Paul Curran

Fall 2022

Global Images of Japan

Welcome – We will begin in a few minutes
Please write your screenname in English.
Remember to fill in the attendance form before the end:
Link in Chant. Must be looged into TUFS Google account.
 Warm-up
Syllabus
Contents Terminology
Discussion
Questions
 When you were a kid, what did you want to
be when you grew up? Why?

What movie would you change the ending to

if you could? How?

WARM-UP Who would you have dinner with if you could

QUESTIONS... have it with any person, living or dead? Why?

If you could only take two books on a desert

island, which would you take? Why?

What is the best Japanese invention? Why?

Syllabus
Course Goals and Overview:

Students will develop skills for participating in lectures given in

English. They will participate in discussions, do independent
research, prepare for tests, and give presentations.

This course encourages students to discuss how foreign countries

have represented and been influenced by Japanese arts and
culture. Students will develop tools to critically reflect on and
evaluate how global images of Japan have changed over time and
may change in the future.
 Course Schedule: (Subject to Change)
Syllabus
1. 5-Oct – Psychogeography 1 (Traditional Orientalism)
Day & Time: Wednesday 2. 12-Oct – Psychogeography 2 (Mythical land / Empty centre)
2nd period (16:00 - 17:30) 3. 19-Oct – History 1 (Geisha / Samurai)
4. 26-Oct – History 2 (Kamikaze / Godzilla)
5. 2-Nov – Technology 1 (Techno Orientalism)
6. 9-Nov – Technology 2 (Manga / Anime)
7. 16-Nov – Mid-term Test

8. 30-Nov– Criminology 1 (Weird Orientalism)

9. 7-Dec – Criminology 2 (Yakuza / Otaku)
10. 14-Dec – Futurology 1 (Global Orientalism)
11. 21-Dec – Futurology 2 (Disaster Zones)

12. 11-Jan – Final Presentation 1

13. 18-Jan – Conclusion (Presentation 2)

14. ALH1 (10%) Reflection Paper 1

15. ALH2 (10%) Reflection Paper 2
Syllabus

Assessment:

Participation - 30%
Homework assignments and classwork 10%
Mid-term test - 20%
Final presentation - 20%
ALH1 - 10%
ALH2 - 10%
Which are these five cities...?
 London
What’s your Paris
impression of
these five New York
famous cities?
How are they Los Angeles
similar or
different? Tokyo
 • In his seminal article, “Introduction
to a Critique of Urban Geography”
(1955), Lettrist/Situationist founder
Guy Debord called for a new field
of inquiry, to be known as
What is “psychogeography,” established to
study “the precise laws and specific
psychogeography effects of the geographical
environment, consciously organized
or not, on the emotions and
behavior of individuals.”
 • Despite this apparent attempt at
concrete definition, the field of
psychogeography has eluded the
methodological and theoretical
formalization common in other
disciplines — it is, at heart, an
undisciplined discipline — being
more frequently associated with
what even Debord himself
referred to as “a rather pleasing
What is vagueness.”
psychogeography
What is psychogeography
• Equally important, although the
Situationists may have been the first
to recognize and name it, the practice
of psychogeographical inquiry can be
traced back though centuries of
historical precedents and influences
found in travelogues, real and
invented biographies, opium-induced
confessions, playful and surreal works
of art, and other literary, poetic, and
geographical flights of fanciful reality
(and realistic fantasy).

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

 • Similarly, the past 60 years have seen
further flourishing (albeit perhaps
“underground flourishing,” reminiscent of
the growth pattern of psychotropic
subterranean fungi. . . ) in the field from
novelists, poets, and essayists (Ackroyd,
What is Ballard, Sebald, Self, Sinclair, Solnit), as
well as geographers and planners
psychogeography (including DUSP’s own Kevin Lynch, who
explored mental maps of urban spaces),
photographers, filmmakers, anarchist
communitarians, guerrilla artists, land-
scape painters, musicians, game
designers, and others.
 • As a result, the quest to define
“psychogeography” may in fact
be a form of psychogeographical
wandering itself — possibly
futile, but nonetheless fun,
What is fascinating, and rife with hidden
meanings. (Or perhaps it is just
psychogeography one big inside joke....)

• Ezra Haber Glenn, Lecturer Fall 2017

• Wanderings in Psychogeography: Exploring Landscapes of History, Biography,
Memory, Culture, Nature, Poetry, Surreality, Fantasy, and Madness (11.S942)
Syllabus and Orientation Notes
 psychogeography
drift....
• A dérive (drift) is an unplanned journey through a
landscape, usually urban, on which the subtle aesthetic
contours of the surrounding architecture and geography
subconsciously direct the travellers, with the ultimate
goal of encountering an entirely new and authentic
experience.

• Guy Debord defines the dérive as “a mode of

experimental behaviour linked to the conditions of
urban society: a technique of rapid passage through
varied ambiances.”
Learning to Drift
• CLIVE HOLTHAM’S LEARNING DÉRIVE

• Purpose: A vehicle to develop curiosity, creativity, and more critically reflection.

• Prof. Clive Holtham of Cass Business School and Allan Owens of the University of Chester
developed the practice of the learning dérive as a learning vehicle to promote curiosity,
creativity and more critically, reflection in the postgraduate education of their students.
 Purpose
• One way through which time, space, and place can be created to
generate a form a person-centered, informal, dialogical learning.

• Seek to promote learning as an active process in which learners

construct the world through dialogue, action, and reflection as they
interact with other people and their environment.

• Collaboration and deliberate movement through an urban

environment generate dialogue that participants find professionally
and personally relevant and stimulating, often arising from the
psychogeography of the area being experienced and the personal
stories that are prompted by it.

• Seeing a familiar area a new or making an unfamiliar area familiar

is one of the ways in which new insights are generated.

• Stimulus arises not only from oral interaction but also silence and
reflection.

• Dériving leads participants to talk about the experiences with

others who have not been involved.

https://conversational-leadership.net/derive/
 What is Orientalism?

In his famous book Orientalism, Edward Said (1979) traced the origins of
"orientalism" to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the
Middle and Near East and, from its position of power, defined "the orient" simply as
"other than" the occident.

In what ways could orientalism be said to have appeared during the Meiji
Restoration, when Japan’s borders were opened to the occidental world...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=oembed&v=WE_wA09owhg
discussion

"... the whole of Japan is a pure invention.

There is no such country, there are no such
people... The Japanese people are... simply a
mode of style, an exquisite fancy of art.” –
Oscar Wilde, 1889.

What does this quote mean to you?

Do you agree/disagree? Why/Why not?

What do you think are the main Global images of

Japan today?
 Homework DRIFT Assignment
Go for a 20-30-minute walk in no particular
direction, perhaps one you would not
usually take, and with no destination in
mind.

Look around, up and down, for anything you

find interesting or haven’t noticed before,
and drift to wherever you feel drawn... Take
photos if you wish (No GPS), but also think
about other senses apart from sight

After the drift, write notes about the

experience...and prepare to talk about it
next week...
 Contact

Instructor: カラン ポール ロバートCURRAN Paul Robert

Email: paulcurran@tufs.ac.jp Office Location: Online

Class Day & Time: Wed 16:00-17:30