Transfer Student Courses in Japanese (Division 401)

Winter Term, 2000 (January 5 - April 26, 2000)

To see what Transfer Student courses have been added or changed in Japanese this week go to What's New This Week.

Waitlist policy for all courses is 1 - get on the waitlist and go to the first day of class and talk to the instructor.

Students wanting to begin language study in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, at a level other than first year, must take a placement exam to be held on Tuesday, January 4, 1-3pm. Test locations will be posted outside of the Department office in 3070 FB.

Language Courses

Instructor(s): Misa Kozuka (kozuka@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Japanese 101. (5). (LR). Laboratory fee ($9) required.

Credits: (5).

Lab Fee: Laboratory fee ($9) required.

Course Homepage: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/asian/japanese/J10x/10x.html

This course is designed for students who have less than the equivalent of one year's study of Japanese at the University of Michigan. The goal of the course is the simultaneous progression of four skills (speaking, listening, writing, and reading) as well as becoming familiar with aspects of Japanese culture which are necessary for language competency. Recitation sessions are conducted in Japanese emphasizing speaking/reading in Japanese contexts at normal speeds. Analyses, explanations, and discussions involving the use of English are specifically reserved for lectures with a linguist. Students are required to do assignments with audio tapes a minimum of two hours for each class hour (10 hours per week). It is expected that, by the end of the year, students will have basic speaking and listening comprehension skills, a solid grasp of basic grammar, reading and writing skills in Hiragana and Katakana, and will be able to recognize and produce approximately 140 Kanji in context. Texts: Situational Functional Japanese, Vol. 1-2.

Language Courses

Instructor(s): Mayumi Yuki Johnson (yukijohn@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Japanese 201. (5). (LR). Laboratory fee ($9) required.

Credits: (5).

Lab Fee: Laboratory fee ($9) required.

Course Homepage: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/asian/japanese/J20x/20x.html

Further training is given in all the language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) for students who have acquired a basic language proficiency. The aim of the oral component is to provide the student with the speaking and comprehension skills necessary to function effectively in more advanced practical situations in a Japanese-speaking environment. In the reading and writing component, the emphasis is on reading elementary texts, developing an expository style, and writing short answers/essays in response to questions about these texts. Approximately 400 of the essential characters are covered. Discussions on the social and cultural use of language are provided. Students are required to attend five hours of class per week: two hours of lecture and three hours of recitation. Students are also required to practice a minimum of two hours for each class hour (12 hours per week). Recitation sessions are conducted entirely in Japanese. Recitation sessions emphasize speaking/reading in Japanese contexts at normal speed with near-native pronunciation, accent, intonation, rhythm, and appropriate body language. Analyses, explanations, and discussions involving the use of English are specifically reserved for lectures. Texts: Situational Functional Japanese, Vol. 2-3.

Culture Courses/Literature Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Ken Ito (kenkito@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (Excl).

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This introductory course to modern Japanese fiction examines how novels and short stories written after 1868 engage the issue of national, cultural, and social identities. The inquiry in the course will simultaneously move in two directions: We will examine how fiction written in an age of national print-capitalism participates in the work of building a common understanding of a nation and its people. But we will also see how the same fiction can spotlight divisions of gender, sexual orientation, class, generation, and region. Using the fiction written by some of the best known of Japanese writers – Mori Ogai, Natsume Soseki, Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, and Oe Kenzaburo – the course will pursue its inquiries on both formal and thematic levels. Attention will be paid to how different narrative genres and techniques either erase or emphasize social differences.

• How do Japanese novels help to construct what Benedict Anderson would call the "imagined community" of the nation?
• By what process does Japanese become a "national print language" appropriate for fictional writing?
• How is the Japanese "self" narrated into being?
• How are competing visions of what is "modern" and "traditional" addressed in the search for identity?
• How does fiction, written by male and female writers, address the selfhood of Japanese men and women?

These are the questions that we will ask as we traverse the contested terrain of Japanese identities. No prior knowledge of Japanese language or literature is required. All readings will be in English translation.

Language Courses

Instructor(s): Shoko Emori (semori@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Japanese 405. (5). (Excl).

Credits: (5).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

Advanced training is given in all the language skills. Practice in the use of spoken Japanese is contextualized within simulated Japanese social settings. A variety of selected modern texts (essays, fiction, and newspapers) are read with emphasis on expository style. The goal is to produce self-sufficient readers who can read and discuss most texts with the aid of a dictionary. Students are required to practice with audio/visual tapes a minimum of two hours for each class hour (10 hours per week). Recitation sessions emphasize speaking/reading in Japanese contexts at normal speed with near-native pronunciation, accent, intonation, rhythm, and appropriate body language. Analyses, explanations, and discussions involving the use of English are specifically reserved for lectures. Texts: An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese.

