The Age of the Samurai Fall 2019 HIS 364G/ANS 372 Class time Tuesday and Thursday: 1230P - 200P Location: ART 1.110 Instructor Dr. Adam Clulow Office: GAR 2.202 Email: [email protected] Office Hours: Tuesday 2:30-4 and by Appointment in GAR 2.202 Teaching Assistant Jing Zhai E-mail: [email protected] TA office hours: 12:30 to 2:00 at Prufrock's Java city (the coffee shop by the entrance of PCL library). THE CLASS Course Description The samurai has captured the global imagination, occupying a unique cultural space and generating a remarkable proliferation of images across multiple genres. But who were these warriors and why have they come to assume such an outsized status? This course explores the complex and ever-changing figure of the samurai and with it the history of Japan. The focus is broadly on the period from 1185 to 1867 when Japan was ruled by a succession of warrior regimes, but we will also examine the evolution of samurai images and representations up to and including the present. The central concern is with the changing nature of the historical samurai across this long period and with the constant tension between the ideals put forward about the way of the warrior and the actual realities of samurai life. Across the class, we will investigate how and why the samurai emerged as a distinct group, how they changed across Japan’s long history and the nature of samurai representations. Course Goals By the end of the course, I hope you’ll learn the following: 1. To distinguish between recurring myths and the historical reality of the samurai 2. To understand the broad chronology of Japanese history from the premodern to the modern period and the changing role of the samurai 3. To place yourself in a historical place and time and to appreciate the complexity of the dilemma faced by Asano’s retainers, Confucian scholars and Tokugawa officials 4. To decipher scholarly debates over the emergence of the samurai and the nature of Japan’s warrior class 5. To grapple with the multiplicity of representations of the samurai and to understand why Japan’s warrior class has come to occupy an outsized role in the global imagination Flags This course fulfills the requirements for a Global Cultures Flag. At least one third of the course content requires an in-depth examination of the broader cultural context and perspectives of one or more non-U.S. communities, countries, or coherent regional groupings of countries, past or present. REQUIRED BOOKS The following books are required: Ikegami, Eiko. The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997) Constantine Vaporis, ed. Voices of Early Modern Japan: Contemporary Accounts of Daily Life During the Age of the Shoguns (Boulder: Westview Press, 2013) John Tucker, The Forty-Seven Rōnin: The Vendetta in History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) Nitobe, Inazo, Bushido, The Soul of Japan: An Exposition of Japanese Thought (Tokyo, 1899), available for free via archive.org All of the required texts are available at the UT Co-Op. Additional required readings will be available via the Canvas course site. If you have problems getting hold of any of the readings please let me know as soon as possible. Please note that some weekly reading are optional and these are clearly marked. All other readings are required. Optional texts Friday, Karl. Hired Swords: The Rise of Private Warrior Power in Early Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992) Conlan, Tom. In Little Need of Divine Intervention: Takezaki Suenaga’s Scrolls of the Mongol Invasions of Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell East Asia Series, 2001). Benesch, Oleg. Inventing the Way of the Samurai: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Bushido in Modern Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) You can purchase these as background reading if you’re especially interested but they are not required for the class. We will read key excerpts which will be available via Canvas. ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING Reading Responses – 10% (5 responses x 2% each) Map Quiz – 5% Periodization Quiz – 5% Akō incident Group Exercise (performance in class) – 5% Akō incident Reflective Essay – 20% (due November 21) Midterm– 25% (Short IDs and essay) Final exam – 30% (Short IDs and essay), during the regularly scheduled final time in exam week Grading Scale Students’ work will be assessed using the +/- scale: Grading Scale: A 95-100 B+ 87-89 C+ 77-79 D+ 67-69 A- 90-94 B 84-86 C 74-76 D 64-66 B- 80-83 C- 70-73 D- 60-63 F 0-59 *Failure to turn in an assignment will result in 0 grade points Midterm and Final For the midterm and final exams, I will be distributing questions for study beforehand. This will be a long list of possible questions that may appear on the exam. You should study the full list of questions but not all of these will appear on the exam itself. Reading Responses During this class you will be required to complete five response grids about the secondary source readings. The blank grid template is posted on Canvas. These grids are designed to structure your reading and to help you situate individual works in a wider context. The grids must be submitted in pdf form via the Canvas assignments tab 24 hours before the start of the class for which the reading is assigned. So if the relevant class is on Tuesday at 12:30pm, the reading grid is due by Monday at 12:30pm. No grids will be accepted on primary source documents, such as the Vaporis readings so make you sure you only look at the secondary readings. To make sure that everyone doesn’t respond to the same readings, we will split the class into four groups. If you have a preference for one group, please let us know as otherwise we will be assigning students randomly. You will be required to Group A: Do your five reading grids in weeks 1, 2, 9, 10 Group B: Do your five reading grids in weeks 3, 4, 11, 12 Group C: Do your five reading grids in weeks 5, 6, 12, 13 Group D: Do your five reading grids in weeks 7, 8, 14, 15 The reading responses are designed to help you with the readings. They are also intended to stimulate discussion during individual weeks so be prepared to be called upon during class to contribute during one of your weeks. Keep in mind that you should do all the readings for every class. The reading responses are a specific assignment, and this doesn’t mean you should neglect the readings in other weeks. To help you get started, here is a sample reading grid filled in for one of the optional readings for week 2. Reading Response Grid (Age of the Samurai) Student Name: Sample Reading: Friday, Hired Swords What kind of work is this? What is the This is the introduction to Karl Friday’s 1992 main topic? book, Hired Swords. Friday is concerned especially with the emergence of the samurai in the Heian period. What are the main arguments or Friday argues that samurai emerged as a response interpretations? What are the key to the court’s desire to professionalize its military elements of those arguments? (Think forces and achieve maximal efficiency. He about historiography, that is prior suggests that the court was a powerful actor that scholarship on this issue and how this maintained a monopoly over force even as it reading relates to those) enfranchised the samurai. He challenges the Asakawa-Sansom thesis which suggested there was a total breakdown in central authority. What issues and/or questions does this Friday ascribes considerable agency to the court. reading raise for you about the This makes the samurai seem like little more than samurai? List at least three issues or imperial tools. If the court was so good at questions that struck you while you manipulating the bushi, why did they lose control were reading in the end? This looks a lot like private military companies like Blackwater etc. Is this an encouraging or a cautionary tale? In other words, does the bushi example show the value or danger of privatizing military force? Friday dismisses past scholarship on the samurai as clearly wrong? But shouldn’t we consider when Asakawa was writing and what he was trying to argue for? Is Friday’s critique accurate or too harsh? Akō incident Exercise During this class, we will run an extended historical roleplaying exercise designed to simulate one of the most fascinating episodes in Japanese history known variously as the Akō incident or Chushingura or the 47 ronin. The exercise has two parts: Exercise A: Responding to Asano’s death Exercise B: The Trial of the Ronin To make this exercise work, we will be splitting the class into two sections which will meet separately. The total exercise is worth 25%. 5% of this will be based on your performance in the exercise itself and 20% on a reflective essay written after the exercise finishes. We will be providing detailed instructions for each stage of the exercise as the semester goes on but here are the basics so you can get a sense of what is involved. Exercise A: Responding to Asano’s death The year is 1701. The retainers of the house of Asano Naganori have gathered at Akō castle to discuss what they should do in response to news from the capital that their master has been forced to commit seppuku for having attacked and injured Kira Yoshinaka, a shogunal official.