This course tracks discourses and representations of race and ethnicity emerged in modern Japan for the purpose of debunking the myth of the homogenous nation. The notion of Japan's homogeneity has functioned and continually serves as a powerful ideological tool not only domestically but also on the global scale. Focusing on cultural materials such as literature and film produced between the late nineteenth century and the present, the course explores the various ways in which cultural production has borne witnessed to, participated in, and/or resisted to the creation and perpetuation of a dominant narrative of Japan. Analyzing course materials against such backdrops as colonialism, world wars, Cold War, capitalism, and globalization, the course aims at contemplating the porous boundaries, the frontiers within, and the invisible borders that the myth of the homogenous nation continues to conceal.

This course tracks discourses and representations of race and ethnicity emerged in modern Japan for the purpose of debunking the myth of the homogenous nation. The notion of Japan's homogeneity has functioned and continually serves as a powerful ideological tool not only domestically but also on the global scale. Focusing on cultural materials such as literature and film produced between the late nineteenth century and the present, the course explores the various ways in which cultural production has borne witnessed to, participated in, and/or resisted to the creation and perpetuation of a dominant narrative of Japan. Analyzing course materials against such backdrops as colonialism, world wars, Cold War, capitalism, and globalization, the course aims at contemplating the porous boundaries, the frontiers within, and the invisible borders that the myth of the homogenous nation continues to conceal.