OSAKA UNIVERSITY SHORT-TERM STUDENT EXCHANGE PROGRAM _

Objective
In Japan and its study, one is inevitably confronted with discourses of "Japaneseness". This course aims at exploring discourses of Japanese peculiarity through contemporary visual culture. It focuses mainly on manga (as comic), though not in an otaku-like, i.e. a hermetically inherent way. Rather it links the manga to discourses of popular culture and art, gender, and interculturality, examining issues of cultural identity in Japan in terms of "hybridity" and "critical syncretism".

Lecture Outline

• 1) Introduction: The peculiarity of the manga in Japanese and Western discourses
• 2) Manga as literature, manga as a visual media
• 3) Manga as popular culture: folk culture, subculture, mass culture (history of the story-manga)
• 4) Shojo manga/girl's comic as a "female genre" and a subculture (the New Wave of the 70s)
• 5) The Takarazuka revue (playing gender; stylization)
• 6) Shojo manga and the aesthetics of cuteness/kawaii, women's comics in the 90s
• 7) Elements of manga in the work of young women artists (Nishiyama Minako, Ichihara Hiroko, Mori Mariko, Fukuda Miran)
• 8) Neo-Pop: Occupying the borderline between pop and fine art (Murakami Takashi, Nakahashi Katsushige, Yanagi Miwa)
• 9) The body as a battleground of identities: Morimura Yasumasa, the "art ninja"
• 10) Japaneseness as collage: Yokoo Tadanori's graphic design (compared to the motive of the flag in Yanagi Yukinori's ant farm works of the 90s)
• 11) Otaku - the "real heir of Japanese culture" (Okada Toshio)?
• 12) Miyazaki Hayao, the "Japanese Walt Disney" (Japanese anime and American animation; narration and visuality in "Princess Mononoke")
• 13, 14) Japanese manga in Asia, Asian Comics in Japan
• 15) Manga in the museum: Confirming cultural status by visualization (manga museums, manga exhibitions in Japanese art museums)

The lectures will be held basically in English, but also include the Japanese language, as a means of communication in the classroom as well as in terms of references. Instead of using a one and only textbook throughout the whole course, a variety of references will be provided according to the different aspects of the subject. Visual material (slides, video, prints) and its discussion will form a central part of most of the lectures.

Participants in this course are not required a previous knowledge in art history or aesthetics, but expected to be open-minded towards discourses of culture and art.

Grading
The students will be asked to give short papers during the course and/or to write an essay (in English or Japanese) at the end of the semester. The schedule for the papers will be decided on during the first lecture.