JAPNLIT 162: Girl Culture, Media, and Japan

[Download a PDF copy of the syllabus ]

JAPNLIT 162 (Spring 2019)

Class Meetings: Rm 212, 2 Divinity Ave, Wednesdays 3:00-5:45 

 

Instructor:

Tomiko Yoda, 2 Divinity Ave., Rm. 217

Office Hours: Thursdays 3-4 or by appointment

Email: yoda@fas.harvard.edu (please begin the subject headline with "JAPNLIT 162" for correspondences regarding this course)

 

Teaching Fellow:

Lingling Ma

Email: lma@g.harvard.edu

 

In contemporary Japan, girls and girl culture are considered to be among the most significant sources of popular cultural trends. For instance, the girly aesthetics of “cute” (kawaii) has animated broad areas of Japanese culture since the 1980s and has become a global cultural idiom through the dissemination of Japanese entertainment medias and fashion products abroad. The course will explore a number of key questions about Japanese (and global) girl culture. How did the conceptualization of girlhood, girl culture, girl bodies, and girl affect transform in Japan from the early twentieth century to the present? How did various medias and media consumption help shape these trends? What can the exploration of “girls’ question” tell us, not only about Japanese socio-cultural history, but also about the general conditions of youth, gender, and media culture in the world today (e.g., the sea of pink at Women’s March 2016)? We will begin the semester by unpacking key terms such as “girl,” “girlhood,” and “girl culture” in relations to the modern and contemporary notions of gender, maturity, and majority. The course materials include fiction, popular magazines, teen films, manga, and animation. No prior knowledge of Japanese language or history is expected.

 

Assignments:

Weekly postings (250 words min 350 words max) on assignments for the upcoming week to be posted on the course website by Monday@6pm every week unless otherwise noted.

Three papers:

Paper #1 (5-7 pages), due Friday, March 8@6pm

Take-home midterm essay (4-6 pages), due Friday, April 12@6pm

Paper #2 (8-10 pages), due Friday, May 10@6pm

**Short quiz at the last meeting; no final exam

 

Grading:

Class participation and weekly postings (30%)

Paper #1 (20%)

Mid-term take-home exam (15%)

Final short quiz (at the last class 5/1) 10%

Paper #2 (25%)

 

Weekly Postings are short write-ups where you are expected to reflect on, question, criticize, and offer analyses on the assigned materials. Please remember that you do not have to (in fact, you shouldn't) summarize a piece of text or a video in order to express your thoughts about it. Rather, you are encouraged to begin directly with the points you want to address. These writings are not expected to be polished analyses and you are encouraged to raise thoughtful questions about what you have read or viewed. Sometimes I may post specific questions that I want you to respond to. If no such questions are posted, you are expected to respond directly to the materials on your own terms.

 

Your Responsibilities: A course cannot be successful without your input and cooperation. There are few policies that I want you to keep in mind.

*Class attendance is mandatory. Missing more than two class meetings may result in grade reduction. If you know you will miss a class please send a note to TF explaining your absence.

*You are expected to submit all assignments on time. We will accept one late posting with no question asked; but more than one late submission may result in grade reduction.

*You are expected to come to classes prepared (having completed assigned readings/viewings/writings). You should make every effort to participate in classroom discussions. Thoughtful participation will have positive effects on your final grade.

* Please do not use your laptop or other electronic device during the class meetings.

 

Course Materials

 

Required textbooks to be purchased

• Yoshimoto Banana, Kitchen.
• Okazaki Kyōko,
• Yoshiya Nobuko, “Kibara”and “Translator’s Introduction,” by Sarah Frederick (only available on Amazon.com in kindle edition, please purchase it online).
• Rokudenashiko, What is Obscenity? The Story of a Good for Nothing Artist and Her Pussy.

Optional text (if you decided to write your first paper on this novel): Tanizaki Jun’ichirō Naomi.

 

• All other reading materials will be available on the course website, unless otherwise noted.
• All videos can be watched online or through the Canvas.
• Names of Japan-based writers, scholars, and manga authors are listed with family name first, following the Japanese convention.

