Japanese Program Courses

Course Catalogues

See the Undergraduate Catalog for a full list of our course offerings and Testudo for our current courses.

Degree Program Requirements

Please consult the program pages for requirements about each degree:

Current Courses

JAPN 428B: Seminar in Japanese Discourse and Conversation Analysis: Japanese Business Discourse from a Cross-Cultural Perspective

This course will introduce Japanese business language and practices from a cross-cultural, cross-linguistic perspective and is designed for intermediate to advanced level learners. This is a hybrid linguistics/language class. Background readings at the outset of the course in English will be drawn from relevant fields including pragmatics, conversation and discourse analysis, anthropological linguistics, and ethnomethodology in order to introduce students to concepts such as genre analysis, corpus linguistics, and data collection for linguistic studies. Subsequent class discussions in English and Japanese will be based on oral and written samples of authentic discourse, and will acquaint students with business terminology and kanji, as well as the genres of business telephone conversations and business e-mail correspondence. This is the “practicum” part of the course. Finally, two to three case studies on multinational companies conducted by the Wharton School of Business will also be examined in Japanese through the assigned textbook.

JAPN 438A: Topics in Japanese Pragmatics: Stylistic variation in the films of Miyazaki Hayao and Studio Ghibli

This seminar familiarizes students with fundamental topics in the field of linguistic pragmatics (the study of language use in context) through the lens of stylistic variation in the films of Miyazaki Hayao and Studio Ghibli. Students are introduced to pragmatic concepts such as deixis (how language is used to “point” to social, temporal, and spatial relationships), speech acts (how utterances function as requests, orders, apologies, invitations, etc.), and linguistic (im)politeness. An important area of focus is how the linguistic behavior of various characters contributes to their situated portrayals in these films.

JAPN 447: Technologies of Japanese Performance

This course explores technologies of performance in Japan across the centuries. We will focus on concepts of likeness and liveness as they manifest in performance’s mythical origins, the traditions of noh drama, the popular, commercial theatres of kabuki and bunraku, and contemporary experiments with robotics, Vocaloids, and other new technology. Taught in English.

Contemporary Japanese Theatre

Contemporary Japanese Theatre explores current works by Japanese playwrights with attention to their theatricality, their use of language, and the social issues they bring to light. Students will develop their skills for reading in Japanese, contextual research, and translation. Students will also stage selections of the plays to work on oral delivery and gesture.

Manga: Method and Message

Covers the history of manga from the 1600s to the present, featuring works from a wide-range of author-creators who depict varied experiences, histories, and social and political critiques. Students study Tokugawa-era scrolls, "paper theater" of the early 1900s, comics in magazines from the 1920s and 30s, works of the 1960s gekiga movement, and a variety of shōjo manga, Boys Love (BL), and more. While introducing students to analytical vocabulary and reading practices that engage visuals, script, spacing, coloring, and more, the course also reinforces a wide-variety of writing strategies for analyzing visual mediums.