Sound, Image and Narrative: A Multidimensional Approach to Japanese Culture

Sound, Image and Narrative: A Multidimensional Approach to Japanese Culture is a Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies tutorial taught by J. Oba.

Course Description
This tutorial explores Japanese culture using Japanese songs as literary, musical and sociocultural texts that project its aesthetics, self-images, history, and national myths. The course examines a broad range of materials, both in terms of musical genres and historical periods, from nursery rhymes to traditional chants to contemporary rap songs. We sing select songs in Japanese (including some regional dialects) in order to familiarize ourselves with the sounds of Japanese language and the correlation between language and musical structure; study their lyrics in English translation and discuss their meanings, culture-specific connotations and functions in their contexts. In addition to reading select articles, students conduct a series of mini research on specific songs and topics at several junctures during the course and share their findings in class discussions. The course aims to present and share the results of our collective musical endeavor and individual research with our community in the form of an informal concert/ workshop at the end of the semester.

Learning Goals

 * Multi-Cultural
 * Project-based
 * Presenting
 * Reading