Tuesday and Thursday, 9:30 to 10:45am
Claude Moore Nursing Education Building G010

Instructor: Allison Alexy
Department of Anthropology, Brooks Hall 207
phone: (434) 982-2997
alexy [at] virginia.edu
Office hours: Tuesdays, 3:30 – 5:00 and by appointment
** The Collab site has the class recordings, powerpoint slides, and a sign-up sheet for my office hours **



Course Overview
This course offers an introductory survey of Japan from an anthropological perspective. It is open without prerequisite to anyone with a curiosity about what is arguably the most important non-Western society of the last 100 years, and to anyone concerned about the diverse conditions of modern life. We will range over many aspects of contemporary Japan, and draw on scholarship in history, literature, religion, and the various social sciences. The course does, however, revolve around three broad issues that provide an underlying thematic coherence and that demonstrate how anthropologists approach a society of such complexity and depth.

1. What is it that makes Japan a recognizable cultural and social entity? What cultural idioms and social institutions are distinctive, salient features of Japan and the Japanese? How can we talk about the "distinctiveness" of Japan without falling into the all-too-common trap of attributing a "uniqueness" to Japan?

2. What has been the course of social and cultural change in modern Japan? In what ways are Japan's present patterns continuous or discontinuous with its past? What have been the cultural politics of tradition? Is Japanese "modernity" the same as Euroamerican "modernity"?

3. Profound changes are now taking place in Japanese society as new social actors are appearing among the youth, the adults, and the elderly. What is the new social formation that is replacing the patterns of life that characterized Japan in the late twentieth-century?

These questions both motivate and organize this course. They are the central issues for any considered judgment of a country whose roots are deep in the East Asian past but whose place is now among the most influential nations of the world. The study of Japan challenges us to reevaluate the premises of Western social theory, and it rewards us with fresh understandings of the transformations to modernity and the nature and direction of modern life.




These gorgeous pictures were taken by Richard Atrero de Guzman, who traveled around Japan in 2004 with two medium format cameras. Please visit his website here. All images on these pages come from his beautiful work.