JAPN 302 - History of Japan
This course further develops advanced level Japanese through building and expanding knowledge of Japanese history as a dynamic, interrelated system and employs a variety of processes to identify, analyze and evaluate cultural themes, values and ideas. Students will demonstrate ability to accurately comprehend ideas across a range of historical content. Taught in Japanese.
(Prereq: JAPN 201 or equivalent with a C- or better)
(Prereq: JAPN 201 or equivalent with a C- or better)
course narrative
In this course, we looked into 2 different topics of Japanese history every week. We started in very early Japan, and worked up to recent history, stopping at the Tokyo Olympics of 1964. One of the things we went over that I found interested was when we went over the history of Japan opening up its borders. With Japan having been closed for a long time beforehand, learning about just how much of an effect the opening had was intriguing and let me see things in a new light. We had in depth discussions in class about alternate outcomes, which also had me thinking from a new perspective. As a final project, we had to do a partner presentation on one of the topics we learned about throughout the course, as well as doing some new research on our own. The presentation can be found here.