Japan

This course teaches Aikido, one of the Japanese martial arts, to international students. The purpose is to learn the techniques and get in touch with the spirit of Aikido. The course also teaches Aikido as a self-defense technique that can relieve stress.

Socio-cultural anthropology is the study of how people across the globe create, understand, adapt to, and transform their worlds. Located at the juncture between the humanities and social sciences, cultural anthropology merges the study of societies (social structures, institutions and political and economic systems) with the study of culture (belief and value systems, language, ritual and art).

Drawing from their own fieldwork experiences, historical archives, as well as from studies in the sciences and humanities, socio-cultural anthropologists describe, analyze and theorize a wide array of human experiences and relationships. The approach in this course is ethnographic and comparative: it studies peoples and places in depth, comparing places and peoples with one another, in order to gain a better understanding of what is general and what is particular about being human. Beginning with basic concepts in anthropology, ethnography as the core anthropological methodology, and some disciplinary history, the course then turns to a series of topics that anthropologists find important in understanding human beings: kinship and family; domination and subordination in everyday practice; identity and politics; and modernization, capitalism, and globalization.
 

The course explores some of the seminal texts in the discipline to understand how the fundamental questions asked by anthropologists have developed over the last century, and examines how these questions are refashioned in the contemporary world around urgent matters like technological change, global warming, migrants and refugee flows.

This course is for students with at least one year of prior study of Japanese. The goal of this course is for students to acquire well-balanced basic proficiency in listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and to develop an understanding and command of basic grammar and its usage. Students practice listening comprehension and pronunciation using videotapes and CDs. They learn conversational expressions and phrases necessary in daily life, fundamentals of written expression, and how to read and write short passages on topics familiar to them using previously learned sentence patterns and vocabulary. By the end of term, students master 1500 basic words and 300 basic kanji.

Culture is very much a combination of lifestyle and art. This course explores the development and transition of Japanese aesthetic in lifestyle from the prehistoric Jomon Period all the way to today, with special emphasis on the crafts and arts of Edo, Meiji, Taisho, and Showa eras. In Japan, there are fine arts, fine crafts, Mingei (the people’s arts and crafts), and design. The course examines the trends in art and lifestyle from ancient times; how traditional crafts and arts appeared in art history, and how Japanese arts and lifestyle transformed with the industrial revolution during the Meiji Era with a newly applied idea of “fine arts,” followed by the emergence of the philosophy of Mingei. The course finishes by discussing how art and crafts influence our everyday lifestyle; what it means to us today, and what you think will happen in the future.

The course introduces financial markets and financial institutions. The course instructs on the roles of regulation and deregulation in financial markets and the causes of financial crises. Then, the course discusses commercial banks and how financial institutions utilize financial instruments from financial markets to manage their risks. The course employs tools and concepts as well as classroom lectures and discussions, and "live case studies" to offer a hands-on learning experience.

The course is geared toward the applications of principles from finance and economics that explore the connection between financial markets, financial institutions, and the economy.

The purpose of this course is to guide students in mastering economic tools and critical thinking skills as applied to financial markets and institutions. After completion of the course, students will be familiar with and able to explain key elements of financial markets and how they function, including the role of information in financial markets, and the causes and consequences of financial crises.

This course explores field methods in linguistics by working with speakers of less-studied languages. It introduces various methods of investigating linguistic questions using theoretical inquiries. Students are encouraged, but not required, to have completed at least one 200-level course.

The course instructs on how to collect data from speakers of other languages, using main linguistic concepts, including but not limited to phonetics, phonology, syntax and semantics. Students will then apply acquired skills to design field documentation sessions that can be used to test linguistic hypotheses. Furthermore, these skills will be used to investigate less-studied languages in an objective, scientific manner.

This course discusses the origins and structure of contemporary society based on the method of social history, comprehensively examining the dynamics of society, considering not only its economy, but also its politics, culture, and other various aspects. The course addresses education, media, cities, families, social movements, etc.

This course aims to trace certain aspects of postwar Japan, particularly the planning and reconstruction of cities damaged during the Second World War, taking comparisons with Great Britain into account.

This course considers the ethical duties that come with citizenship and political participation. It encourages students to critically assess their own beliefs about the role of the state in their lives. During this process, students will be expected to practice constructively exchanging ideas with their peers while remaining tolerant of those with differing perspectives.

This course focuses on global trade system/rules (namely WTO Agreements and Free Trade Agreements) and Japanese trade policies and laws under those rules. It will provide basic knowledge on concepts and terms related to global trade system/rules, together with tools for legal analysis of trade laws and policies of respective countries.
 

The class sessions begin with lectures on basic trade system/rules/policies followed by case studies. Relevant cases are distributed in advance and active participation in the case-related presentations, debates, or other forms of group work, depending on the number of students, is necessary. Case studies are based on actual cases and can be complex.

In this course students acquire a broad knowledge base and develop analytical and critical thinking skills. Students actively participate in seminars, read assigned texts and research papers, and analyze research data. Students also discuss results obtained in their own experiments with peers and senior laboratory members.