2009 Spring Term (April-July)


Aspects of East Asian Society : Media of East Asia
This course shall concentrate on Japan and China, but will also touch on Korea, Taiwan, Australia and other locales. We will define "mass media" to include not only print, broadcast and online sources, but the auxiliary fields of advertising and public relations as well. The first part of the course will focus on entertainment (non news) media----TV dramas, comedies, game shows and variety shows; popular magazines; and online satirical clips. The second part of the course will focus on news, using comparative sources such as the Freedom House indices. A special emphasis will be the instructor's current research on why Japanese manga/anime have attained such global popularity.

Aspects of East Asian Culture and History : Japanese-Sino Relations
This course is designed to be an introduction to the history of Japanese-Sino relations in modern times. Since the late 19th Century until 1945, Japan's development and economic growth had been closely linked to its colonialist expansion into the East Asian continent, especially into China. China's struggles for modernization and nation building had always been confronted with the presence of Japan both as a model to follow and metance to fight against.

East Asian Finance
This course aims to explore the financial and banking system in Asian countries with a particular emphasis on China and Japan. The course shall introduce the basics of monetary policy and international financing, examine the banking and financial system of major Asian countries, discuss the causes and effects of the Asian financial crisis of 1997, understand the increasing role of Asian countries in world financial markets, and explore the possibility of integration of the banking and financial markets in Asian.

Japanese Diplomacy
This course shall draw on the personal experiences and recollections of Ambassador Kazuo Asakai who has served as Japan's Ambassador to Myannmar (1998-2000) and the EU (2002-2005). This course aims to examine key events, issues, and personalities in Japanese foreign policy from the 20th and 21th centuries. Of particular concern will be the examination of Japan's relations with East Asia, the United States, and the European Union.


2009 Autumn Term (September-January)

Aspects of East Asian Culture & History:
Japanese History Since 1850
This course is designed to be a survey of Japanese History from 1850-1952. Themes of particular concern include : 1)the continuities and changes in the relationship between the government and imperial household ; 2)the role of conflict between indigenous traditions and pressures and expectations of modernization ; and 3)the development and advancement of democracy in Japan.

Aspects of East Asian Politics: Contemporary Japanese Politics
This course offers a genearal overview and background to understand contemporary Japanese politics. The goal of the course is to learn the major characteristics of the Japanese system and its institutions and to comparatively assess the Japanese decision-making process. Throughout the course, the focus will be on understanding the Japanese political dynamics and
constraints within which political actors operate and the way in which they formulate policies.

East Asian Business
This course shall engage in a comparative study of the development strategies of the economies of Japan, China, and South Korea. The three countries now share a competitive but cooperative relationship, which inevitably affects the course of economic, political, and social developments. But the development patterns are not necessarily the same because of the differences of history and institutions. This course shall pay equal attention to past experiences and future alternatives.

International Political Economy
The aim of this course is to give broad understanding of capitalist economy to students. Currently many oligopolistic corporations are evolving to transnational corporations and importance of regional economic blocs is overshadowing the importance of nation states as the unit of the social reproduction. This course shall investigate the impact of such development and its implications in East Asia.

2009 Spring Term

2009 Autumn Term