Students learn about Japanese culture
today in new EAP Tokyo option
Mary McMahon, EAP Regional Director
EAP announces a new fall program jointly offered by the University of California (UC) and the International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo, Japan. The Contemporary Japanese Culture program was designed by a UC-ICU faculty committee to explore post-World War II Japan, its international influence and contributions, and its social and cultural phenomena, including the language and art of Japanese popular culture. EAP students will study changes taking place in Japan today (immigration, declining birth rate, global youth culture, role in world affairs) and the reflections of those changes in artistic genres and other cultural representations. The program is offered in English to allow UC students from a wide range of disciplinary interests to participate.
Co-taught by ICU and UC professors, the program’s core course, Contemporary Japan from Ramuné to Anime, covers fundamental changes in post-war Japan and the geopolitical, socioeconomic, artistic, and media traditions with which they connect. The course provides a prism through which students can discover and understand contemporary Japanese social and cultural manifestations in their historic and contextual complexity. Instructional materials include academic articles, literary pieces, and personal essays by key political and cultural figures; recorded radio and television broadcasts; as well as important films, animé, and manga. Group projects with Japanese classmates, carried out in the neighborhoods of Tokyo, augment the classroom experience. John Nathan (East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, UCSB) and Yasuhiro Tanaka (International Studies, ICU) are instructors of the core course in the program’s opening fall 2007 term. The core course is supplemented by interdisciplinary and subject courses in the areas of art, communication, sociology, popular culture, economic development, history, politics, media, and theater.
This unique program guides UC students in an investigation of the transnational dimensions of Japanese culture—a dynamic and ever-changing kaleidoscope of 21st-century color, commentary, and commotion.
Please urge students interested in the fall 2008 program to explore the EAP website before the upcoming application deadline.