Course Overview
This course explores post WWII Japanese music, literature, artistic media, and hi-tech products. Investigates social themes ranging from post-holocaust Japanese hedonism to childhood fantasies by looking at Manga comic books, Animation, and popular music, as well as fashion and style, popular technology, consumerism, and environmental issues. Explores the evolution of pop culture and its impact on society. Taught in English. (3 Units)
Course Narrative
This course was an absolute must for someone like me who wanted to explore more facets of Japanese pop-culture outside of video games. It covered areas such as animation and the overall transformation of visual media that occurred when Japanese works were brought over to other countries (mostly America). A major highlight was the formation of kawaii ("cute") as a trend in Japan. Especially fascinating was that it apparently originally formed from a peculiar writing style that bored high school students came up with in the 60s. I was also able to use the course as a way of presenting on Japanese video game localization and the impact that the script/programming re-writing done by American publishers has on the industry as a whole.
MLOs Satisfied: MLO2