The Asian Culture course provides students with an opportunity to engage with education and research on current affairs and issues relating to the leveraging of culture for practical purposes and resolve issues in Asia, including Japan, from a comparative cultural perspective. The course also enables students to reflect on specific policies and theoretical formulations regarding the leveraging of cultures rooted in the region. Alongside, students will study methods to understand the diverse cultures of different regions within Asia and conduct regional and comparative cultural studies, all of which will serve as a basis for leveraging cultural assets as described above.
To achieve these aims, the course is centered on three key concepts: regions, coexistence, and comparison. The term “regions” refers to spaces with regional characteristics that have created diverse cultures or where cultural assets are being leveraged in new ways. To understand a culture, one must first understand the region that gave rise to that culture and the related cultural phenomena, rather than just considering that culture in isolation. “Coexistence” refers to a state in which diverse cultures live alongside one another, and the value system of seeking to move toward such a state. Issues relating to coexistence play a major role in the Asian region, such as coexistence between diverse cultures, and between tradition and modernity. Clinging to one particular idea of culture can only lead to cultural conflicts and clashes. How can we build cultures that coexist? As we seek to understand Asia, we must always remain oriented toward coexistence. “Comparison” is also an important perspective for understanding Asian culture. Seeking to understand a culture from a single perspective can lead to bias. We must instead seek to relativize our perspective through engaging in diverse comparisons: between regions, between the past and the present, and between the cultural phenomena that we study.
Students in this course will consider the leveraging of cultural assets according to the characteristics of different regions and communities based on the three concepts highlighted above. There are a wide variety of scenarios in which cultural assets are leveraged in contemporary Asia. For example, cultural assets may be used in creating a business as a means to attract customers, as a soft power asset to be used with other countries, or as a foundation for achieving a society based on coexistence. Leveraging cultural assets based on regional characteristics is an important issue that extends beyond the Asian region to have application in contemporary society as a whole. As such, the educational and research activities of this course will make a significant contribution to resolving issues in contemporary society.
Staff
| Professor Tsuneo Matsuura | Professor Tsuneo Matsuura seeks to clarify how theaters were formed within the sphere of Greater China, both from a historical perspective and also in relation to contemporary society. His past research has mainly focused on the relevance of media during the ROC period; moving forward he hopes to focus on new forms of theater in Greater China as it enters a new phase in the 21st century. |
|---|---|
| Professor Hiroshi Tawada | Professor Hiroshi Tawada specializies in cultural anthropology, his main field of study is Southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia. He is interested in understanding culture from perspectives in application, including the status of culture and religion in contemporary society, and challenges relating to creating multicultural societies of coexistence. |
| Professor Madoka Hori | Associate Professor Madoka Hori focuses on the study of Japanese culture and Japanese literature from an international perspective. She employs a comparative perspective to study the history and reality of negotiations relating to art, literature, and culture, seeking to define Japan in terms of its status as a region within Asia. |
| Research on the peoples of the Korean Peninsula and the global Korean diaspora, including in Japan, with the aim of uncovering the words, literature, and histories of marginalized people who have been deprived of their voice. |