Understanding Japan

184 Pages·1.377 MB·English

by  The Great Courses

Topic Subtopic
History Civilization & Culture
Understanding Japan:
A Cultural History
Course Guidebook
Professor Mark J. Ravina
Emory University
Smithsonian®
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Mark J. Ravina, Ph.D.
Professor of History
Emory University
P
rofessor Mark J. Ravina is Professor of
History at Emory University, where he has
taught since 1991. He received his A.B.
from Columbia University and his M.A. and
Ph.D. from Stanford University. He has been a
visiting professor at Kyoto University’s Institute
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the International Research Center for Japanese Studies. He has also received
research grants from the Fulbright Program, the Japan Foundation, the
Academy of Korean Studies, and the Association for Asian Studies.
Professor Ravina has published extensively in early modern Japanese
history, with a particular focus on the transnational and international aspects
of political change. He has also published research on Japanese and Korean
popular culture, Japanese economic thought, and the history of science. As a
public intellectual, he has appeared on CNN, CNN International, NPR, and
the History Channel.
A former director of the East Asian Studies Program at Emory University,
Professor Ravina has also served as president of the Southeast Conference of
the Association for Asian Studies. In addition, he is on the editorial board of
The Journal of Asian Studies.
Professor Ravina is currently completing a book entitled Japan’s Nineteenth-
Century Revolution: A Transnational History of the Meiji Restoration for
Oxford University Press. His previous books include The Last Samurai:
(cid:55)(cid:75)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:47)(cid:76)(cid:73)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:68)(cid:81)(cid:71)(cid:3)(cid:37)(cid:68)(cid:87)(cid:87)(cid:79)(cid:72)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:82)(cid:73)(cid:3)(cid:54)(cid:68)(cid:76)(cid:74)(cid:448)(cid:3)(cid:55)(cid:68)(cid:78)(cid:68)(cid:80)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:76) and Land and Lordship in Early
Modern Japan(cid:17)(cid:3)(cid:374)
i
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
Professor Biography ............................................................................i
Course Scope .....................................................................................1
LECTURE GUIDES
LECTURE 1
Japan: A Globally Engaged Island Nation ..........................................3
LECTURE 2
Understanding Japan through Ancient Myths ...................................10
LECTURE 3
The Emergence of the (cid:53)(cid:76)(cid:87)(cid:86)(cid:88)(cid:85)(cid:92)(cid:448) State ..............................................17
LECTURE 4
Aspects of the Japanese Language .................................................23
LECTURE 5
Early Japanese Buddhism ................................................................30
LECTURE 6
Heian Court Culture ..........................................................................37
LECTURE 7
The Rise of the Samurai ...................................................................44
LECTURE 8
Pure Land Buddhism and Zen Buddhism .........................................51
LECTURE 9
Samurai Culture in the Ashikaga Period ...........................................58
LECTURE 10
Japan at Home and Abroad, 1300–1600 ..........................................65
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Table of Contents
LECTURE 11
Japan’s Isolation in the Tokugawa Period ........................................72
LECTURE 12
Japanese Theater: Noh and Kabuki .................................................79
LECTURE 13
The Importance of Japanese Gardens .............................................86
LECTURE 14
The Meaning of (cid:37)(cid:88)(cid:86)(cid:75)(cid:76)(cid:71)(cid:448) in a Time of Peace ....................................93
LECTURE 15
Japanese Poetry: The Road to Haiku .............................................100
LECTURE 16
Hokusai and the Art of Wood-Block Prints ......................................107
LECTURE 17
The Meiji Restoration .....................................................................114
LECTURE 18
Three Visions of Prewar Japan ......................................................121
LECTURE 19
War without a Master Plan: Japan, 1931–1945 ..............................128
LECTURE 20
Japanese Family Life......................................................................135
LECTURE 21
Japanese Foodways.......................................................................142
LECTURE 22
Japan’s Economic Miracle ..............................................................149
LECTURE 23
Kurosawa and Ozu: Two Giants of Film .........................................156
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Table of Contents
LECTURE 24
