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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures : Asian Studies

Postgraduate Course: State, Society and National Identity in Japan after 1989 (ASST11075)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Literatures, Languages and Cultures CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThis course will map out and interrogate the contours of continuity and change in Japanese society from 1989 to the present.
Course description 1. Studying post-cold war Japan: legacies of the past
2. Politics and the economy after 1989: towards a new 'system'?
3. Shifting state, individual relations in post-1989 Japan: risk and human security
4. Questioning the nation at the end of the 20th century
5. Neo-conservative tendencies in Japanese society and education policies
6. The Demographic Shift: Japan's Aging Society
7. Difference and multiculturalism in the 'New Japan': Japan's minorities
8. Japan's New Working Class : the advent of a kakusa-shakai?
9. Gender 1: Women and the Economy
10. Gender 2: (Re)producing Gender in Japan

This course will map out and interrogate the contours of continuity and change in Japanese society from 1989 to the present. The first section covers major political, societal and identity related shifts in Japan at the end of the Cold War. This sets the stage for a thematic section, which zooms in on specific cases of identity and difference in contemporary Japanese society, including questions of ethnicity, class, age and gender. This approach will enable students to build both synchronic and diachronic knowledge of the relationship between state, society and identity in post-Cold War Japan.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Discuss major changes in Japanese politics, society and identity since the end of the Cold War
  2. Critically apply analytical concepts such as 'risk' 'identity' and 'difference' to Japan, as well as use those concepts elsewhere
  3. Present detailed, evidence-based arguments both in oral and written form
  4. Quickly locate, utilise and critique relevant literature
  5. Use knowledge acquired from the course to appraise news media and popular discourses on Japanese society
Reading List
Segers, R.T., 2008, A New Japan for the Twenty-First Century: an Inside Overview of Current Fundamental Changes. London: Routledge.
Gaunder, A., 2011, The Routledge Handbook of Japanese Politics. London: Routledge.
Sugimoto, Y., 2010, An Introduction to Japanese Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Gordon, A., ed., 1993, Postwar Japan as History. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
KeywordsSSNIJ
Contacts
Course organiserDr Christopher Perkins
Tel: (0131 6)50 4174
Email: Chris.Perkins@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMiss Charlotte McLean
Tel: (0131 6)50 4114
Email: cmclean9@exseed.ed.ac.uk
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