Hitotsubashi University

This course has two main objectives. The first objective is to understand CSR, CSV and Sustainability based on the theory and the history, and the second objective is to think about what we should do from a corporate perspective to make society and the environment better for our time and the next generation.

The concept of Sustainability is constantly innovating. However, the fundamentals of what a company should do to ensure the sustainable development of the company, society, and the environment remain unchanged. The course aims to unravel the concepts that link corporations with society and the environment, such as CSR, CSV and Sustainability, along with their history. The course also considers what companies should do to improve society for the next generation, citing examples from Japanese and overseas corporations.

Public Economics analyzes the market failure and the function of the government, specifically what the government should do in a market economy. This course covers the basic principle of public economics, especially the role of the government and the rationale for the policy, in a framework of applied microeconomics. The course teaches the standard approach of public economics, which is the foundation of economic analysis in any policy issue. It assumes that students are familiar and comfortable with basic concepts of microeconomics that includes, for example, the method of Lagrange multiplier and Slutsky Equation.

This course gives an overarching view of the different challenges and opportunities of international management, and takes a deep dive into some selected cases and examples. It covers the different layers of complexities that come with business across borders and how companies manage to solve, or gain advantage of, these issues. The course focuses mostly on questions of strategy and organization, rather than issues or activities related to leadership, psychology, operations management or finance/accounting.

This course is for students who have mastered hiragana and katakana, approximately 150 kanji characters, and the first half of beginner-level grammar. It is designed to develop practical skills in the four skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking Japanese. The class provides many exercises based on situations that students will encounter in their daily lives, aiming to enable students to communicate in Japanese outside of class immediately.

Upon completion of this course, students should be able to:
1. Improve their listening, by understanding simple conversations on topics related to daily life;
2. Improve their speaking, by communicating on everyday situations in Japanese and making short presentations in Japanese;
3. Improve their reading, by reading short texts in hiragana, katakana, and about 195 kanji characters, and
4. Improve their writing, by writing short passages using hiragana, katakana, and kanji characters.

This course is recommended for students who plan to study at Hitotsubashi University for one semester or more, and want to learn Japanese at a slow pace.

This course focuses on a statistical approach of Japanese history. Upon completion of the course, students will have improved their critical understanding of using statistical methods in historical analysis; information extraction from primary historical sources, as well as analysis of historical data with the use of a computer.

This course introduces perspectives on language. It starts with very fundamental questions and assumptions about the nature of language itself and proceed by analyzing basic linguistic structures of the languages course participants know. The course aims to discover that the comparison of languages leads us to linguistic categories some consider universal (same categories in all languages no matter how different they appear to be on the surface), asking the questions: If all languages are more or less alike than why is it so hard to learn a foreign language?  This course considers perspectives from the fields of psychology or anthropology gives us clues, thereby looking at some of the findings the science of language owes to other sciences.

This course is designed to cultivate the basic skills of intermediate-level kanji and vocabulary. Students learn a variety of vocabulary by theme and study the characteristics of kanji, utilizing them to learn new kanji and words. The focus is placed on understanding the meaning of the vocabulary in sentences and accurately understanding the meaning of sentences. Achievable goals for the course include acquisition of N3 level kanji and vocabulary and skills to be discern the reading and meaning of new kanji.

This course introduces local, traditional and/or modern aspects of Japanese culture through field trip visits to cultural heritage sites, museums, and theaters. Special attention is given to comparing one's own culture with that of Japan in discussion with peer students. In addition, students examine how seeing Japanese culture firsthand has impacted their view of Japan. 

Students will acquire knowledge of Japanese economics and business and of the Japanese terms used in these fields by reading articles and watching TV programs suitable for advanced-level learners.

The theme of this seminar is “identities,” focusing particularly on racial, ethnic, and national identities. Through readings and discussions about contentious issues around identities, the course aims to critically examine basic social science concepts, such as: communities, groups/collectivities, nation-states, race and ethnicity, home, and ultimately, the boundaries that define “us” and “them.” The course collectively thinks about questions such as: What does it mean to be Japanese, and what does it take to become (and cease to become) Japanese (part of Japanese nationhood)?