Modern China and Japan
4 CREDITS
INTRODUCTORY OR ADVANCED LEVEL
LIBERAL STUDY
FILLS GEN ED REQUIREMENT IN OTHER WORLD CIVILIZATIONS
This study examines and compares major problems in the history of modern (post 1800) China and Japan in relation to: Confucian (and Buddhist and Shinto) values and social structures, encounters with western capitalist imperialism, disintegration of traditional governing systems and construction of modern nation-states, modern “nationalism”, war and revolution, and feminism. We will study the modern histories of two long-established and distinctive Asian cultures that in 1800 had voluntarily isolated themselves from the wider non-Asian world, but that during the course of the 20th century became major and critical state actors in the geopolitical realm. We will study the histories of modern China and Japan chronologically and thematically, noting how their national histories have intertwined with one another and with the West (most particularly with the United States).