Fall II course available as HY 300.010! This course counts towards the Asian Studies minor. See course description below or flyer.

Japanese pop figures and icons travel almost everywhere in the world and are extremely popular. You can easily name some of those, such as Hello Kitty, Godzilla, Pokémon, and Power Rangers. Japan has produced rich and diverse cultures that target to popular audiences in the form of spectacles, music, film, painting, and text. In this course, rather than exclusively focusing on the current developments, we will examine the many changing forms of popular culture from the Tokugawa period to the present by analyzing fascinating primary and secondary sources. We will also question what is meant by the concept of “popular culture” in historical terms.