HIST 4860 Japanese Popular Culture, Past and Present

This class is an upper-level seminar on the cultural history of modern Japan focusing on the popular culture of Tokyo. Students will be introduced to literature, art, and theater, as well as popular practices ranging from early-modern pilgrimage to "costume play" (kosupure) among devotees of anime in contemporary Japan. The course aims to situate cultural forms from the late-seventeenth to the twenty-first century in the context of the key social, political, and economic changes that took place in Japan during the same time. This also counts as an elective for the Modern Language Studies major.