Objectives

  1. Describe some major writers and genres during the Meiji (1868-1912), Taisho (1912-1926), and Showa (1926-1989) periods.
    1. Recognize how Soseki Natsume wrote novels to challenge the import of foreign technology and ideas in the Meiji era.
    2. State the Japanese autobiographical novel (shishosetsu)’s three main traits (sincerity, disclosure, and emptying self)
    3. 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).
    4. Explain how Akutagawa Ryunosuke and Hagiwara Sakutarou’s sometimes experimental literature subverted and reimagined genres and even charted a path between old and new.
    5. Compare and contrast how Mishima Yukio, Oe Kenzaburo, and Murakami Haruki reacted to a democratic, capitalist Japan after World War II.
  2. 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.
    1. Describe how the threat of colonial subjugation led to reform.
    2. Explain how Japan imported foreign technology.
    3. Describe how Fukuzawa Yukichi embraced education while Soseki Natsume was skeptic of foreign technology and ideology.
    4. Describe how Japan as a colonial power and post-Occupation continued to struggle with their interior space and external perceived threats and opportunities.
  3. Recognize how a central tenet of democracy is a government by the consent of the governed.
    1.  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.
    2. Recognize how a national philosophy (e.g. kokutai) or cultural creed can override central principles of democracies.
  4. Determine three principles to assess a regime on its progress towards a democratic government.
    1. Define political competition (Principle 1) and how competing ideas and interests represents the people.
    2. Indicate how greater electoral control over offices (Principle 2) leads to the people securing more power
    3. Connect how free and fair elections with widening suffrage (Principle 3) yields a more democratic government
  5. Identify the precipitating and systemic causes of the downfall of democratic governments
    1. Identify how military adventurism, assassinations, and foreign threats can precipitate the downfall of democratic governments
    2. Identify how systemic causes like a restrictive or unclear constitution, circumvention of elected bodies, and militarism can lead to the downfall of democratic governments
    3. Identify how a democratic government can be built and how it can erode and fall.