International Christian University

This course explores how language appears and is employed in popular cultural productions, including songs, films, advertisements, and more. It considers the changing nature of language and how different media use language to tell stories, express ideas, and have effects on their readers, viewers, or listeners. The course analyzes specific works for its language choices and its circulation; its differences in oral and written contexts; and the constellation of associations that can be created across time, space, and media. 
 

This course aims to do the following: 

1) Develop skills and knowledge one has acquired in foundational Media, Communication and Culture courses.
2) Introduce a range of interesting popular cultural productions and increase one’s cultural literacy in the process.
3) Recognize that scholarly inquiry and appreciation does not exclude popular culture and that they are worthy of discussion, analysis, and aesthetic appreciation.

Public economics nestles economic activity in the government and the public sector. This course deals with assessing the government's role in the context of the broader economy. The course deals with understanding taxation, inequality, analysis of government policies, and the response of individuals to those policies. The course also discusses competition policy (why & when governments intervene in the functioning of markets), as well as government procurement.
 

The course offers the opportunities to:
- Understand the role of the government in the economy
- Analyze government policies, such as taxation, regulation, competition policy, and environmental policy
- Explore the empirical literature on public policy and its implications for policy design

Basic microeconomics (for example, ECO102) is a recommended prerequisite or corequisite of this course since many of the topics covered will presuppose an understanding of consumer theory, market equilibrium, elasticities, etc. 

This course deals with the new trend of Japanese modern literature after the Great Kanto Earthquake (September 1920), which had a major impact on Japanese modern culture.  The devastating blow to the Tokyo metropolitan area and its subsequent rapid recovery was influential on Japanese literature and arts. 

Modernization occurred after the Meiji era (1868-1912) and achieved a certain degree of success during the Taisho era (1912-1926); however, after the earthquake these achievements were destroyed, and new experimentation developed. It is a common practice in literary history to distinguish the period of “modern times” based on the year of the earthquake. 

This course covers Japanese Constitutional Law from political and social perspectives. It comprises four parts: 

1) “Invitation to Japanese Constitutional Law” introduces the basics of Japanese Constitutional Law and constitutional law in general; 

2) “Basic Principles of Japanese Constitutional Law” covers basic principles of Japanese Constitutional Law such as pacifism, popular/national sovereignty and fundamental human rights; 

3) “Human Rights and Governance” explores some crucial provisions in human rights and governance; and 

4) “Current Topics in the Japanese Constitutional Law” covers recent topics to discuss the role of Japanese Constitutional Law today and in the future.

Each class is composed of student presentations, lectures and discussion. 

This course aims to introduce students to the reading of both primary and secondary historical materials in Medieval Japanese history, thus deepening their knowledge of historical issues in this period. Topics of the classes and the related readings are different every year.

The course involves careful reading of various sources in English and Japanese (both primary and secondary sources, depending on the requests and ability of the participants), and discussions of their content in historical context. For each session students are expected to read the materials in advance and summarize the content of the text(s) in the form of a detailed handout (approx. 2-3 pages). All participants will be required to ask two questions or comment on the presentation of others.

As a neighbor, China is geographically close but politically distant. At a glance, Chinese society seems similar to Japanese society; however, China has a large territory and various ethnic groups and thus cannot be understood easily as a “nation of the same race and same script.”

This course offers lectures on the Historical Change of Chinese society in the 17-19th centuries, in South China (Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi provinces and Taiwan). It focuses on migration, ethnic minorities, unification of society, and secret sects.  The course explores the following three problems: the migration that kept the population explosion in China; the relationships and conflicts between ethnic minorities and Han Chinese as the result of exploitation in the frontier area, and the unification of society that resulted as a process of migrant settlement.

Music is a fundamental activity found in all human societies and at all periods of history. This course introduces different methods of studying music as an academic subject, and considers the many ways that music intersects with other aspects of society. The course is recommended for potential music majors and any other students interested in music.

The course covers the following topics:

• Why study music?
• Histories of music
• Music theory and analysis
• The Sociology of music
• The musical mind – music and psychology
• The new ‘musicologies’
• Decolonization of music studies
• The economics and business of music 

This course helps students consider the various international perspectives to be incorporated in the field of education. Examining literature and case studies, it attempts to tackle imminent issues such as poverty, demographic change, environment, war, and gender imbalance in the globalizing world. The course provides the opportunity to propose a plan for incorporating international perspectives to a country's education system using collaborative online international learning (COIL) as one of the formats.  

The course addresses the following topics: 

- Education as a means of national development
- Internationalization of education
- Literacy
- Gender equality
- Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
- Environmental education
- Intercultural competence
- Multicultural education
- ICT and education
- Collaborative online international learning (COIL)
- Education and development
- Education and peace

This course is designed to survey the basic content and methodology of contemporary psychology. While psychology as a scientific and humanistic enterprise is the underlying theme of the course, the field of psychology is approached so that is serves as the solution to many problems facing society at large.

The course addresses the following topics:

• Psychology as a discipline 
• Knowing the world: Sensation and perception 1 (Morishima)
• Learning - classical conditioning, operant conditioning (Morishima)
• Making sense of the world: Basic cognitive processes - memory (Morishima)
• Making sense of the world: Higher-level cognitive processes concept formation, categorization, knowledge representation, decision making, reasoning, creativity, etc. (Chan)
•  Biological bases of behavior: Basic structure and function of the human nervous system, mind/body problem, etc. (Chan)
• Motivation & Emotion (Smith)
• Development (Smith)
• Social Psychology (Smith)
• Health & Clinical psychology (Chan)

This course introduces basic concepts in linguistics from the perspective of language documentation. Based on data from less-studied languages, the course explore subfields of linguistics, including but not limited to phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax. Most data will come from fieldwork conducted by the instructor using authentic data. Target languages are Xitsonga and Tshivenda (South Africa), Kiribati (Kiribati), Drenjongke (India), Burmese (Myanmar), Zhuang and Yi (China) as well as Japanese dialects spoken in Tohoku and Okinawa.

The course covers the following topics:

-Introduction to language documentation
-Issues concerning endangered languages
-Phonetic and phonological documentation
-Documenting cultural materials (Mid-term presentation)
-Morphological documentation
-Syntactic and prosodic documentation