2024/2025
History of Japan
Type:
Minor
Delivered by:
School of International Affairs
Open to:
students of all HSE University campuses
Language:
English
ECTS credits:
5
Course Syllabus
Abstract
Japanese history from the early periods through to the early 20th century. Japanese civilization before the 17 century: a recap. Periodization of Japanese history: eras prior to Tokugawa. Tokugawa shogunate in Japan. Feudal state and military government of Japan in 1600-1868. From national unification to a new political order. Foreign relations in the age of sakoku. Meiji Japan: a case of effective modernization. Domestic reforms and the end of the ancien regime. Post-Perry political struggle and collapse of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Meiji reforms and rapid westernization. Japan from Black Ship to Meiji Restoration. Unequal treaties and Meiji diplomacy. First steps toward territorial expansion. The First Sino-Japanese War and its repercussions. This part of the course ends with the Russo-Japanese War and assessing its origins, course and consequences. Russian, Japanese and international receptions of the war in politics and culture are discussed as well.
Learning Objectives
- The course aims to walk students through the multitude of complex processes, which shaped Japan during different eras of its history. It will define approaches to Japanese historiography, key historical events, processes, leaders and concepts, which influenced political, economic and cultural development of Japan from ancient times until the early-20th century. The course will also reveal the main patterns in Japan’s relations with its neighbours, including China and Korea throughout history, and finally, focus on the end of the Meiji era and Japan’s transition into the 20th century as a nationalist power.
Expected Learning Outcomes
- • Students can define the chronology of Japanese history and basic approaches to its historiography.
- Students can describe the main features of different eras of Japanese history.
- Students can confidently talk about the social structure of Japan and the emergence of various social classes throughout its history (e.g. samurai, peasant, merchant, etc.).
- Students can distinguish Japanese feudalism from European.
- Students can describe the main events of the Imjin war and its consequences for Japan, Korean and their neighbours.
- Students can discuss the role Heian culture played in directing the development of Japanese culture.
- Students are able to analyse the development of the government and social system of under the Tokugawa shogunate.
- Students are able to explain the key processes in Japan’s cultural and social development during the 17-19th centuries.
- Students can define key features of modernity in Japan and assess the extent to which the arrival of the West played a part in it.
- Students can compare the economic and political development of the country during the Meiji era to that of its neighbours.
- Students are able to describe the impactful events which led to the Russo-Japanese War.
- Students can describe the geopolitical situation in East Asia before the Japanese occupation of Korea.
Course Contents
- 1) The origins of Japan.
- 2) Early Japan: Jōmon, Yayoi and Kofun periods.
- 3) Classical Japan: Asuka and Nara.
- 4) Heian era and the flourishing of the Imperial court. Japanese culture and society during the Heian period.
- 5) Japanese feudalism during the Kamakura and Muromachi eras.
- 6) Azuchi-Momoyama period and the unification of Japan.
- 7) Japan’s encounters with the outside world, Christian influences and the closing of the country (sakoku).
- 8) Tokugawa shogunate in Japan: the economy and state of politics.
- 9) The age of Edo: cultural foundations of Japan. The Tokugawa society.
- 10) The arrival of the West and the unequal treaties.
- 11) The Meiji Ishin: Restoration or Revolution? 4 hours
- 12) Japan’s take on modernisation.
- 13) External Relations in the Meiji era and the First Sino-Japanese War.
- 14) The Russo-Japanese War: World War Zero?
- 15) The annexation of Korea.
Interim Assessment
- 2024/2025 2nd module0.1 * Attendance + 0.3 * Class participation + 0.35 * Final exam + 0.25 * Midterm exam
Bibliography
Recommended Core Bibliography
- A history of East Asia : from the origins of civilization to the twenty-first century, Holcombe, C., 2022
Recommended Additional Bibliography
- A history of East Asia : from the origins of civilization to the twenty-first century, Holcombe, C., 2011
- A history of Japan, 1582-1941 : internal and external worlds, Cullen, L. M., 2003