A Brief Essay on Course Pedagogy
Class Schedule and Reading Assignments
When I first began teaching this course in 1980, world public opinion was giving much circulation to the projections of futurologist Herman Kahn, who believed that if the nineteenth century had been the "British century" and the twentieth century was been the "American century," then the twenty-first century was likely to be the "Japanese century." In matters of family values, economic organization, education, policy planning, and more, Japan's structures and values seemed to imbue it with special strength to succeed in the late modern world. Over the 1980s decade in this course, we watched and pondered as the economic prosperity and social stability Japan then enjoyed was massively inflated by a huge speculative run-up. But then this bubble burst suddenly at the end of the decade, and throughout the 1990s, we studied a Japan mired in serious economic stagnation. As we start a new millennial century, Kahn's prediction seems more folly than prescience. All of Japan's social structures and cultural values that seemed to make it invincible a decade ago are now cited by commentators as the root cause of political paralysis, dinosaur economics, and deep social malaise. As any reader of today's press knows, Japan faces withering criticism-as much for its social and cultural fabric as for the economic and political forms that are fashioned from that fabric.
Thus, the pendulum of analysis and commentary in mass media and policy forums as well as in academic disciplines swings wildly, but Japan remains a center of attention and controversy. From its workplaces, school system, and bureaucratic planning to its architecture, cuisine, and fashion, the presumed institutions and practices of Japanese society are analyzed and criticized on front pages and op-ed essays around the world. Not surprisingly, at this historical moment, the Japanese themselves are also reflecting concertedly on the nature of their society and its place in a world that has changed radically for them in the past decade. And within Japan as well, projections about the nature of its social arrangements range over the full spectrum, from dire pessimism to jingoistic pride.
Unfortunately, many of these analyses and self-analyses glide effortlessly across a polished veneer of Japanese life. Too often, we are as trapped by stereotypes of Japan as the Japanese are obsessed with superficial images of themselves. This course is designed to provide a more rigorous grounding in the patterns and experiences of Japanese lifeways. It is a comprehensive introduction to Japanese society and culture that aims to replace cultural clichés with anthropological analysis.
The course is open to anyone with a curiosity about Japan and a concern about the diverse conditions of modern life. We will range over many aspects of historical and contemporary Japan, and draw on scholarship in history, literature, religion, and the various social sciences. The course does, however, revolve around three broad issues that provide an underlying thematic coherence.
a. What is it that makes Japan a recognizable cultural and social entity? What cultural idioms and social institutions are distinctive, salient features of Japan and the Japanese? How can we talk about "distinctiveness" without falling into the false essentialism of "uniqueness"?
b. What has been the course of sociocultural change in Japan? In what ways are its present patterns continuous or discontinuous with its past? Have traditional values and behaviors been obstacles to modernization or have they provided solutions to problems of modernity? What have been the cultural politics of tradition? Is Japanese "modernity" the same as Euroamerican "modernity"?
c. What is happening in and to Japan as a new millennium begins? Is Japan a rising sun or a setting sun? Do the social arrangements of present-day Japan represent a highly and perhaps uniquely successful adaptation as an advanced industrial society? Or is the relative stability and prosperity the society has enjoyed over much of the late twentieth century now proving to be a fragile and temporary condition that is now unraveling?
These questions both motivate and organize this course. They are the central issues for any considered judgment of a country whose roots are deep in the East Asian past but whose place is now among the most influential nations of the world. The study of Japan challenges us to reevaluate the premises of Western social theory, and it rewards us with fresh understandings of the transformations to modernity and the nature and direction of modern life.