Meiji Gakuin University

Demons, ghosts, and monsters have populated the cultural landscape in Japan for centuries. Appearing in anime, manga, games, and movies, mysterious creatures continue to form the core of contemporary popular culture, and have sparked a global obsession with Japanese monsters. This course explores the cultural history of the strange and supernatural in Japanese literary, visual, and performing arts. Engaging with primary and critical sources from the eighth century to the present, the course considers the social roles that representations of the "weird" have played in Japan.

This course offers an introduction to the field of transcultural studies. It explores some of the processes of creative adaptation of foreign ideas and interactions between cultures on multiple levels to better understand human communication. Upon completion, students are expected to acquire knowledge of the transcultural approach and to understand the constructed nature of concepts such as boundaries, culture, nation, society, and civilization.

This course builds upon the concepts studied in INTRODUCTION TO ECONOMICS A and introduces business strategies. The course covers cost calculations, market structures, firms' decision making, supply chains and such other topics. 

The regular version of this course is worth 3.0 UC quarter units. The Q version of this course is worth 4 or 4.5 UC quarter units. Students must submit a special study project form which outlines the requirements for the additional units. This is typically an additional paper graded by the instructor of the course.

This course studies important economic problems that emerged in Japan in the last few decades as well as their causes. The goal of the class is to deepen an understanding of contemporary Japanese economy and its relations to the world economy.

This course explores how labor markets work and analyzes a wide range of labor issues within Japanese and US economies. Each class begins with the theoretical background of labor economics, then students analyze a related research article to understand how and whether the standard, neo-classical model is applied to real economic life. 

The regular version of this course is worth 3.0 UC quarter units. The Q version of this course is worth 4.5 UC quarter units. Students must submit a special study project form which outlines the requirements for the additional units. This is typically an additional paper graded by the instructor of the course.

This course consists of ethnographic studies on Japanese popular culture, focusing on an academic understanding of Japanese popular culture through weekly meetings but also extracurricular team investigations of sociocultural phenomena that signify Japanese popular culture. 

This course is designed for students with no or little previous contact with the Japanese language. It provides a balanced grounding in grammar, vocabulary and oral/written expressions.

Upon completion of this course, students should be able to (1) : Express thoughts on very familiar topics with simple Japanese; (2) Turn their Japanese skills into actual communication for immediate needs; (3) Read and write Japanese words or simple sentences, and (4) Deepen knowledge of Japanese culture.

This course teaches how economic and psychological factors affect economic decisions of individuals, focusing on their bounded rationality. Each class is composed of two parts. The first half of the class explains the basic concepts and principles of Behavioral Economics; the second half introduces a few research articles to bolster student discussion of related research questions.