HIEA 115: Social and Cultural History of Modern Japan (Spring 22)
Professor Wendy Matsumura: wmatsumura@ucsd.edu
Please email me or send me a slack dm if you would like to schedule office hours.
[Peace Monument in Glendale, CA. https://www.publicartinpublicplaces.info/peace-monument-of-glendale-2013]
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Japanese culture and society changed dramatically with the establishment of the Meiji state in 1868. This course examines the transformation of older, more disparate cultural codes into what we know as “Japanese,” and traces the fights that people waged over definitions of culture within the context of Japan’s capitalist development, empire-building, and international wars. A concern that runs through this course is that of what historian narratives get constructed and by whom, and how those decisions impact the way that certain lives and deaths get remembered, celebrated, or memorialized. The photo you see above of a memorial in Glendale, California that honors the lives of Korean women who were recruited as so-called comfort women by the Japanese government into the military’s brothel system in the years preceding Japan’s entry into World War Two. The memorial’s siting in California, as well as the intense conflicts that its presence continues to provoke, indicate to us that the legacies of Japanese empire — formally dissolved after World War Two — remain present today, much closer to home than we might think. By the end of this course, you will understand the historical conditions that connect Meiji Japan to Glendale California through the figure of the so-called comfort woman — one of many young girls and women who paid an extremely heavy price for Japan’s economic successes of the 20th century.
COURSE FORMAT
Because we are still in a pandemic, this course will try to do its part in: a. keeping campus density down; b. providing as much flexibility and accessibility to students as possible. To these ends, all course material will be available asynchronously. Because I know that it is important for many of you to have in-person classes, I will be holding these once a week, on Tuesdays from 5–6:20 for as long as it is safe to do so. These Tuesday meetings are optional, and if you do not feel safe attending classes in person, do not worry: these sessions will be available as podcasts via the this page. The rest of the course discussion will take place primarily through the course slack page asynchronously. There are many students in this class who have taken my courses before. If you are unsure about what is going on, please feel free to pose a question in your slack channel or in the general channel and I or one of your classmates can provide clarity and reassurance.
REQUIRED READINGS
All required readings are available in the course googledrive here.
COURSE EXPECTATIONS AND ASSESSMENT
First and foremost, we are still in a pandemic. During the over 2 years that I have been teaching in this pandemic, I have found that flexibility is key for students to be able to continue learning as they deal with even more unpredictable situations than usual. The mode of assessment that I have found best suited to these times operates on a principle of ungrading, begins from a recognition that each of you are living through different challenges, whether they be personal, financial, or academic. Ungrading invites you to reflect upon your own conditions and upon your own learning as an active participant in the course. Dr. Jesse Stommel, an expert on the topic, outlines the main ideas of ungrading 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 most important thing that I hope that we can all practice here is trust and kindness — these terms may seem out of place in a classroom setting for some of you, but I have found that students have gotten the most out of my classes when I operate from these principles, with the understanding that everyone learns at their own pace, often at one that does not conform to the academic cycle.
The primary mode of assessment for this course is therefore self-reflection (of how you think you have done on the assignments listed below). Your final grade will be determined by 2 self-reflections (one midterm and one final), in consultation with your course TA, who will be reading your posts and discussions. I cannot submit a grade for you without your 2 self-reflections, so please make sure that you turn these in.
Assignments:
- In addition to the 2 self-reflections, you are expected to keep up with your weekly slack group discussions. The slack group is a virtual space for you to discuss your ideas with each other. If you are unable to contribute a particular week or if you are getting behind, please communicate with your group members. If you notice that one (or more) of your group members has not contributed recently, please reach out to make sure they are ok.
- You will be responsible for 2 Medium posts (#1 due April 19 and #2 due May 19). The prompts for these will be linked to the course schedule below.
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
ALL COURSE READINGS ARE AVAILABLE ON THE COURSE GOOGLEDRIVE HERE
WEEK 1: COURSE INTRODUCTION, NATIONS AND GENDER (3/29 AND 3/31)
Come to Tuesday’s class or listen to the podcast (powerpoint only here)
Read: Benedict Anderson, “Imagined Communities” and Anne McClintock’s “Family Feuds.”
Sign up for slack, join the course page. Join a discussion group (there are 7 groups created — please join one with less than 10 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: Is exclusion (whether it takes sexist, ableist, racist, or other forms) necessary to nationalism according to Anderson and McClintock? How do their definitions of nation help you make sense of your own national community?
