographical to various media forms and genres
   
4. use feminist theories about gender, victimization, and feminization to critique gender representations in the primary texts and connect them to discourses of globalization and militarism
5. apply terms and concepts relating to orientalism, self-orientalism and the Japanese “othering” of Asia
   
6. apply theories of history in narrative, testimony, vicarious experience, war and memory to their readings of primary texts.

STRUCTURE: 1 3-hr seminar per week

GRADING:

Paper Proposal  10%
Paper   50%
Presentation  20%
Participation  20%

SCHEDULE

Week 1 From Manga to Anime

Nakazawa, Keiji. (2004). Barefoot Gen Vol. 1. San Francisco: Last Gasp.
Nakazawa, Keiji. (2004). Barefoot Gen Vol. 2. San Francisco: Last Gasp.
Nakazawa, Keiji. (2005). Barefoot Gen Vol. 3. San Francisco: Last Gasp.
Nakazawa, Keiji. (2005). Barefoot Gen Vol. 4. San Francisco: Last Gasp.

Barefoot Gen: The Movies I & II. (2006). Dir. Mori, Masaki. Geneon.

Shimazu, Naoko. (2003) Popular Representations of the Past: The Case of Postwar Japan. In Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 38, No. 1, 101-116.

Week 2 The Politics of Remembering

Yoneyama, Lisa. (1999). Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Week 3 Gendering the Nation

Ueno, Chizuko. (2004). Nationalism and Gender. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press.

Week 4 From Literature to Film

Black Rain. (1998). Dir. Imamura, Shohei. Image Entertainment.

Grave of the Fireflies. (2004) Dir. Takahata, Isao. Central Park Media

Penney, Matthew. (2007) 'War Fantasy' and Reality - 'War as Entertainment' and Counter-narratives in Japanese Popular Culture. In Japanese Studies, Volume 27, Issue 1, pages 35 – 52.

Week 5 Militarism, Gender & Globalization

Enloe, Cynthia. (2004). The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire. Berkeley: University of California Press

Week 6 Feminine Representations

Field, Norma. (1997). From my Grandmother’s Bedside: Sketches of Post-war Tokyo. Berkeley. University of California Press.

Kouno, Fumiyo. (2007). Town of the Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms. San Francisco: Last Gasp.

Week 7 Feminizing Representations

Gojira/Godzilla (2006). Dirs. Honda, Ishiro & Morse, Terry. Classic Media.

Orr, James. (2001). Victim as hero: ideologies of peace and national identity in postwar Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

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Week 8 Holocaust Comics

Tezuka, Osamu. (1996). Adolf, Volume 1: A Tale of the Twentieth Century. New York: VIZ Media. 
Tezuka, Osamu. (1996). Adolf, Volume 2: An Exile In Japan. New York: VIZ Media.   
Tezuka, Osamu. (1996). Adolf, Volume 3: The Half-Aryan. New York: VIZ Media.   
Tezuka, Osamu. (1996). Adolf, Volume 4: Days Of Infamy. New York: VIZ Media.  
Tezuka, Osamu. (1997). Adolf, Volume 5: 1945 And All That Remains. New York: VIZ Media.   

Spiegelman, Art. (2003). The Complete Maus. New York: Penguin Books.

Lau, Lisa. (2007). Re-Orientalism: The Perpetration and Development of Orientalism by Orientals. In Modern Asian Studies. Published online by Cambridge University Press 21Aug2007.

Young, James, E. (1998). The Holocaust as Vicarious Past: Art Spiegelman's "Maus" and the Afterimages of History. In Critical Inquiry, Vol. 24, No. 3. (Spring), pp. 666-699.

Week 9 True Stories – Documentary and Witnessing

White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (2007). Dir. Okazaki, Steven. HBO Home Video.

Maclear, Kyo Iona, (1998). Beclouded visions: Hiroshima-Nagasaki and the art of witness. New York: State University of New York Press.

Paper Proposals Due

Week 10 Words Only – Atomic Literature

Oe, Kenzaburo, (Ed.). (1994). The Crazy Iris: And Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath. New York: Grove Press.

Treat, J. (1995). Atrocity into Words. In Writing ground zero: Japanese literature and the atomic bomb, pp. 25-44. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Morris-Suzuki , Tessa. (2001). Truth, postmodernism and historical revisionism in Japan. In Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 2, Issue 2, pages 297 – 305.

Week 11 Images Only – WWII in Contemporary Japanese Visual Art

Tomiyama, Taeko. Kitsune Monogatari (The Fox Story). Slideshow installation.

Murakami, Takashi, (Ed.). (2005). Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture. New Haven: Yale University Press.

First Draft of Papers Due
Week 12 Paper Presentations I
Week 13 Paper Presentations II
Week 14 Final Versions of Paper Due

RECOMMENDED READING

• Dower, John, W. (2000). Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: W. W. Norton & Company
• Gluck, Carol. (1987). Japan's Modern Myths. Princeton University Press.
• Hersey, John. (1989). Hiroshima. New York: Vintage.
  
• Karatani, Kojin. (1993). The discursive space of modern Japan. In Japan in the world, Miyoshi Masao & Harootunian, H. D. (Eds.), pp. 288-315. Durham. Duke University Press.
• Shimazu, Naoko. (2006). Nationalisms in Japan. New York & London: Routledge.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING

• Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990). Dir. Kurosawa, Akira. Warner Home Video.
• Hiroshima Mon Amour (1960). Dir. Resnais, Alain. Criterion.
• I Live in Fear (Record of a Living Being – Ikimono no kiroku). (1953). Dir. Kurosawa, Akira. AV Channel.
• Rhapsody in August. (2003). Dir. Kurosawa, Akira. MGM.

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Last reviewed 1/4/2008 7:20:09 PM