| Go to | Natsume | Tanizaki | Kawabata | Ooka | Ibuse | Murakami | Yoshimoto | | ||||||
| DATE (Week) |
Weekly Subject |
Lecture Discussion | Read/Preparation | |||
| Author | Chapter/Article | Book names | ||||
| 1 | 3/31 Tue |
PreModern Literature/ PreModern Self |
Class contents: Introduction, course mechanics, goals, etc. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4/2 Thu |
Faces of the PreModern Hero |
Murasaki Shikibu | "Evening Faces" | The Tale of Genji | ||
|
|
"Sanemori" "Nasu no Yoichi" "The Dropped Bow" |
The Tale of the Heike | ||||
| Ejima Kiseki |
"Characters of Worldly Young Women" "A Wayward Wife" |
|||||
| 2 | 4/7 Tue |
The Prisonhouse of Culture | Approaches to Modern Japanese Literature | Donald Keene | "Introduction" | Modern Japanese Literature |
| Janet Walker | "Introduction" | The Japanese Novel of the Meiji Period and the Ideal of the Individual | ||||
| 4/9 Thu |
Translating the Modern Self | The Meiji Restoration and Translations of the Modern Self | Stephen Greenblatt | "Culture" | Critical Terms for Literary Study edited by Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. |
|
| "The Meiji Era" (including "The Charter Oath," "The Constitution of 1868," and "The Imperial Rescript on Education") | Sources of Japanese Tradition | |||||
| Samuel Smiles | Self-Help | |||||
| Fukuzawa Yukichi | "An Encouragement of Learning" | |||||
| Kanagaki Robun | excerpts | The Beefeater | ||||
| Hattori Busho | "The Western Peep Show" | |||||
| 3 | 4/14 Tue |
Translations of the Modern Self, II | Language and the Individual | Futabatei Shimei | "An Odd Beginning to a Love Story: Part I" and Chapter 19 | Ukigumo/The Floating Cloud |
| Higuchi Ichiyo | "Child's Play" | In the Shade of Spring Leaves: The Life of Higuchi Ichiyo with Nine of Her Best Short Stories | ||||
| 4/16 Thu |
Interiority/Exteriority and Confession | Shimazaki Toson | "The Broken Commandment" | |||
| Tayama Katai | "The Quilt" | |||||
| Ishikawa Takuboku | "The Romaji Diary" | |||||
| 4 | 4/21 Tue |
Soseki's Individualism | Breaking the Chains of Isolation | Natsume Soseki | Kokoro | |
| 4/23 Thu |
Dillemmas of the Modern Self | Natsume Soseki | "My Individualism" | |||
| 5 | 4/28 Tue |
Midterm examination | ||||
| 4/30 Thu |
Constructing East/Constructing West, I | An Eastern West | Tanizaki Jun'ichiro | Some Prefer Nettles | ||
| 6 | 4/28 Tue |
Constructing East/Constructing West, II | A Western East | Kawabata Yasunari | Snow Country | |
| 4/30 Thu |
The Japanese Myth of Ambiguity | Kawabata Yasunari | "Japan, the Beautiful, and Myself" | |||
| 7 | 5/5 Tue |
The War and the Occupation | Writers and the Greater East Asian War | Ooka Shohei | Fires on the Plain | |
| 5/7 Thu |
Literature of the Defeated | Nosaka Akiyuki | "American Hijiki" | |||
| Kojima Nobuo | "American School" | |||||
| 8 | 5/12 Tue |
Writing Degree Zero--Literature and the Atomic Bomb | Who is to Speak, and How? | Ibuse Masuji | Black Rain | |
| 5/14 Thu |
Women Writers and the Bomb | Ota Yoko | "Fireflies" | The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath | ||
| Sata Ineko | "The Colorless Paintings" | The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath | ||||
| 9 | 5/19 Tue |
Exporting "Japan" | Reread Kawabata Yasunari | "Japan, the Beautiful, and Myself" | ||
| Oe kenzaburo | "Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness" | |||||
| Oe kenzaburo | "Japan, the Dubious, and Myself" | |||||
| 5/21 Thu |
The Postmodern Condition | TBA | ||||
| 10 | 5/26 Tue |
Postmodern Japan | Murakami Haruki | A Wild Sheep Chase | ||
| 5/28 Thu |
Can Japan be Postmodern? | TBA | ||||
| 11 | 6/2 Tue |
Postmodern Japan | Banana's Postmodernism | Yoshimoto Banana | Amrita | |
| 6/8 Mon |
final papers due | |||||
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