Asian Languages & Civilization 220 - Reinventing Tokyo: The Art, Literature, and Politics of Japan's Modern Capital

(Offered as ASLC 220, ARCH 220, and ARHA 256) Tokyo is the political, cultural, and economic center of Japan, the largest urban conglomeration on the planet, holding 35 million people, fully one-fifth of Japan’s population. Since its founding 400 years ago, when a small fishing village became Edo, the castle headquarters of the Tokugawa shoguns, the city has been reinvented multiple times—as the birthplace of Japan’s early modern urban bourgeois culture, imperial capital to a nation-state, center of modern consumer culture, postwar democratic exemplar, and postmodern metropolis. The class will focus on the portrayals of Tokyo and its reinventions in art, literature, and politics from the end of the Edo period to the present day. It will examine the changes that took place as the city modernized and Westernized in the Meiji era, became the center of modern urban life in Japan before the Second World War, and rebuilt itself as the center of the country’s economic miracle in the postwar era. As the largest human cultural creation in Japan, one that endured political upheavals, fires, earthquakes, fire-bombings and unbridled development, Tokyo has always been a complex subject. We will use that complexity to engage in interdisciplinary thinking and to consider a culture different than one’s own.

The seminar will culminate with an 8-day trip to Tokyo, Japan in early January 2027. All students enrolled in the course are expected to participate in the trip. The cost of the trip will be covered by Amherst College. 

Limited to 12 Amherst College students. Open to sophomores and juniors. Admission with consent of the instructors. Preference is given to majors in the ASLC and ARHA Departments. Fall semester. Professors Maxey and Morse.

How to handle overenrollment: Interviews and reviews of students’ academic record will take place in Spring 2026 to determine the composition of the class. Preference is given to majors in the ASLC and ARHA Departments, then rising juniors, and sophomores.

Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: Written work, readings, independent research, oral presentations, group work, visual analysis, active participation in class discussion