This course introduces you to the contemporary challenges facing Japan. It presents a different side to the country, one which tells a different story about the character of globalization and prevailing global conditions in the 21st century. This is a course about how Japanese experience insecurity in their daily lives. It addresses this via four principal themes: labor, recession, nuclear disaster, and population decline.

One purpose of this class is to provoke you into asking where Japan is headed, and its outlook for the future (Learning Goal 1 and 2). The other main purpose is to help you arrive at a firmer understanding of the array of systemic and structural issues which determine a country's well-being (Learning Goal 1 and 2). We will do this not by reading textbooks on business theory, but by engaging and reckoning with the outsider - the marginalised and the oppressed - in Japanese society. We will study their narratives and experiences, and learn about their everyday forms of resistance (Learning Goals 1, 2, 3 and 4).

This course contests conventional wisdom and will present particular difficulties for students who are not inclined to confront or critique neoliberal dogma (Learning Goal 1). This is another way of saying that the course requires that students try to be a different type of observer and thinker of the world around us, or indeed, of the world not immediately around us but located in other contexts and places. The course, then, is less an introduction to Japan in itself than an introduction to ways of thinking imaginatively and deeply about different lives (Learning Goal 2).

I will in lecture introduce some new concepts and terms as well as reading and thinking strategies, but my primary objective is to place you in an encounter with various texts and films and see what you make of them (Learning Goals 1 and 4). By the end, you will have some new ideas and tools with which to make sense of a rapidly changing world and country.

*本学の教育ミッションを具現化する形で設定されています。

By the end of the course, students will have acquired knowledge on a range of social changes, crises, and transformations affecting contemporary Japan.

You will have looked at these issues through the lens of the socially and politically invisible (the socially disenfranchised and the economically precarious) and of grassroots movements (community and social activists).

By applying basic methods of ethnographic fieldwork you will have collected and recorded ethnographic data on how social and economic vulnerability is experienced in Japan.

You will have learnt how to read and critically assess ethnographic writing and film.

You will have produced an ethnographic report documenting and presenting the process and findings of their fieldwork. This involves a detailed description of how a particular social group operates, based on observation of, and often participation in, the group, and it may be supplemented by interviews and gathering of documents and artefacts.

教育手法 Teaching Method		% of Course Time
インプット型 Traditional		30 %
参加者中心型 Participant-Centered Learning	ケースメソッド Case Method	40 %
	フィールドメソッド Field Method	30 %
合計 Total		100 %

Classroom discussion
- This refers to your active contribution of ideas and viewpoints in the Ethnography and Film Labs over the course of the semester.
- Working in groups, you will be assessed on your ability to interpret and evaluate ethnographic writing and film.

Oral presentations
- You will also be asked to deliver oral presentations as a group to present your findings on a particular theme, text, or film.
- You will be assessed on your ability to work as a group, on the range and diversity of contributions, and on the extent to which you communicate your ideas in a clear, concise and interesting way.

Fieldwork and field reports
- Fieldwork requires a special set of skills, and you will be assessed on your ability to do fieldwork cooperatively, competently, and with commitment
- Your field reports, submitted after each fieldwork session, will show how well you have understood the methods of fieldwork.

Written exam
- The final exam, a written essay, will take place at the end of the semester. It will test the comprehensiveness of your knowledge and your ability to critically evaluate what you have done across the semester.

*成績は下記該当項目を基に決定されます。
*クラス貢献度合計はコールドコールと授業内での挙手発言の合算値です。

講師用内規準拠 Method of Assessment	Weights
コールドコール Cold Call	0 %
授業内での挙手発言 Class Contribution	30 %
クラス貢献度合計 Class Contribution Total	30 %
予習レポート Preparation Report	0 %
小テスト Quizzes / Tests	0 %
シミュレーション成績 Simulation	0 %
ケース試験 Case Exam	40 %
最終レポート Final Report	0 %
期末試験 Final Exam	30 %
参加者による相互評価 Peer Assessment	0 %
合計 Total	100 %

評価の留意事項　Notes on Evaluation Criteria

• N.A.「Compiled by the Instructor」N.A.（N.A.）

1 From Salaryman to Freeter
• Anne Allison, Precarious Japan, chapter two, “From Lifelong to Liquid Japan”
• Tokyo Sonata (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008)

2 Social Connectedness – Social Withdrawal
• Precarious Japan, chapter three, “Ordinary Refugeeism”
• Welcome to the N.H.K. (NHK ni youkoso, 2006)

3 Nuclear Fallout
• Precarious Japan, chapter seven, “In The Mud”
• Tell the Prime Minister (Eji Oguma, 2015)
• Souls of Zen (Tim Graf, 2013)
• Can Pigs Fly (Action in Asia, 2011)

4 A Dying Country? – Shrinking Population and Alternative Futures
• Precarious Japan, chapter four, “Home and Hope”
• Ross Douthat, “Incredible Shrinking Country”, The New York Times (April 28, 2012)
• 日本国憲法。外国人には適用されるのか？／生活保護・教育 (NHK, 2017)
• The Worst Internship Ever (Vice News, 2015)
• Struggles of Second Generation Brazilians in Japan (Deana Mitchell, 2015)

"In my opinion, Seng Ong (Singaporean) is one of the best professors at NUCB and his courses are well taught and really interesting. I highly recommend you take some of his courses." - Byambasuren Jargalsaikhan, Class of Fall 2017

Refereed Articles

• (2016) Spinning Tales: The Activist-Interviewer and Migrant Worker Oral Histories in Singapore. «AGON» Journal of International Cultural, Linguistic and Literary Studies 9(April-June 2016): ISSN 2384-9045
• (2010) Jurisdictional politics in Canton and the first English translation of the Qing Penal Code . Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland (Third Series) Volume 20(2): 1356-1863