Language Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Yasuhiro Omoto

Prerequisites & Distribution: Japanese 413. (4). (Excl).

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This reading course is specifically designed for students who plan to pursue a career in Japanese studies research at a graduate level. Intensified instruction on how to develop reading ability through the reading of a variety of materials is given during the first half of the term. Then acquired techniques will be applied to actual reading of the materials in the student’s area of interest. Oral and listening comprehension are not the focus of the course, but the class may be conducted mostly in Japanese, with occasional English explanation if necessary.

Language Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Kaori Ohara (kohara@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Japanese 406, 411. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course stresses the effective use of the Japanese spoken language in contexts likely to be encountered by a career-oriented professional in Japan.

Winter Term topics include: Banking, Import and Export, The Japanese Market, Annual Reports, Business Ritual and Socializing. In addition, the course will include practice in rapid reading and transcription/dictation of moderately difficult texts, newspaper articles, and news broadcasts. Students are expected to practice with audio tapes for a minimum of two hours for each class hour.

Language Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Misao Kozuka (misakozu@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Japanese 451. (4).(Excl).

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

The goal of the course is the acquisition of linguistic, pragmatic, and sociocultural competence in all four skills at an advanced level. A TV drama is used as the main textbook with the focus on the improvement of speaking and listening competence, and variety of reading materials on Japanese sociocultural issues that are related to the content of the TV drama are used to further develop reading and writing skills. The two hour class period is devoted to the verification and discussion of the drama content, use of new vocabulary and expressions as well as the acquisition of more complex, advanced grammar pattern usages. The techniques of improving reading skills is taught during the class period, and the actual reading of the materials and writing of the reaction papers will be assigned as homework.

Culture Courses/Literature Courses

Section 001 – From Kabuki to Kitano: Japanese Cinema History. Meets with Film and Video 455.002

Instructor(s): Michael Raine (mraine@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: A knowledge of Japanese is not required. (3). (Excl). Laboratory fee ($50) required.

Credits: (3).

Lab Fee: Laboratory fee ($50) required.

Course Homepage: http://coursetools.ummu.umich.edu/2000/winter/lsa/film/455/002.nsf

From kabuki films to Kitano Takeshi, Japanese cinema has come a long way in the past 100 years. This course traces the history of Japanese cinema from the silent films, with their extraordinary benshi performances, to recent Japanese cinema as shown at international film festivals. Along the way, we will take in avant-garde and social protest films, fascist entertainments, rock and roll youth films, animations, and trendy idol dramas. We’ll even see the occasional tea ceremony! Most importantly, we will learn to see Japanese cinema as more than a pictoral version of famous novels, or an expression of artistic sensibility; it is a vibrant strand within the ongoing history of Japanese popular culture.

In sum:

• Film is not literature! We will learn that film is an audio-visual rhetoric with its own protocols of interpretation and its own relations to other forms of popular culture.
• Film is not (just) art! Some of the most sophisticated and interesting films in Japan were made in popular genres. In this course we will give those films their proper due.
• Japanese cinema has its own history! Through that history we will come to understand that film is both a symptom and an agent of changes in what it means to be Japanese in the 20th century.
• Film Studies has its own history! We will study how scholars in the West have thought about Japanese cinema from its ‘discovery’ in the 1950s to the present day.

Language Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Mayumi Yuki Johnson (yukijohn@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Japanese 406. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

The goal of the course is to provide an overview of theories and issues in teaching Japanese. The class discussion includes the history and theory of teaching methods, although the focus mainly is placed on the most current teaching approaches and their theoretical implications. Acquisition of such aspects of language teaching will further be confirmed through the practice of actual teaching in real classroom settings, as well as by observation and review of regular language classes.

Language Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Ken Ito (kenkito@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Japanese 406 and 408. (3). (Excl). May be repeated for credit with permission of instructor.

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

The seminar for this term will focus on early-Showa, the period roughly from 1925 to 1945, and will investigate the major cultural and literary currents of this period. We will read examples of modernist Shinkankuha texts, proletarian literature, and the popular fiction produced by a burgeoning mass culture publishing industry. We will also examine the challenging writing produced by female writers who began to publish at this time. The term will end by looking at the turns rightward or toward the "tradition" taken by a number of writers as Japan entered the war years. The emphasis will be on locating texts in literary and cultural history, and developing an overarching view of the interconnectedness of various facets of Showa culture. Readings will include works by Yoshikawa Eiji, Uno Chiyo, Okamoto Kaonoko, Kawabata Yasunari, Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, and Hino Ashihei.