CUHK - HIS5563

Lecturer:	Professor Yoko Miyakawa
Tutor:	Mr. Michael H. Lee
Lecture:	Time: 6:30-8:15 pm, Mondays;
	Venue: ELB 207
Tutorial:	Time: 8:20-9:35 pm, Selected Mondays;
	Venue: ELB 207

This is a survey course on modern Japanese history, covering the period from the late 19th century to the present. The course will explore various issues in Japan’s modern history: industrialization, development of mass media, imperialism and colonialism, nationalism, feminism, war, and democracy. The course will aim to achieve a general understanding of modern Japanese society in all its complexity through the study of its recent past.

Class schedule:

Lecture	Date	Theme
1	07 Sep 2009	Introduction: the background of the Meiji Restoration
2	14 Sep 2009	Making of the New State and “Civilization and Enlightenment”
3	21 Sep 2009	The Meiji Constitution and Freedom and People’s Rights Movement
4	28 Sep 2009	Industrialization
5	05 Oct 2009	War and the Empire
6	12 Oct 2009	Imperial Democracy
7	19 Oct 2009	Rural Life/Urban Milieu in Taisho Japan and Radicalism
8	02 Nov 2009	Japan’s Colonial Empire and the Rise of Militarism
9	09 Nov 2009	The Japan-China War
10	16 Nov 2009	The Pacific War
11	23 Nov 2009	The Allied Occupation and Yoshida Doctrine
12	30 Nov 2009	The Economic Miracle and the Season of Protest/ Student Presentation
13	07 Dec 2009	Japan in Affluence/ The End of Showa / Japan Today

The class consists of a 40 to 50-minute lecture and a 40 to 50-minute discussion of the book chapters and articles we read for the week. There are also 4 one-and-half-hour tutorials, the format and content of which will be announced later.

*Requirements:*	1)	participation in in-class discussion. This will be 10% of your grade.
	2)	participation in tutorials, making up 20 % of your grade.
	3)	two 5-6 page papers, due on the first week of November, on two of the several questions to be announced later. This will be 30% of your grade.
	4)	16-18 page research paper, due on the first week of December 2009, on any topic in modern Japanese history of your choice. This will make up 40 % of your grade.
* Please be reminded to honor academic integrity in your writing assignments. The information is available at <http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty>
*Required Texts:*	1)	James L. McClain, Japan: A Modern History (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002)—the book is available for purchase at the campus bookstore as well as on reserve in the Chung Chi Library;
	2)	other readings are on reserve in the Chung Chi Library as well as on the web.

