HI 488: Twentieth Century Japanese History

Spring 2026 – Ronald Richardson

This course is an engagement with the “Japanese past” during the “long twentieth century”, a concept that I will explain during our first class session.  As such it deals with Japan as a “warfare state” in relationship with Koreans, Chinese, Ainu, Okinawans, “Westerners” and other “others” both abroad and within Japan.  We will explore the relationship between changing conceptions of “Japanese” national, ethnic, cultural and racial identities Japan’s engagement with those imagined as “other” than Japanese, or less than fully Japanese, within the global racial order.  Though our focus will be on the period from the Sino Japanese War of 1894-1895 to the post World War II period of American occupation, we will also include the entire Showa era and the 1990s. This broad perspective will allow us to appreciate the radical changes in Japanese collective and individual identities since the end of the Second World War. While we will not follow warfare in detail we will devote considerable time to the impact of war on Japan, including the plight of the civilian population during WWII, the devastation of the firebombing of major cities and the impact of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We will be particularly interested in how Japanese responded to and interpreted their situation in art, film, including anime, literature and such creative forms as manga. Thus, the course includes significant use of film, literature and art.

However, the world we live in was shaped by what did not happen, not only by what did occur. The “excavated” or “reconstructed” portion of the latter is what we can history. But history so conceived can never account for our world, or any world. So, we will ask not only about “history” but try to imagine alternative paths to the “future”, why they were forestalled and foreclosed and how they might  have been activated.

Course description written by Professor Ronald Richardson.