Also sign up for the course slack channel using an ucsd email address. Join one of the 7 discussion groups channels set up for this course (there should be 10 people per group). Please share a link to your Medium post (above) to your slack group channel.
WEEK 2: The FAMILY AND WOMEN’S WORK IN MEIJI JAPAN (4/5 AND 4/7)
Come to Tuesday’s class or listen to the podcast (powerpoint only here)
Read: Meiji Civil Code sections and Patricia Tsurumi, “Whose History is it Anyway?”
Discuss in your slack channel: How does the Meiji Civil Code define full personhood? How does the Meiji Civil Code allow Japanese women to become incorporated into the newly established nation-state? What stock should we place in the Civil Codes in determining the way that Japanese women moved and lived in this period (think about how legal structures restrict, empower, and otherwise impact your everyday lives)?
WEEK 3: COLONIALISM, CUSTOM, AND GENDER (4/12 AND 4/14)
Come to Tuesday’s class or listen to the podcast (powerpoint only here)
Read: Sungyun Lim, “Women on the Loose.”
**MEDIUM POST #1 (DUE 4/19): Write and publish a post addressing the following questions: How do you think changes to the colonial legal system in Taiwan or Korea impact the way that women were viewed by local (Korean or Taiwanese) elites? Might this differ by class, region, etc.? Do you agree with the argument that changes that favored women vis a vis patriarchal households were only advanced because they were profitable to the interests of Japanese capital? If you agree with the above statement, what does it say about the way that you view how historical change takes place more generally? (who/what is the main driver of transformation?) Make sure to post a link to this post in your slack discussion channel. In addition to writing your own post, please make sure to comment on at least 2 of your group-mates’ posts. This post is due on Thursday, April 19th by end of day. A set of additional guidelines can be found here.
WEEK 4: WORLD WAR ONE AND THE EMERGENCE OF HOUSEWORK (4/19 AND 4/21)
Come to Tuesday’s class or listen to the podcast (powerpoint only here)
Read: Wendy Matsumura, “More than Wife Corps”
Please post MEDIUM POST #1 to your slack discussion group by 4/19
Self-reflection #1 is due by end of day on Sunday, 4/24. Click here for the googleform.
WEEK 5: “BURAKU” WOMEN AND THE ASAMA STRUGGLE (4/26 AND 4/28)
For the next three weeks, you will encounter the stories of differentially racialized women who lived in the Japanese empire. This week, I will narrate the story of an elderly buraku woman who lived in a small village called Asama in Mie prefecture. Asama was located in the heart of what might be called Japan’s spiritual center, the Ise region, which is best known as being the location of Ise Shrine, one of the most important Shinto shrines in the nation. During the period I discuss, her hometown experienced many changes that were tied to the state and railroad companies’ efforts to promote religious tourism. Asama village was the site of Kongoshoji Temple, one of the 3 major destinations for people who were interested in participating in pilgrimage to the Ise shrine area. Two photographs of what the contested region looks like are here and here. (the “buraku” and “non-buraku” neighborhoods are divided by the bridge you see in the second photo)
Come to Tuesday’s class or listen to the podcast (powerpoint only here)
Read: Saidiya Hartman, “The Anarchy of Colored Girls Assembled in a Riotous Manner.”
Watch a short video of Hartman compiled by the MacArthur Foundation, which gave her a “genius grant,” see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG5Y8NDdGtY
Discuss in your slack channel: Is the way that the report mobilized the elderly, unnamed, buraku woman satisfying for you? What does the report help us understand about the way that individuals from the 140 buraku farm households felt as they fought for access to the commons? How does your assessment change if I remind you that according to the Meiji Civil Code, “buraku” women, like non-“buraku” women, would not have enjoyed full control over property and political rights even if their community had won equal access to the commons? What more expansive ways might we think about the unnamed “buraku” woman’s determination not to “die in the darkness?” Thinking with the way that Hartman wrote about Esther Brown, what kinds of sources would you need to do this kind of work?
WEEK 6: OKINAWA’S BLUE CLERKS (5/3 AND 5/5)
This week, I introduce you to a young woman named Iha Yoneko who lived in a place called Ishikawa, in Misato village, Okinawa prefecture. By treating much of what is revealed about her life in the ledgers of the Farm Household Survey as Dionne Brand’s “right-hand ledgers,” I ask you to think about what stories about her should be told, and which stories should remain secrets. The main question I ask you to think about is here: who has the right to tell her story?
Come to Tuesday’s class or listen to the podcast (powerpoint only here)
Read: Excerpts from Dionne Brand, The Blue Clerk.
