Taught in English and designed for undergraduates and graduate students with no prior background in Japanese language, literature, or history, this course aims to introduce various manifestations of Japanese cultural paradigms and imagination through the medium of film by some of the most prominent talents in the Japanese cinema from the 1920s to the present-day. They include such artists as Kurosawa Akira, Kobayashi Masaki, Ozu Yasujirō, Ichikawa Kon, Morita Yoshimitsu, and Teshigahara Hiroshi.

Some of the films I have used are based on widely-acclaimed literary texts, including Abe Kōbō’s Woman in the Dunes, Ōoka Shōhei’s Fires on the Plain, and Endō Shūsaku The Sea and Poison. In such cases, comparisons between the cinematic interpretation and the original text would form an important theme for study and analysis.