Jan 2
HIEA 112 (Winter 2022)
History of Japan: Mid-19th Century to US Occupation
Email: wmatsumura@ucsd.edu
Class format:
UPDATED ON JANUARY 9:
All faculty received notice on January 6 (after I made the above edit) that the Academic Senate’s Educational Policy Committee has decided to grant an “emergency limited-term exception” to the Policy on Distance Education Courses to allow any course to be taught remotely for this quarter. We also attended a town hall on UCSD’s covid response, which is available on youtube here. In an effort to maintain some sense of consistency, I’ve decided to keep this class in the format that I outlined in my January 6th update, which means that we will be completely asynchronous, with optional zoom sessions every Thursday until the end of the quarter. While I would love more than anything to meet you in-person, I would not be able to forgive myself if I were to play some part in creating negative health outcomes for any of you, UCSD staff who have to work in person, my own family, or communities in SD that would be impacted. I wanted to communicate this decision with you as soon as possible so that you are able to quickly find another course if you still feel strongly about keeping open the possibility of reconvening in person after January 31st. Please feel free to ask me any questions via email, during our optional Thursday zoom sessions, or through slack. The link to the Thursday zoom sessions is here.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course examines the emergence of the modern Japanese nation-state as a bounded entity, which was co-constitutive of its emergence as an empire. It will trace the transformation of a loosely integrated early modern realm into a defeated empire, interrogating the very category of “modernity” along the way. Close attention will be paid to the experiences of marginalized peoples — women, colonial subjects, workers, and so on — whose presence contributed to and often disrupted Japanese self-understandings of its place and position in the world.
REQUIRED READINGS
All required readings are available in the course google drive here.
For those of you who prefer to have a standard narrative history of modern Japan as a guide, the textbook, Modern Japan by Peter Duus is an excellent source. If that one is difficult to access, Andrew Gordon’s A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present is also good. (Copies of both are available in the library)
Lectures may mention the readings in passing, but for the most part, they are designed to provide useful context and an interpretive framework through which you can better understand the texts.
COURSE FORMAT
Due to the continuing concerns about the impact that covid will have on students’ ability to make it to class, I will offer all course content asynchronously. However, because I understand that having the opportunity to meet safely in-person and interact with faculty + peers is also extremely important, I will hold in-person lectures beginning in week 3 (January 18) at our usual class time. This is subject to change in consultation with university guidelines.
EXPECTATIONS/ASSIGNMENTS
- I ask that you do your best to keep up with the slack group discussion (see weekly course schedule for discussion questions), and that you use that virtual space to talk to one another. If you are unable to contribute a particular week, please try to let your fellow group members know. If you notice that one of your group members has not contributed recently, please reach out to see if they are doing ok. For those of you who attend the in-person sessions, I will try to leave some time at the end of each class for you to be able to work on this.
- In addition to participating in the slack group discussion, you will be responsible for writing two (2) posts on your Medium page in response to discussion questions posted in the course schedule (week 3 and week 7). These responses will ask you to reflect on the readings, so please keep up as best as you can.
- Your final project asks that you to think like a historian: take one topic or theme that we considered in this course, and think about how you would approach it differently, based on your own positionality. Please click here for the prompt.
ASSESSMENT
The primary mode of assessment for this course will be through self-reflection (of how you have done on the 3 assignments listed above). Because I recognize that each of you are living through different challenges, whether they be personal, financial, or academic, your grade for this course will be based on the principles of ungrading, which invite you to reflect upon your own conditions and learning. Those of you who would like to learn more about this can refer to the writings and research of Dr. Jesse Stommel, an expert on the topic, which is available here. A piece, “Grades are Dehumanizing, Ungrading is No Simple Solution” expresses the general pedagogical philosophy that I hope to practice in this course.
The final course grade will therefore be determined in the end by your self-assessments and consultation with the course graders, who will be reading your posts and discussions. **I cannot submit a grade for you without your two self-assessments (due February 8th and March 17th). Please complete as thoroughly as you can.
ACCESSIBILITY
I am committed to accessibility. While I of course, accept formal accommodations, please contact me any time via email if you have any (additional) accessibility concerns that you would like me to address. The lectures will be provided via class podcasting, and lecture transcripts are available upon request.
COURSE SCHEDULE
WEEK 1
January 4: The tasks for this week are a bit tedious, but it will get easier once you get used to the rhythm of the course.
Sign up for slack, join the course page. Join a discussion group (there are 12 groups created — please join one with up to10 members)
Sign up for Medium (all you’ll need is a free account), create a profile, making sure to upload a picture (of you or something that represents you). **write an initial post where you respond to the following question: what is your relationship to Japan?
Once you are done writing your post, please make sure to share a link to it on the slack channel that you joined— this is the best way that you will be able to find each other. Don’t forget to comment on at least 2 of your classmates’ posts.
(this exercise is to get you used to this mode of interaction with your group — if you have any questions, please ask them before reaching out to me)
I will hold a session on zoom at our scheduled course time, 5–6:20pm to answer any questions you may have. Please make sure to attend if you have questions about the way this course is organized. For those who cannot make it, please post any questions you have to your slack discussion channel so your classmates can help you out.
