Subject | Humanities & Social Sciences

  • Learning

A Critical Introduction to the Study of Japan

This course is a review of the various pitfalls associated with taking "Japan" as an object of study. It offers concrete examples of the issues of orientalism, simplistic comparativism, and decontextualized essentialism. It argues that attaching the adjective "Japanese" to things, people, phenomena etc. is a comparative act that needs to be deconstructed if we are to say something meaningful. Several concrete examples are employed to illustrate these discussions and various suggestions are offered on how a study of "Japan" can be done without falling into the same traps.

Content/学習内容

Staff/スタッフ

    • Teacher
    loannis Gaitanidis
    Chiba University Graduate School of Global Transdisciplinary Studies
    Associate Professor

Competency/コンピテンシー

達成目標

  • 1) acquire basic knowledge about the problems of Area Studies
  • 2) think critically about what it means to “learn” about a country
  • 3) discover recent approaches espoused by researchers of Japan

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