Discuss in your slack channel: Would your reading of Iha Yoneko’s death differ if you thought of her hometown, Okinawa, as part of the Japanese nation-state vs if you thought of it as a colonial space? If yes, in what ways Think about Yoneko’s life and death through Dionne Brand’s blue clerk. What new questions does Brand’s text force us to ask? In contrast to the right-hand pages that are made visible to the reader, Brand writes, “I have withheld…Nine left-hand pages [that] have already written their own left-hand pages…” those things that are “too delicate and beautiful for the present world.” How does your understanding of Yoneko’s life and death change if you think about what we know to also be the result of the withholding of records/the keeping of secrets?
WEEK 7: KOREAN MIGRANT WORKERS AND THE PROBLEM OF WORK (5/10 AND 5/12)
This week, I introduce you to the unnamed Korean women residing in the Japanese archipelago as colonized subjects whose lives and labors were erased due to the way that the national census recorded domestic and agricultural work in general. I also introduce you to a couple of Korean men, Pak and Min, who we encounter in the Farm Household Survey ledgers of the Ihara’s, who resided in a place called Hikogi in Okayama prefecture. I ask you to listen to all of their stories through Arondekar’s essay.
Come to Tuesday’s class or listen to the podcast (powerpoint only here)
Read: Anjali Arondekar, “Without a Trace.”
**MEDIUM POST #2 (DUE 5/19): Write and publish a post relating the discussions about the incompleteness of archives that you had in your groups through Korean, “buraku,” and Okinawan women and men who lived primarily in the Japanese countryside, to your own conditions today. The primary question I would like you to think about is what kind of history-writing about the lives of these women is ethical, and how is being careful about how we represent them using archival materials different from erasing them from history? To think through this question, reflect on the times that were are living right now. What sorts of experiences and relationships have been important to you in these pandemic times, that you think may not be recorded in official archives (Brand’s “right hand ledgers”) or make it into narratives of historical transformation? How might centering those experiences and relationships transform the way historians making sense of this moment think about 2022 even if they do not write explicitly about them? How many of the experiences and relationships that were meaningful for to you in this moment would you feel comfortable having future historians dig through? How does thinking about these questions change the way you think about the ethics of writing other people’s histories? Make sure to post a link to this post in your slack discussion channel. In addition to writing your own post, please make sure to comment on at least 2 of your group-mates’ posts. This post is due on Thursday, May 19th by end of day. The length and citational guidelines from Medium post #1 apply here.
WEEK 8:WARTIME MOBILIZATION AND IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD (5/17 AND 5/19)
Come to Tuesday’s class or listen to the podcast (powerpoint only here)
Read: Jennifer Robertson, “Japan’s First Cyborg?” and Cynthia Enloe, “Women — The Reserve Army of Army Labor”
Discuss in your slack channel: Do you agree with Robertson that there is an extremely thin line separating ideals of beauty and eugenic thinking and/or policy? Can you adapt some of Roberston’s analysis to the present? How do you imagine women like those I introduced in the past 3 weeks fared as the nation-state geared up for war in a way that mobilized Japanese women for the war machine?
Please post MEDIUM POST #2 to your slack discussion channel by 5/19
WEEK 9: SEXUAL VIOLENCE, RACIALIZED LABOR, AND JAPANESE IMPERIALISM (5/24 AND 5/26)
Come to Tuesday’s class or listen to the podcast (powerpoint only here)
Read: Sarah Soh, “From Imperial Gifts to Sex Slaves.”
View: The Murmuring
Discuss in your slack channel: What are the benefits to Soh’s choice to not use the language of ‘sexual slavery’ to describe the “comfort women” and use instead, ‘public sex’ performed largely by impoverished women within a system of structural violence that surpassed the era of colonial Japanese rule?What are some of the drawbacks/possible risks to this approach? Why do you think she insists on it nonetheless? What do you think Soh would think of the memorial in Glendale — in particular, its representation of the “comfort women” as a young woman? In your opinion (turning away from Soh), what do you think is important to keep in mind in thinking about acts of commemoration in the aftermath of such a severe, mass, and state-directed violence against women? Should memorializing be separate from the act of grieving?
WEEK 10: AFTERLIVES OF EMPIRE (5/31 AND 6/2)
Come to Tuesday’s final class if you have any remaining questions. (no lecture)
There are no readings or lectures for this week. Please use this time to catch up on any assignments you have not turned in.
**Final self-reflection is due on 6/9. Click here for the googleform (this will be up by the end of week 10).