version 1.1

updated 2/3/2004

Foreign Cultures 84, Tokyo

syllabus for Spring 2004

Ted Bestor

Professor of Anthropology and Japanese Studies

bestor@wjh.harvard.edu

Bestor’s office: 420 William James Hall; 496-6539 or via my assistant (Jessa Piaia) at 495-3832 (piaia@wjh.harvard.edu)

Bestor’s office hours: to be announced. (Office hours will be announced in class and posted on website). Sign-up sheets for office hours are posted on my office door, or you may contact Jessa Piaia (piaia@wjh.harvard.edu) to ask to be signed up for available time slots.

Teaching Fellows: office hours and contact information to be announced

Tokyo On-Line: The course website is: http://icg.harvard.edu~fc84/. My personal homepage, which includes a large section called “Tokyo: Culture, Society, and History” is: www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~bestor

All materials distributed in class will be posted on the FC84 website, and it will be updated frequently throughout the semester. The website also includes a wide variety of visual and on-line resources on Tokyo past and present.

Overview of the course

This course has no prerequisites – and the course is designed for students without prior knowledge of Tokyo, Japanese studies, anthropology, and/or urban studies.

At the beginning of the 17^th century, Edo (as Tokyo was known before 1868) became the de facto political capital of Japan and quickly blossomed into Japan’s most important urban center. During the Tokugawa period (1603-1868), Edo became one of the world’s largest--although among the most isolated—cities; its influence permeated and transformed Japan through its cultural, social, economic, political, and demographic dominance over the entire country. Edo’s sophisticated urban culture drew upon and in turn shaped Japanese society and culture for over two centuries, but remarkably the city had barely any sustained contact with urban centers beyond Japan’s own boundaries.

Since the mid-19th century, Tokyo’s influence over the entirety of Japanese life has increased still further, and the city has also become the major node of Japanese interaction with other societies around the globe. The city of Tokyo itself has been transformed by these interactions, and structures of local identity, social class, institutions of social integration, beliefs and worldviews, and consumption patterns have all been shaped in the interplay between local and global trends, forces, developments, and images.

Drawing on urban theory in the social sciences and cultural studies, as well as on Japanese ethnography, cultural and social history, and many other genres of material, this course will focus on the urban anthropological analysis of Tokyo as a metropolitan culture, in terms of the dynamics of urban life on a local scale, the relationships between urban life and the larger patterns of Japanese culture and society in which the city is embedded, and the interactions between this urban center and global/international trends of cultural, social, and economic influence.

Lectures and readings – including ethnographic, historical, and literary works – will address the following major themes, across various historical periods of Edo/Tokyo.

1. Tokyo as a focal point for Japanese interaction with global trends (past and present)

2. Public culture (media, entertainment, popular religion, lifestyle, consumption, travel)

3. Social institutions of daily life (family, community, and workplace)

4. Class and identity

5. Space and place (architecture and the cultural meanings of built environments)

6. Political economy of urban life

Class sessions

There will be three classroom sessions and one discussion section per week. (Times for sections will be arranged during the first and second weeks of the semester.)

In most weeks, there will be two lectures (on Monday and Wednesday) and the third lecture period (on Friday) will be used for in-class films and videos, visiting lectures (drawing on visitors to the Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies and the US-Japan Program, for example), and/or visits to various Harvard museum collections related to Edo/Tokyo.

The Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies is sponsoring a series of visiting lecturers this semester that will focus on various aspects of Tokyo’s history and popular culture. A schedule of visiting speakers will be distributed shortly, and students from FC 84 are strongly encouraged to attend these lectures.

Some film showings will have to be scheduled outside of class hours to accommodate their lengths. Times and places will be announced in class.

Course requirements and grading:

All assigned readings are in English. No prior knowledge of Japan is required, nor is Japanese language ability expected; of course, if students have sufficient Japanese language abilities, they may use Japanese materials as the basis for assigned papers in the course.

• Active participation in sections – 15% of course grade – see below.

• Short paper on assigned themes – 20% of course grade per paper – see below – due no later than Friday, March 26.

• Final project – 30% of course grade – see below – a written précis of the project is due by Friday, April 9^th. The complete final project is due by Friday, May 14.

• Midterm examination – 15% of course grade – scheduled for Friday, March 19, in class – will include basic identification and conceptual questions about the historical development of the city and comparative perspectives on Japanese urbanism.

