East Asian Studies 115. Japanese Monsters

Course Canvas Site
Academic “monster studies” has boomed over the past twenty years and Japan offers a rich history for exploring how a culture’s monstrous imagination has been shaped by (and in turn shaped) social, political, economic, and technological change. This course will examine Japan’s rich profusion of monsters in a variety of media (folklore, fiction, manga and anime, film, character goods, video games), with a focus on the 19th century to the present. Ranging from Noh plays to Godzilla movies to Hello Kitty advertisements, we will experience monsters in Japanese mythology, religion, and folk belief; the supernatural in court and warrior culture; the cataloging and commercialization of monsters in early modern Japan; science, the nation, and the making of “modern” monsters; nuclear anxiety and kaijū films; nostalgia and the cute (kawaii) in the postwar “monster boom”; and urban legends, cryptozoology, and Pokémon in millennial Japan. Through an immersion in the history of Japan’s fantastical creatures, this course will develop what Jeffrey Jerome Cohen calls “a method of reading cultures from the monsters they engender.” No prior knowledge of Japanese language or history is required or assumed.

Course Canvas Site

Academic “monster studies” has boomed over the past twenty years and Japan offers a rich history for exploring how a culture’s monstrous imagination has been shaped by (and in turn shaped) social, political, economic, and technological change. This course will examine Japan’s rich profusion of monsters in a variety of media (folklore, fiction, manga and anime, film, character goods, video games), with a focus on the 19th century to the present. Ranging from Noh plays to Godzilla movies to Hello Kitty advertisements, we will experience monsters in Japanese mythology, religion, and folk belief; the supernatural in court and warrior culture; the cataloging and commercialization of monsters in early modern Japan; science, the nation, and the making of “modern” monsters; nuclear anxiety and kaijū films; nostalgia and the cute (kawaii) in the postwar “monster boom”; and urban legends, cryptozoology, and Pokémon in millennial Japan. Through an immersion in the history of Japan’s fantastical creatures, this course will develop what Jeffrey Jerome Cohen calls “a method of reading cultures from the monsters they engender.” No prior knowledge of Japanese language or history is required or assumed.