Japan

Japan, as recent history has powerfully illustrated, is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries. Today it is also one of the best prepared to face such extraordinary seismic risk. This was not always the case.

Using earthquakes as a window into Japanese society, this course examines when, how, and why contemporary Japan became a nation prepared for disaster as we know it today.  The course explores interconnections between nature, politics, education, economics, ideology, and the built environment in new and exciting ways. It considers earthquakes as events that not only cause suffering and devastation, but occurrences that inspire opportunism and unleash contestation. The themes and questions we explore remain relevant to Japan today.

This course will adopt an interdisciplinary approach and use a range of primary source material to explore topics including vulnerability and resilience; survivor accounts; visual representations of destruction in art and media; relief; reconstruction; political use of catastrophe; commemoration; disaster education and training.

Students will acquire a sophisticated understanding of the following: how earthquakes have been interpreted, explained, and remembered in Japanese culture and society; how governments use disasters and reconstruction processes that follow for political purposes; how and why earthquakes often expose underlying tensions in society and result in competing visions for post-disaster rebuilding and the future. Students completing this course will have a detailed understanding of how disasters have shaped Japanese history, culture, and society.

In addition to the 160 basic kanji characters taught in K150, students will learn to read, write and type 160 new characters. They will become familiar with various methods of kanji learning and expand their vocabulary of words that contain kanji.
Eligibility: Students who have learned about 160 kanji characters and are at least A1 level in the CEFR/JF Standard for Japanese-Language Education (N5 in the JLPT).
Learning Objectives: 
・Understand the meanings and readings of 320 kanji and words using those kanji.
・Be able to write the 320 kanji vocabulary words with the help of example models.
・Be able to type short sentences containing the 320 kanji on a smartphone or PC.

This course examines one of the most complex products of society- the city, with the focus on the city of Tokyo. It takes a multidisciplinary approach to study the phenomenology of Tokyo at the meeting point between the built city and the personal urban experience. The course also looks at the creation and recreation of the city's physical texture, architecture, urban landscape, infrastructures and technology while at the same time, observing it as a social product determined by everyday life and habitual practices, the organization of the immediate surroundings, personal rites and the micro-politics of life in the city. In the same manner, the course looks at buildings and neighborhoods per se, as a material construct guided by geometry and legal code, while also recognizing how the pragmatics of this built environment interrelate with cultural systems such as literature and film, and with culture as a whole. The course also looks at how the city is not merely a reflection or expression of politics, but rather an intricate political apparatus in and of itself, influencing relationships and encouraging change.

Why do potentially revolutionary products and services fail to become successful? How do companies take care (or not) of innovations developed by firms that they buy? What happens when companies try to introduce radical innovations in new countries? This course addresses these questions. Furthermore, this course provides a deep understanding of the different challenges that arise when a company has to convince a market to accept its innovations. This is even more important in foreign countries, where different sets of norms and unwritten rules may impact the success of innovations. Both through instructor-led lectures, case sessions and a joint project, the course studies the complex and often overlooked dynamics at the tail end of the innovation process that may make or break a product or service that is otherwise competitive.