• Final examination – 20% of course grade – to be scheduled by the registrar; the final examination will consist of analytic questions covering material from the entire course.

Section participation

Students are expected to participate actively in their sections. Teaching fellows will distribute and assign discussion questions based on lectures, readings, and other course materials, and will solicit topics for further discussion from section members. Each section will pick several current topics about Tokyo to explore through on-line English editions of major Tokyo newspapers and other on-line media, and students will be expected to keep abreast of these topics for periodic discussion in sections. Students will be expected to discuss their short papers and plans for their final projects in sections and to provide useful critical feedback to each other about their projects. Teaching fellows are responsible for assigning grades for section participation.

Short papers

Students will write one short paper that they select from among the four assignments listed below, each with a specific thematic or methodological focus. Students should consult with the professor and with teaching fellows about specific topics for the short paper. The paper should be roughly 2,000 words (7-8 pages) in length, and must include appropriate scholarly documentation (citations, footnotes, bibliography).

The short paper is due by Friday, March 26 (just before Spring break).

The four options for the papers are:

1) A paper that focuses on Tokyo (or Edo) vis-à-vis Japanese history, society, and/or culture; that is, on the relationship between some aspect of the city and its context as a Japanese city. The aspect of the city you examine can be literary, artistic, commercial, culinary, political, demographic, architectural, sociological, economic, but the paper must focus on the relationship between the urban phenomenon in question and a wider sense of Japanese history, society, and culture.

2) A paper that examines Tokyo (or Edo) vis-à-vis international, transnational, or global contemporary patterns of urban life; that is, on the relationship between some aspect of the city and trends or phenomena outside Japan. As with the previous option, you can focus on literary, artistic, political, etc. aspects.

3) A paper that is explicitly comparative, either drawing direct comparisons between Tokyo (or Edo) and another major non-Japanese city, or using material on Tokyo (or Edo) to illuminate or critique the utility of a theoretical argument about the nature of urban life, urbanization, cultures of urbanism or the socio-economic-political contexts of urban structures.

4) A paper (or equivalent academic product) that draws upon visual or spatial materials in order to describe, analyze, and interpret an aspect of Edo/Tokyo’s culture, social structure, or historical development. (Examples of projects under this heading might include compiling a critical portfolio of photographs on a particular aspect of Tokyo, or analyzing cartographic conventions used to depict the city at various points in the Tokugawa period, or creating a web-based module that documents a particular genre of performing art that is associated with Edo/Tokyo’s urban culture.) Students who decide to complete their short paper requirement through this option are required to submit a short proposal to and get prior approval from Professor Bestor.

Final project

Final course projects will involve individual research and writing (or other appropriate form of presentation--video or other visual media, for example--with prior approval). The final project should be either a 15-18 page research paper, with complete scholarly documentation, or, with prior approval from Bestor, a visual or multi-media product of comparable scope and sophistication. Students should consult early in the semester with teaching fellows and with Bestor about the topic and scope of their projects.

Complete guidelines on format and bibliographic style for the paper will be distributed in class and discussed in sections.

A written preview of the final project (two pages maximum) is required from each student by April 9. Students are urged to develop their preview or précis through consultations with the teaching fellows and with Professor Bestor beforehand. These preview statements should define clearly the question or problem being posed for the final project, and identify resources upon which the finished project will be based. This statement must include a critical annotated bibliography of at least five sources (books, articles, video, etc.) with complete bibliographic citations, call numbers, and a sentence or two describing each source. This preview of the final project is required, and will count toward 10% of the grade on the final project. The final project is due on May 14.

Course website and on-line resources: http://icg.harvard.edu~fc84/

The course website will include basic course materials (syllabus, handouts, assignments, bibliography of additional resources on Tokyo), and it will also contain extensive sets of links to multi-media resources on Tokyo, including links to all the major Tokyo newspapers and television networks (English language homepages).

Some course readings will be available on-line, either through the website or through Harvard University Library’s electronic resources, such as JSTOR, available through HOLLIS.

Students may want to contribute additional material to the Tokyo course website, adding links that they have discovered while doing their own papers. Please let Professor Bestor know about any interesting sites you discover.

