- Describe some major writers and genres during the Meiji (1868-1912), Taisho (1912-1926), and Showa (1926-1989) periods.
- Recognize how Soseki Natsume wrote novels to challenge the import of foreign technology and ideas in the Meiji era.
- State the Japanese autobiographical novel (shishosetsu)’s three main traits (sincerity, disclosure, and emptying self)
- Connect the Japanese autobiographical novel (shishosetsu)’s three main traits (sincerity, disclosure, and emptying self) to other genres, such as the novel, personal writing (zuihitsu), and poetic forms (haiku, tanka).
- Explain how Akutagawa Ryunosuke and Hagiwara Sakutarou’s sometimes experimental literature subverted and reimagined genres and even charted a path between old and new.
- Compare and contrast how Mishima Yukio, Oe Kenzaburo, and Murakami Haruki reacted to a democratic, capitalist Japan after World War II.
- Describe Japan’s struggle between open and closed relations to the world during the Meiji (1868-1912), Taisho (1912-1926), and Showa (1926-1989) periods.
- Describe how the threat of colonial subjugation led to reform.
- Explain how Japan imported foreign technology.
- Describe how Fukuzawa Yukichi embraced education while Soseki Natsume was skeptic of foreign technology and ideology.
- Describe how Japan as a colonial power and post-Occupation continued to struggle with their interior space and external perceived threats and opportunities.
- Recognize how a central tenet of democracy is a government by the consent of the governed.
- Indicate how Yoshino Sakuzo’s conception of a government just for the people and not by the people is not sufficient for a full democracy.
- Recognize how a national philosophy (e.g. kokutai) or cultural creed can override central principles of democracies.
- Determine three principles to assess a regime on its progress towards a democratic government.
- Define political competition (Principle 1) and how competing ideas and interests represents the people.
- Indicate how greater electoral control over offices (Principle 2) leads to the people securing more power
- Connect how free and fair elections with widening suffrage (Principle 3) yields a more democratic government
- Identify the precipitating and systemic causes of the downfall of democratic governments
- Identify how military adventurism, assassinations, and foreign threats can precipitate the downfall of democratic governments
- Identify how systemic causes like a restrictive or unclear constitution, circumvention of elected bodies, and militarism can lead to the downfall of democratic governments
- Identify how a democratic government can be built and how it can erode and fall.