International Christian University

This course provides an overview of the basic themes essential to properly interpret Japanese classical literature. Understanding Japanese classical literature requires multiple perspectives, including various aspects of society, politics, religion, environment, education, architecture, lifestyle, fine arts, and performing arts. The course instructs on literary works (both poetry and prose) dating from the Nara period to the Kamakura period, but the focus is on the Heian period. This course expects to enable students to rediscover the pleasure of reading classical literary works.
 

How are words used to change people’s minds? What makes us pay attention to someone’s words, sung, spoken, or written? Does the spoken (or sung) word have more impact than the written one? What makes someone click on the headline of an online publication? Is an image more powerful with or without a linguistic frame? Can language be more persuasive than an image? Is persuasion, like humor, culture-specific? These are questions that will be explored in this course about how rhetoric, the art of verbal persuasion, operates in contemporary society. 
 

The course aims to: 

(1) To develop an awareness of how language is used to persuade and manipulate by looking at rhetoric, the art of verbal persuasion, and recognizing how a range of rhetorical devices, including repetition and metaphor, are employed in popular songs, and memorable advertisements, headlines and tweets, political speeches, and film titles; and 

(2) To practice the use of rhetorical devices in making language more persuasive.

This course aims to give a broad outline of several Japanese musical genres, along with an understanding of the way in which the musical styles exist within Japanese culture. Emphasis will also be placed on the cultural and geographical position of Japan within the larger context of East Asia. The course takes a practical approach, with frequent demonstrations, providing an opportunity to try out several Japanese instruments. No musical or linguistic skills are needed to take the course.

Learning goals:  

1) To obtain an overview of musical traditions in Japan; 
2) To develop ways of describing these musical traditions and understanding them in their cultural context, and
3) To relate these traditions to Western European and other Asian musical traditions.

This course is part of the "Japanese as a Foreign Language Program." It provides an opportunity to learn reading, writing, and usage of vocabulary and kanji in the latter half of intermediate-level Japanese. The course includes lectures on reading, writing, vocabulary usage, research, as well as individual and group presentations. There will be weekly check assignments on vocabulary and kanji. Prerequisite: “J4: JAPANESE” or equivalent.

This course is designed to explore key issues and current debates in the field of Marketing and International Marketing. The course explains theoretical concepts in the discipline of international marketing and the importance of how to think globally in business. In addition, the impact of political, legal, economic and cultural factors on marketing activities across countries will be discussed. Students will learn to analyze marketing plans and consumer product strategy at the global level.

The course examines how different religions adapt to a world of consumer capitalism, mass migrations and new technologies. Religious participation has gained new speed in recent years, but not in ways we associate with traditional institutions like temples, pilgrimages and rituals. In today's world, religions spread through transnational migration, social media and consumer practices. Focusing on ethnographies conducted mainly (but not exclusively) in Asia, the course explores how these emerging practices shape contemporary religion.

This course teaches basketball as a team sport, providing an overview of the communication skills, teamwork, leadership, followership, self-understanding, understanding others, and awareness of one's own body and its movements to play a successful game. Furthermore, this course aims at learning the enjoyment of the sports culture of basketball itself.

This Japanese language course is designed for students who have completed Japanese III at ICU and have mastered basic skills. It is comparable to third and beginning fourth year at UC. The course continues the development of skills in listening, reading, and writing. By the end of the course, students should be able to communicate in intermediate Japanese incorporating fundamental knowledge of Japanese culture.

This course introduces the sounds, grammar, vocabulary, genetic affiliation, and types of Japanese language, terms and concepts often used in Japanese linguistics.  It covers the basic information on Japanese language needed for students interested in teaching it as a second/foreign language or a native language. Japanese is also contrasted with other languages such as Korean, Chinese and English.

A beginning dance class, this course teaches the basics of jazz dance and various ways to express music with one's body. This class requires a lot of movements based on the classical ballet technique.