Books

Required and recommended books have been ordered through the Harvard Co-op and the Harvard Book Store (1256 Massachusetts Avenue). You may also be able to find copies of the books (and many other materials about Tokyo) in Porter Square at Sasuga Books, a bookshop that specializes in Japanese publications (including an extensive selection of English-language material on Japan). All required and recommended readings will be placed on reserve in Lamont-Hilles, the Harvard-Yenching Library, and the Tozzer Library (Anthropology)

Sourcebook

The FC84 Sourcebook of xeroxed readings will be available through the Core Program. Copies of the Sourcebook will be placed on reserve.

Some readings will be available on-line through HOLLIS, using JSTOR. Details on these readings will be distributed in class and posted on the course website.

Required books: you are required to read FOUR of the following books

1. Allison, Anne.  1994.  Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club.  University of Chicago Press. paperback, ISBN: 0226014878.
2. Bestor, Theodore C. 1989.  Neighborhood Tokyo.  Stanford University Press. paperback, ISBN: 0804717974.
3. Fowler, Edward. 1996. San’ya Blues: Laboring Life in Contemporary Tokyo. Cornell University Press. paperback, ISBN: 0801485703.
4. Hamabata, Matthews.  1990.  Crested Kimono: Power and Love in the Japanese Business Family. Cornell University Press. paperback, ISBN: 0801499755.
5. Jinnai, Hidenobu, 1995. Tokyo: A Spatial Anthropology. Berkeley: University of California Press. hardcover: ISBN: 0520071352.
6. Kondo, Dorinne K. 1990. Crafting Selves: Power, Gender and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. paperback, ISBN: 0226450449.
7. LeBlanc, Robin M. 1999. Bicycle Citizens: The Political World of the Japanese Housewife. University of California Press. paperback, ISBN: 0520212916.
8. Robertson, Jennifer.  1991.  Native and Newcomer: Making and Remaking a Japanese City.  University of California Press. paperback, ISBN: 0520086554.

Course schedule -- Spring 2004

Schedules for visiting lectures, films, and museum visits will be distributed in class

Section I – Introduction

Week 1 -- Introducing Tokyo (Feb 4-6)

Readings: Sourcebook = Cybriwsky (Introduction, Orientation, Historical Development), Coaldrake (Order & Anarchy)

Week 2 – Thinking About Cities (Feb 9-13)

Readings: Sourcebook = Redfield & Singer, Appadurai; Smith (Tokyo & London); JSTOR (HOLLIS) = Wirth, Sjoberg,

Monday, February 16 – Presidents’ Day holiday – NO CLASS

Section II – The Historical City

Weeks 3 & 4 -- Edo: Castle-town extraordinaire (Feb 18-27)

Guest lecturer: Adam Kern

Readings: Sourcebook = Kojiro; JSTOR = Hanley, Hall, Coaldrake; article by Kern, to be distributed

Weeks 5 & 6 -- Meiji Tokyo: First-wave Globalization (March 1-12)

Readings: JSTOR (HOLLIS) = Smith (Transition), Roden, and additional readings to be announced

In-class midterm examination, Friday, March 19

Weeks 7 & 8 – From Jazz Age Tokyo to World War II (March 15-26)

Readings: Sourcebook = Havens, Cook & Cook, and additional readings to be announced

Short paper due – March 26

Spring Break – March 29 – April 2

SECTION III -- Post-War and Post Post-War Tokyo

Week 9 – Corporate Capital: Tokyo and the Japanese Business Miracle (April 5-9)

Required & recommended articles to be put on reserve

Week 10 -- The New Middle Mass City (April 12-16)

Readings: Sourcebook = Vogel, Fields

Plus additional required & recommended articles to be put on reserve

Week 11 – Inventing Tradition (April 19-23)

Readings: Sourcebook = Gluck, Bestor (shitamachi)

Plus additional required & recommended articles to be put on reserve

SECTION IV – Tokyo and Japan’s Gross National Cool

Week 12 – Subcultures, scenes, margins, and outsiders (April 26-30)

Guest lectures by Ian Condry and Matt Thorn on hip-hop and manga

Readings: Sourcebook = Condry; JSTOR = McGray (Gross National Cool)

Paper by Thorn (on manga markets) to be distributed in class

Plus additional required & recommended articles to be put on reserve

Week 13 – Globalizing consumption and lifestyle (May 3-7)

Readings: Sourcebook = Bestor (Wholesale Sushi; How Sushi Went Global), plus additional required & recommended articles to be put on reserve

Final projects due May 14

Final examination – to be scheduled during exam period