Professor: John Leisure

4 credits

This course surveys the history of Japan from ancient times to the present. We will examine early inhabitants of the archipelago, premodern state formation, aristocratic culture, and samurai rule. The course also explores the formation of modern political subjects, crises of sovereignty in Japan, and economic modernization. In the 20th century, we will interrogate imperialism, the Asia Pacific arena, and total war. The course concludes with post-WWII revitalization and the reconstruction of national identity through Olympic events and World Expos. In our final class session, we will examine the contemporary environment of Tokyo, while thinking about what it means to do history from the perspective of the present. Students in this course will be asked to analyze conventional categories that are often taken to be self-evident, such as politics, modernity, and the economy, while analyzing how the nation-as-subject (e.g. Japan) coordinates historical memory and our sense of time.