International Christian University

This course is for students learning Japanese as a mother tongue, first language, or heritage language. Through this course, students will acquire such basic skills as vocabulary building, reading comprehension, writing passages, and oral expression necessary for university students. Prerequisite: “Introduction to Japanese for First/Heritage Language Speakers” or equivalent. Six class hours/week. 

By the end of this course, students will be able to:
read coherent sentences with consideration of keywords, the main points of paragraphs, and the overall structure,
summarize your own opinions about what one has read or heard and tell them to others,
summarize your own opinions and thoughts in writing using an appropriate style.

From ancient times people have been interested in recording or analyzing past events, thereby giving birth to different traditions of telling history and the development of history as an academic discipline with a strict methodology. Still, people often ignore the conventions of this field when they refer to past events. We must deal with the whole of the past and reveal it based on valid methods, without making choices based simply on what we like. There were always kings, politicians etc. who tried to create a glorious past or hide an inglorious past, to change or use memories of the past for harming others or benefiting themselves. The misuse of history is part of our long history, and it has always been the responsibility of historians to organize/analyze past sources and describe a fair picture of the past.

This course aims to provide a firm understanding about history as an academic discipline, with its general rules and methods, its strengths and limits, while at the same time, gaining an understanding of why a correct or decent understanding of history is (and was) important for us to cope with internal and external problems in our world.

This course focuses on four major themes in Japanese and East Asian history:
(1) Diplomacy and trade;
(2) Disasters and Pandemics;
(3) War and Politics; and,
(4) Territory.
 

Each week the course explores a selection of primary documents related to these themes and key events. The goals of this course are: (1) To think about how and why different people have recorded and written about past historical events; (2) To consider how these events and documents were interpreted by different stakeholders/audiences/winners/losers at the time, and (3) to identify the challenges and limitations faced by historians as we seek to better understand the past, and its relevance for the world we live in today.

 

This advanced course prepares students to take courses taught in Japanese. Given clear organization and a solid point of argument, students comprehend long conversations, lectures, debates, and spoken media language, students become able to understand long, abstract texts on a familiar field with the use of dictionaries, write clear and lucid sentences with consistency and coherence in compositions and reports, and firmly distinguish and express facts and opinions separate from each other. Students also improve their ability to speak and perform presentations without producing misunderstanding or bringing a sense of discomfort or tension to the audience. 

This course explores the philosophy and politics of food and agriculture from international and comparative perspectives. It examines global food systems; their role in the transformation of agrarian societies, and their environmental effects. The political portion of the course focuses on governance, development, and the role of key institutions in shaping food systems. The philosophical portion of the course explores the values underlying food and agriculture in the United States and Japan, along with efforts to develop more just and sustainable food systems. The course also discusses genetically modified plants, food safety, agricultural intensification/Industrialization. 
 

This is an Advanced Social Psychology course, with the purpose of selecting important themes in social psychology and critically examining research conceptualization, design, and methodology on the specialized topics through class readings and discussion.

This course aims to deepen student understanding of various social-psychological issues (interpersonal relationships, social influence, etc.); provide guidance in critical reading of important articles, and improve awareness and mastery of social-psychological issues and research methods.

This course introduces the history of international relations, with an emphasis on the ways in which the Great Powers came to conceive, shape, and dominate the current ‘international system’. Although it follows a broad chronological trajectory, the course goes beyond traditional narratives and explanations of diplomatic relations by considering what French historians have come to refer to as ‘les forces profondes’ (or ‘deeper factors’) affecting international relations (IR), including economic, demographic, geopolitical and cultural factors that shaped the identity and foreign policies of nation-states. An important part of this process of identity formation--and of this course--revolves around the question of how national identities shaped (and were in turn shaped by) the relations of European states both with each other and with non-Europeans, especially Africa, East Asia, and the Pacific.  A central theme of this course is the idea that the Great Powers not only shape the ‘international system’ but are also shaped by it-- by their experiences of colonization. The course also addresses the critical assessment of historiographic sources (and of the question 'what is history'?); the use of theoretical IR tools to make sense of key international events, and the appraisal of the multiple ways in which variables such as actors, structures and processes contributed to shape the current ‘international system.’

This course examines the social aspects of new and old communication technologies. Communication technologies have been an essential part of our everyday lives. We constantly connect to older communication technologies, such as radio, television, and newspapers, and newer communication technologies, including the internet and mobile phones, to fulfill our daily goals. This course critically examines: 1) How communication technologies are introduced to society and how their use is shaped by various social factors, and 2) How communication technologies influence everyday lives of individuals, organizations, and society.