January 6:
Read: “Collection of Swords, 1588” “Edict on Change of Status, 1591,” “Control of Daimyo, 1595” and “Expulsion of Missionaries, 1587” (Find all under Lu Unification)
Lecture 1: Click here for powerpoint with embedded audio. Audio-only file is here.
DISCUSS IN YOUR SLACK CHANNEL:
What are the long-term impacts that Hideyoshi’s edicts may have had upon social relations between ordinary people of different strata? For example, how do you think the directive that farmers no longer would be allowed to have weapons, impacted their day-to-day lives?
WEEK 2
January 11:
Read: “Excerpts from the Document on the Form of Government (Seitaisho), 1868” “Five Notice Boards, April 6 1868,” “Memorial on the Return of Feudal Domains and Census Registers, March 5 1869,” “Opinion on Military Affairs and Conscription, 1872” (Find under Lu, Meiji Restoration)
Lecture 2: Click here for powerpoint with embedded audio. Audio-only file is here.
DISCUSS IN YOUR SLACK CHANNEL
What were the new Meiji regime’s main priorities, judging from these founding documents? What problems do you anticipate in their implementation?
January 13:
Read: “Iwakura Mission of 1871,” Takashi Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy, chapter 2.
Lecture 3: Click here for powerpoint with embedded audio. Audio-only file is here.
DISCUSS IN YOUR SLACK CHANNEL
Share the most interesting think about the Iwakura Mission report — what surprised you most about the report’s characterization of the United States? What does Fujitani’s chapter tell us about the existence (or not) of a shared sense of nation in Japan in the early Meiji period?
WEEK 3
January 18:
Read: Komori Yoichi, “Rule in the Name of ‘Protection’: The Vocabulary of Colonialism” and “Hokkaido Former Natives Protection Law (Law №27, March 1, 1899) both in Reading Colonial Japan. Also read Fukuzawa Yukichi, “Goodbye Asia, 1885”
Lecture 4: Click here for powerpoint with embedded audio. Audio-only file is here.
DISCUSS IN YOUR SLACK CHANNEL
Why do you think states like to use the language of “protection” when they are enacting violent and extractive policies? Can you think of similar instances from other contexts?
January 20:
Read: Kotoku Shusui, “Against the Wartime Tax, 1904” and Andrew Gordon, “Crowd and Imperial Politics in Modern Japan”
Lecture 5: Click here for powerpoint with embedded audio. Audio-only file is here.
DISCUSS IN YOUR SLACK CHANNEL
Why do you think so many people came out to protest against the government beginning in 1905? How significant do you think this action was in terms of political consciousness (think in relation to the moment we are living in right now)?
MEDIUM post #1 due by Friday, January 21 (please don’t forget to post a link to it in your slack channel so your classmates can comment):
Put yourself in the shoes of an Ainu person who lived through the extension of the boundaries of the old Tokugawa regime to include your ancestral homelands. How might your life change on an everyday level? How might you respond, either individually or collectively to this imposition of colonial rule over you?
{For those of you who would like more information about the Ainu, please read Michele Mason’s “Writing Ainu Out,” which is available in the course readings folder.}
***As a general rule of thumb, this medium post should be no longer than 500 words. Please make sure to address the Meiji regime’s nation-building policies as expressed in the readings and lectures from weeks 2 and 3, and think about how Ainu people would have experienced the imposition of settler colonial policies on their lands. What aspects of their lives would have changed immediately? Which would not? The last question about how you might respond to these changes is a speculative one — given the options at your disposal and your own proclivities, how might you decide to respond and why? When you reference primary documents like the Meiji era unification documents, or the Former Natives Protection Law, please be as specific as possible and use quotes from the texts as much as possible. When you reference secondary documents like Fujitani or Komori, please make sure to provide attribution in some way: you can either say something like: “As Fujitani argues on p. XX, the imperial progresses were designed to establish national unity through the emperor…”
WEEK 4
January 25:
Read: Louise Young, Beyond the Metropolis: Second Cities and Modern Life in Interwar Japan, chapter 1
Lecture 6: Click here for powerpoint with embedded audio. Audio-only file is here.
DISCUSS IN YOUR SLACK CHANNEL
How do you think the Hibiya Riots (1905) and the Rice Riots (1918) differed in their societal significance? Do you think the difference had anything to do with the primary actors involved?
January 27:
Read: Mark Caprio, “Post-March 1st Policy Reform and Assimilation.” Also watch KANO (2014), available on UCSD library course reserve.
Lecture 7: Click here for powerpoint with embedded audio. Audio-only file is here.
DISCUSS IN YOUR SLACK CHANNEL
What do you think about the tenor of the historiography on Japan’s colonization of Korea and Taiwan, as being somewhat improved from the late 1910s because there was a shift from “military” to “cultural” rule? Do you buy this assessment?
WEEK 5
February 1:
Read: Sonia Ryang, “The Great Kanto Earthquake and the Massacre of Koreans in 1923: Notes on Japan’s Modern National Sovereignty”
Lecture 8: Click here for powerpoint with embedded audio. Audio-only file is here.
