Anthropology 204 - Anthropology of Modern Japan

Certain keywords are crucial for understanding Japanese culture and society, words such as amae (dependence), uchi/soto (inside/outside), tatemae/honne (formality/true feeling), giri (obligation), hare/kegare (purity/pollution), seishin (spirit), and en (connection). This course will introduce seminal works that introduce some of these keywords, as well as more recent writing that examines the contexts such as the family, school, and workplace in which these cultural frameworks shape peoples' lives and are themselves reshaped. Also, we will attend to historical moments such as World War II, the postwar era of high-speed growth, and the long recession and era of low birth rate.