EAS/ANT 225

COURSE DESCRIPTION: Japanese society and culture poses compelling questions to American observers. Despite Japan’s status as a major industrial power in the world economy, its social institutions and cultural values are markedly different from American ones (though not as different from other Asian and European ones). We will examine topics of the corporation, schooling, youth culture, the maintenance of social order through law and policing, gender and the family, feminism, and popular culture and counter-culture. The course also looks at social tensions within Japan and the costs of maintaining cohesion and stability. Japan now faces a key juncture in its history: the need (and demand) to move beyond its intimate postwar relationship with the United States and to forge more international ties, particularly within Asia. How prepared is Japan to face that challenge?