The Making of Contemporary Japan ..............................................162
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
Bibliography ....................................................................................169
iv
About Our Partner
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continuous exploration by learners of all ages across these diverse areas
of study.
This course, Understanding Japan: A Cultural History, recounts the
extraordinary transformation of Japan from its modest ancient origins to the
development of the shogunate and to the Meiji Restoration; from the Russo-
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and the postwar economic miracle. Along the way, the course explains
fundamental elements of Japanese culture: the samurai warrior, the (cid:69)(cid:88)(cid:86)(cid:75)(cid:76)(cid:71)(cid:448)
(cid:70)(cid:82)(cid:71)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:82)(cid:73)(cid:3)(cid:75)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:87)(cid:75)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:78)(cid:68)(cid:80)(cid:76)(cid:78)(cid:68)(cid:93)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:70)(cid:88)(cid:79)(cid:87)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:87)(cid:75)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:76)(cid:81)(cid:192)(cid:88)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:70)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:82)(cid:73)(cid:3)(cid:61)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:3)(cid:37)(cid:88)(cid:71)(cid:71)(cid:75)(cid:76)(cid:86)(cid:80)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:68)(cid:81)(cid:71)(cid:3)(cid:87)(cid:75)(cid:72)(cid:3)
modern corporate psychology of Sony and Matsushita. In the end, the course
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Understanding Japan: A Cultural History
Scope:
J
apanese culture presents us with a paradox. Many aspects of Japan’s
culture seem insular and exclusive, and the Japanese people often pride
themselves on their distinctiveness. Yet the Japanese people are also
voracious consumers of foreign culture, and parts of Japanese culture have
gone global. Japanese automobiles, sushi, and animation are known around
the world. In this course, we’ll confront this paradox head on, looking at the
tension between globalization and isolation over two millennia of Japanese
history and culture.
We’ll begin in prehistoric Japan, when the islands were ruled by dozens
of warring kingdoms. Next, we’ll see how Japanese rulers confronted the
challenge of ancient globalization in the 6th through 8th centuries. When
powerful empires on the Asian continent threatened Japan both culturally
and militarily, Japanese rulers imported ideas, such as Confucianism and
Buddhism, and technologies, ranging from writing to metallurgy, to build a
newly powerful state. Then Japan fell into relative isolation, limiting contacts
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on imperial aristocrats in Kyoto and, later, on a rising warrior class. From
the 1300s to the 1600s, Japan experienced a second wave of globalization.
Westerners arrived in Japan and introduced new weapons—guns—and
new ideas—Christianity. Japanese merchants spread throughout East Asia,
establishing trading posts in China, Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam. Japanese
warlords sent envoys as far as Rome, and some converted to Christianity.
From the early 1600s, Japan returned to relative isolation, barring most
Japanese from leaving the country under penalty of death. Foreigners, both
Western and Chinese, were restricted to the port of Nagasaki. Then, in the
mid-1800s, Japan confronted a new challenge: powerful, aggressive, and
technologically advanced Western states. In response, Japanese leaders again
actively embraced foreign ideas and technologies, ranging from democracy
to the steam engine. That transformation produced the modern Japanese
state, able to challenge the West both economically and militarily.
1
In the course of this journey over two millennia, we’ll meet some remarkable
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from behind her male relatives. We’ll also meet Shinran, the charismatic
Buddhist preacher who spread his vision of salvation like a Christian gospel.
The 16th-century warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi rose from humble origins to
become the most powerful man in Japan, with dreams of a global empire.
In the modern period, we’ll meet both warmongers and peacemakers. In the
1920s, for example, Ishiwara Kanji wrote of a coming apocalyptic war with
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international cooperation.
In the last section of the course, we’ll consider Japan today. How have the
past two millennia of Japanese history shaped contemporary Japan? Do
decades of slow economic growth and the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster
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