Lecture	Required readings
1	None required, but recommended, McClain, Chapter 4 (119-154).
2	McClain, Chapter 5 (155-182); Sharon L. Sievers, Flowers in Salt: The Beginnings of Feminist Consciousness in Modern Japan, Chapters 1 & 2 (1- 25); Yukichi Fukuzawa, An Encouragement of Learning, Section 1-3 (1-20); Daikichi Irokawa, “The Impact of Western Culture” in The Culture of the Meiji Period, Chapter 2 (51-75).
3	McClain, Chapter 6 (183-206); Sievers, Chapter 3 (25-53); Itō Hirobumi, “Commentaries on Constitutional Provisions Relating to Emperor’s Position, 1899,” in Tim Megarry, ed., The Making of Modern Japan: A Reader, 183-186; “The German Influence: Roessler and the Framing of the Constitution,” in J. Pittau, Political Thought in Early Meiji Japan, 131-157; “The Imperial Rescript on Education” in W. T. de Bary, ed., Sources of Japanese Tradition, vol. 2, 139-40.
4	McClain, Chapter 7 (207-245), (Not required, but recommended: McClain, Chapter 8, 246-275); Sievers, Chapter 4 (54-86); Andrew Gordon, The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan: Heavy Industry, 1853-1955, Chapter 1 (17-50).
5	McClain, Chapter 9 (283-315); Sievers, Chapter 5 (87-113); Fukuzawa Yukichi, “De-Asianization” [Datsua-ron] in The Meiji Japan Through Contemporary Sources, 129-133; “Miyazaki Tōten: The Dream and the Life” [Introduction] in My Thirty-Three Years’ Dream: The Autobiography of Miyazaki Tōten, translated by Eto Shinkichi and Marius B. Jansen, xiii-xxviii. Recommended reading: Miyazaki Toten, My Thirty-Three Years’ Dream: the Autobiography of Miyazaki Toten (Chinese translation available in CUHK library).
6	McClain, Chapter 10 (316-332); Sievers, Chapter 6 (114-138); Shuichi Kato, “Taisho Democracy as the Pre-Stage for Japanese Militarism,” in B. Silberman and H. D. Harootunian, eds., Japan in Crisis, 217-236; Sheldon Garon, Molding Japanese Mind, Chapter 1 (40-59); “Fundamentals of Our National Polity,” in de Bary, ed., Sources of Japanese Tradition, 278-288
7	McClain, Chapter 10 & 11 (345-393); Barbara Satō, “The Moga Sensation: Perception of the Modan Gaaru in Japanese Intellectual Circles During the 1920s,” Gender and History 5.3 (Autumn 1993): 363-381; Gregory Kasza, The State and the Mass Medea in Japan: 1918-1945, Chapter 2 (28-53); (Not required, but recommended: Sievers, Chapters 8, 163-188).
8	McClain, Chapter 10, 12 (332-344, 393-397, 405-440); Lewis H. Gann, “Western and Japanese Colonialism: Some Preliminary Comparison,” in R. H. Myers and M. R. Peattie, eds., The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895-1945, 497-525; Ramon Myers, “Japanese Imperialism in Manchuria: The South Railway Company, 1906-1933” in Peter Duus et al, eds., The Japanese Informal Empire in China, 1895-1937, 101-132. Recommended reading: Anne Booth, “Did It Really Help to be a Japanese Colony? East Asian Economic Performance in Historical Perspective,” available at http://www.japanfocus.org (click “History and Historical events #822)
9	McClain, Chapter 12 & 13 (441-481); Louise Young, “Imagined Empire: The Cultural Construction of Manchukuo, in Peter Duus et al, eds., The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931-1945, 71-96; “Draft of Basic Plan for Establishment of Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” in de Bary, ed., Sources of Japanese Tradition, 294-298; Shinichi Yamamuro, Manchuria under Japanese Dominion, Chapter 2 (9-38); (Not required, but recommended: Yamamuro, Chapter 5, 198-218). Recommended reading: “The Family Letters of Dr. Robert Wilson,” in Timothy Brook, ed., Documents on the Rape of Nanking, 207-254.
10	McClain, Chapter 14 (482-515); Yoshiko Miyake, “Doubling Expectations: Motherhood and Women’s Factory Work Under State Management in Japan in the 1930s and 1940s,” in Gail Lee Bernstein, ed., Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945, 267-295; John Dower, War Without Mercy, 3-14; Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers, Chapter 1 (39-69). Recommended reading: Yuki Tanaka, “Oda Makoto, Beheiren and 14 August 1945: Humanitarian wrath against indiscriminate bombing,” available at http://www.japanfocus.org (click “History and Historical events #934).
11	McClain, Chapter 15 (523-561); James Orr, The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan, Chapter 2 (14-35); John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, Chapters 9 & 10 (278-318).
12	McClain, Chapter 1ura, Organizin6 (562-582); John W. Dower, “The Useful War,” in Carol Gluck and Stephen R. Graubard, eds., Showa: The Japan of Hirohito, 49-70; Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Power, 1925-1975, Chapter 1 (3-34). Recommended reading: Wesley Sasaki-Uemg the Spontaneous: Citizen Protest in Postwar Japan, Chapter 2 (15-54)
13	McClain, Chapter 16 (582-598) & 17 (599-632); Kathleen Uno, “The Death of ‘Good Wife, Wise Mother’?” in Andrew Gordon, ed., Postwar Japan as History, 293-322; J. Victor Koschmann, “Asianism’s Ambivalent Legacy” in P. J. Katzenstein and T. Shiraishi, eds., Network Power: Japan and Asia, 83-110; Carol Gluck, “The Idea of Showa,” in Gluck and Graubard, eds., Showa: The Japan of Hirohito, 1-26; Recommended reading: Gordon Mathews and Bruce White, eds., Japan’s Changing Generations: Are Young People Creating a New Society?, Chapter 2 (31-45).

Last updated on 08 Sep 2009