DISCUSS IN YOUR SLACK CHANNEL
Why do you think Sonia Ryang selected the concept of homo sacer in order to make sense of the 1923 massacre of 6,000 Korean people living in mainland Japan by a combination of police and vigilantes? How does the notion of the “unsacrificeable Korean” help her make an argument about the nature of Japanese modernity?
February 3:
Read: Tanizaki Junichiro, Namoi
Lecture 9: Click here for powerpoint with embedded audio. Audio-only file is here.
DISCUSS IN YOUR SLACK CHANNEL
Discuss the jarring contrast between Ryang’s modernity and the one depicted by Tanizak in his novel. How do we reconcile the two?
WEEK 6
February 8:
Use this day to catch up or take a rest. Start watching Mizoguchi Kenji’s Osaka Elegy (1936) available through the ucsd library (use vpn) or here.
(no lecture)
Self assessment #1due on this day.
**UPDATE: The googleform is working again. Since there were disruptions, I am extending the deadline to the end of the week, February 13th (any time)
February 10:
Read: “Manchu Girl,” and Kimberly Kono, “Imperializing Motherhood.”
Lecture 10: Click here for powerpoint with embedded audio. Audio-only file is here.
DISCUSS IN YOUR SLACK CHANNEL
Why do you think mobilizing women for nation and empire-building, in particular, in the domestic sphere (the home, the family, motherhood) was so important for the state?
WEEK 7
February 15:
Read: Takashi Yoshida, “Mobilizing the Nation, Sanitizing Aggression”
Lecture 11: Click here for powerpoint with embedded audio. Audio-only file is here.
*This lecture is very short, but please read the sample textbook entries carefully and think about the way that historical fact (Nanjing Massacre) gets neutralized or erased through historical representation (textbook narrative) in relation to the way that you have been taught in whatever educational system you grew up under.
DISCUSS IN YOUR SLACK CHANNEL
What does Yoshida’s discussion of the way that the media’s reporting on the Nanjing Massacre downplayed its atrocities tell us about the role that non-state and non-military actors played in Japan’s total war?
February 17:
Read: Shimada Keizo, “Adventures of Dankichi,” Kawamura Minato, “Popular Orientalism,” “The Way of Subjects, 1941”
Lecture 12: Click here for powerpoint with embedded audio. Audio-only file is here.
Medium Post #2 due by MONDAY FEBRUARY 21 (please don’t forget to post a link to it in your slack channel so your classmates can comment):
Read “The Way of Subjects” alongside “Goodbye Asia” from week 3. What has remained consistent in the justifications that each piece makes for imperialism, and what has transformed over the course of 55 years? What do you think accounts for the main changes?
Week 8
February 22:
Read: Matthew Allen, “Wolves at the Back Door: Remembering the Kumejima Massacres”
Lecture 13: Click here for powerpoint with embedded audio. Audio-only file is here.
DISCUSS IN YOUR SLACK CHANNEL
What is a spy? Do you think it is possible to be considered a “spy” as a colonial subject?
February 24:
Read: “Diary of a Housewife, 1943–1945,” “Imperial Rescript on Surrender, 1945”
Lecture 14: Click here for powerpoint with embedded audio. Audio-only file is here.
DISCUSS IN YOUR SLACK CHANNEL
How does “Diary of a Housewife” complicate your understanding of the Japanese wartime experience? What does it reveal about the relationship between city and countryside?
Week 9
March 1:
Read: John Dower, War Without Mercy (excerpts)
Lecture 15: Click here for powerpoint with embedded audio. Audio-only file is here.
DISCUSS IN YOUR SLACK CHANNEL
Are you convinced by Dower’s argument in War Without Mercy that the Japanese and Allied forces expressed a great deal of racial animosity during the war, and that this drove its particularly high civilian casualty numbers?
March 3:
Watch: Kurosawa Akira, No Regrets for our Youth (1946)on Kanopy here.
Read: Yoshimoto, “No Regrets for Our Youth.”
Lecture 16: Click here for powerpoint with embedded audio. Audio-only file is here.
DISCUSS IN YOUR SLACK CHANNEL
Considering the intense racial animosity that Dower outlines in his work, why do you think that the Japanese and US governments were so quick to see each other as allies? Do you think that this transition was as quick for ordinary people?
Week 10
March 8:
Read: Tessa Morris Suzuki, “Invisible Immigrants: Undocumented Migration and Border Controls in Early Postwar Japan”
Lecture 17: Click here for powerpoint with embedded audio. Audio-only file is here.
DISCUSS IN YOUR SLACK CHANNEL
Think about the previous discussion question. What questions are missing, considering Morris Suzuki’s description of how former colonial subjects were treated following surrender?
March 10:
Zoom session for final class instead of in-person session. I will be available at this time to answer any questions about the final assignment, due on the day of our scheduled final exam, March 17, 2022 .
March 17, 2022: final assignment prompt is here. Self assessment #2 also due on this day. It is available here.
