JAPN 215: Cool Japan Today (MLO 2) Completed Fall 2012
Description:
This course examines contemporary media culture and products as a conceptual lens to focus on Japanese pop culture and soft power in the 21st Century. Manga, Anime, Cinema, literature, performance art, music, and fine arts will all be surveyed with an eye to understanding what exactly is cool and different about Japanese creative work and whether these kinds of cultural exports could become the foundation of a new post-industrial Japanese economy.
This course examines contemporary media culture and products as a conceptual lens to focus on Japanese pop culture and soft power in the 21st Century. Manga, Anime, Cinema, literature, performance art, music, and fine arts will all be surveyed with an eye to understanding what exactly is cool and different about Japanese creative work and whether these kinds of cultural exports could become the foundation of a new post-industrial Japanese economy.
Course Narrative:
For this course, I was able to fulfill the MLO 2 requirements of this major because this course gave me a better understanding on what makes Japan a great and popular nation around the world. While taking this course, I learned about all kinds of different things that made Japan one of the most famous countries in the world. For this course, I wrote essays about some of the important and popular aspects about Japan that people are familiar to the world and how they can play an important part in someone’s life. One of the things that I wrote about was the city of lights known as Akihabara. In Akihabara, there are many different anime and manga stores throughout the area along with many different electronic shops. In my essay, I talked about how the different aspects of Akihabara can affect a person’s life. One example from my essay was about someone who completely fell into despair to the point that he felt like taking their life, but before he could die, he found something in Akihabara that allowed him to continue to live. This taught me that even through times of despair, we as humans can find something in our lives that can inspire us to continue to live. Although I have taken and completed this course, there are still things about Japan that I still don’t really know about. If I am to actually gain more information about it, I must first expose myself to more of Japanese culture. In order to fully explore this, I must emcee myself into other aspects that make Japan great other than the ones that I am most familiar to.
Essay # 2: PDF
For this course, I was able to fulfill the MLO 2 requirements of this major because this course gave me a better understanding on what makes Japan a great and popular nation around the world. While taking this course, I learned about all kinds of different things that made Japan one of the most famous countries in the world. For this course, I wrote essays about some of the important and popular aspects about Japan that people are familiar to the world and how they can play an important part in someone’s life. One of the things that I wrote about was the city of lights known as Akihabara. In Akihabara, there are many different anime and manga stores throughout the area along with many different electronic shops. In my essay, I talked about how the different aspects of Akihabara can affect a person’s life. One example from my essay was about someone who completely fell into despair to the point that he felt like taking their life, but before he could die, he found something in Akihabara that allowed him to continue to live. This taught me that even through times of despair, we as humans can find something in our lives that can inspire us to continue to live. Although I have taken and completed this course, there are still things about Japan that I still don’t really know about. If I am to actually gain more information about it, I must first expose myself to more of Japanese culture. In order to fully explore this, I must emcee myself into other aspects that make Japan great other than the ones that I am most familiar to.
Essay # 2: PDF