Arts and Ideas 310: Japanese Culture and Artistic Creation

 

Arts and Ideas 310: Japanese Culture and Artistic Creation Required Texts: Movies: Music: Course Objective: Attendance and Participation: Projects: Grades: Schedule: January February

 

Location: 035 Karpen Hall
Instructor: Christopher Daniels
E-mail: cdaniels@unca.edu

 

 

Required Texts:

 

Wabi Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers, Leonard Koren

Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics, Frederick L. Schodt

Underground, Haruki Murakami

The Woman in the Dunes, Kobo Abe

Our class Wiki: outsiderjapan.pbwiki.com

 

 

Movies:

 

 

 

Yojimbo, Akira Kurosawa

We will hopefully be showing a spate of Japanese films outside of class time, and attendance will be encouraged but optional.

 

 

Music:

 

Please bring a blank CD-R at some point before the music unit, as I will record a CD’s worth of Japanese music that we will discuss.

 

Course Objective:

 

 

The goal of this class is to examine art’s function to expose and reconcile an individual’s relationship to society.  Most art is heavily concerned with this theme, and a favorite vehicle of writers, filmmakers, and musicians to express this is the conflict between the outsider and the insider. 

 

In particular, we will look at how artists use this notion of the outsider in their art: through characters, themes, symbols, methods, and even the artist’s own persona.  We are going to examine these ideas in the culture of Japan because of the way it has absorbed, reconfigured, and retransmitted the archetypes and themes of our own culture.  We will also, naturally, examine our own methods of employing the outsider in art as well as our reactions to Japan’s reactions to our reactions, ad infinitum…

 

We will begin by looking at a traditional Japanese aesthetic (wabi-sabi), and then take a look at Modern (i.e. 20th and 21st century) Japanese artists in literature, film, visual art, and music to see how they attempt to solve the problem of belonging to the group while staying outside of the mainstream.

 

 

Attendance and Participation:

 

 

A major part of your grade is going to be based on participation – this means that you should be in class, you should prepare by reading the assigned texts, and you should speak up and offer your opinions in class.  You are allowed three unexcused absences in a one-semester class, and every subsequent unexcused absence will result in a drop of half a letter grade.

 

 

Projects:

 

 

You will have three projects due in the course of the semester.

1. A short paper (2-3 pages)

2. A work of art – the format is up to you

3. Constructing a page on the class wiki

 

There are three due dates for the projects, but you will have a choice between the different media for each due date.  However, you may only do each option ONCE!  When you do options 2 or 3 you must also do a short presentation in front of the class: 5-10 minutes for the work of art, 10-15 minutes for the Wiki page.  Each project has 3 days reserved for presentations.

 

Grades:

 

 

The breakdown of grades is as follows:

 

3 projects = 75%

Attendance/Participation/Small Assignments = 25%

 

 

Schedule:

 

 

January

 

15    Class Introduction, Hand out syllabus / The Individual Vs. Society

 

20    Intro to Japanese history / Wabi Sabi: Introduction, A History of Obfuscation, A Provisional Definition,:

 

22    Wabi Sabi

 

27    History and the bridge to the West

 

29    Manga! Manga! Chapter 1 - A Thousand Milllion Manga and Chapter 2 - A Thousand Years of Manga

 

 

 

February

 

3    Manga! Manga! Chapter 3 - The Spirit of Japan and Chapter 5 - The Economic Animal at Work and Play

 

5    Manga! Manga! Chapter 6 - Regulation vs. Fantasy and 4 Manga in the back of the book / History: up to WWII

 

10    Project #1 Due

 

12    Project #1 Due

 

17    Kurosawa Documentary (in class)

 

19    History and Kurosawa

 

24    Yojimbo - Screening in the Whitman Room

 

 

26    Yojimbo - Screening in the Whitman Room

 

March

 

3     Woman in the Dunes: pp. 1-120

 

 

5     Woman in the Dunes: pp. 121 - 194

 

 

10    Spring Break 

 

 

12    Spring Break

 

17    Woman in the Dunes: pp. 195 - 241  

 

19    The 60's - Read Murakami Interview

 

 

24     Haruki Murakami

 

 

26    Project #2 Due

 

31    Project #2 Due

 

April

 

2    Murakami: Underground

• Pages 1-51: Chiyoda Line
• Pages 55-57: Mitsuo Arima
• Pages 73-75: Koichi Sakata

 

7   Murakami: Underground

• Pages 76-90: Tatsuo and Shizuko Akashi
• page 191-194: Dr. Nobuo Yanagisawa
• Pages 195-213: Blind Nightmare: Where Are We Japanese Going?

 

9   Murakami: Underground

• Pages 213-309: The Place That Was Promised

 

14   Superflat

 

16   Superflat

 

 

21   Music

 

 

23   Music

 

 

28   Project #3 Due

 

 

30   Project #3 Due