 

Week 1 (1/30)

Introduction

 

Week 2 (2/6)

Girls, Girl Culture, and Feminism

Mary Pipher, Reviving Ophelia, Chapter 1.

Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, “Feminism and Femininity” in Anita Harris ed., All About the Girl

Catherine Driscoll, “Feminine Adolescence” in Girls: Feminine Adolescence in Popular Culture and Cultural Theory. pp. 47-77

 

Week 3 (2/13)

Modern Girls

            DVD: Osaka Elegy (dir. Mizoguchi Kenji, 1936) DVD J-0178

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w497OJtsYxw

Barbara Sato, “Modern Girl as a Representation of Consumer Culture” in The New Japanese Woman

Miriam Silverberg, “Modern Girl as Militant” in Gail Lee Berstein ed., Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945.

 

Week 4 (2/20)

Girl Fiction, Girl Affect

Yoshiya Nobuko, “Kibara” [Yellow rose] translated by Sarah Frederick (available on Amazon as a kindle book, please purchase it online). Please make sure you read the Introduction.

Honda Masuko, “The Genealogy of hirahira”

Monica Swindle, “Feeling Girl, Girl Feeling: An Examination of ‘Girl’ as Affect

 

Week 5 (2/27)

All-Women Takarazuka Revue: Staging Gender and Female Fandom

Streaming: Dream Girls (Dir. Kim Longinotto) http://id.lib.harvard.edu/aleph/013955314/catalog

Jennifer Robertson, Takarazuka Chap. 2

 

Week 6 (3/6)

Haafu Girls and Modeling in the “Age of Face”

Tamaki Watarai, “Can a Mestiça be a Haaru” Japanese-Brazilian Female Migrants and the Celebration of Racial Mixing in Contemporary Japan,” Journal of intercultural Studies 35:6, 2014

Elizabeth Wissinger, “Photo Shoot” in This Year’s Model

Hyoue Okamura, “The Language of “Racial Mixture” in Japan: How Ainoko became Haafu, and the Haafu-gao Makeup Fad” (p.42-45; p.48-52; p.54-59)

 

Paper #1 (5-7 pages), due Friday, March 8@6pm

No posting this week

 

Week 7 (3/13)

Neo-Girl Fiction

Yoshimoto Banana, “Kitchen” in Kitchen

John Treat, “Yoshimoto Banana Writes Home”

 

[Spring Break]

 

Week 8 (3/20)

Girl Revolution

Revolutionary Girl Utena (selected episodes will be streamed)

 

Week 9 (4/3)

Love and Capitalism

Okazaki Kyōko, Pink

Sharon Kinsella, “Cuties in Japan”

 

Week 10 (4/10)

Lolita Fashion and Girl Subculture

Film, Kamikaze Girls (streamed on Canvas)

Brian Bergstrom, “Girliness Next to Godliness: Lolita Fandom as Sacred Novels of Takemoto Novala,” Mechademia, Vol. 6, 2011.

* Take-home exam due this week on Friday, April 12; No posting this week

 

Week 11 (4/17)

Girl Abjection, Girl Precarity

Watamote [No matter how I look at it, it’s your guys’ fault that I am not popular] (episodes 1 and 7; streamed)

The Misadventures of AWKWARD Black Girl (S1 episodes 1-6)

      https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL379FB6BBC58E28B3

Rebecca Wanzo, “Precarious-Girl Comedy: Issa Rae, Lena Duham, and Abjection Aesthetics”

Amamiya Karin, “Suffering Forces Us to Think beyond the Right-Left Barrier” Mechademia

 

Week 12 (4/24)

Is My Body Obscene!?

Rokudenashiko, What is Obscenity? The Story of a Good for Nothing Artist and Her Pussy

Anne McKnight, “At the Source (Code) Obscenity and Modularity in Rokudenashiko’s Media Activism,” in Media Theory in Japan.

 

Week 13 (5/1)

Trans Girl

Joshiteki Seikatsu (Life as a girl) episodes 1-3 (streamed on Canvas)

Patricia Gherovici, “Transamerica,” and “Plastic Sex, the beauty of it” in Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual Difference

 

Final Paper (8-10 pages) due Friday, May 10@6pm