2020-21 Academic Catalog

This course examines the representations and meanings of puppets, dolls, robots, and vocaloids in Japan from the seventeenth century until the twenty-first century. The Japanese developed their own strands of puppet cultures, starting in early modern Japan where the Japanese came to privilege puppets in the form of bunraku theater. Puppets functioned as a useful means for Japanese rhetoric and self-expression, and this has been the case especially in popular culture. We will watch films, videos, and read works of fiction and manga to interpret Japan through puppets and their recent equivalents.  Prerequisite: Japanese 206 or equivalent