ABOUT THIS BOOKThis book aims to offer ideas and examples of pedagogy in the undergraduate classroom. The basic premise taken by the authors begins with a question: What if stereotypes surrounding Japan were not pushed to the margins in teaching but took center stage and were exposed for the multiple ways that they can be used to learn not only about “Japan” but of various scholarly disciplines? The task then becomes constructing ways to challenge essentialist notions that do not seek merely to deny, but to shift the conversation constructively by encouraging engagement with a theoretical field from which to acquire tools to critically and effectively evaluate stereotypes of Japan or other societies. The result is a collection of carefully crafted case studies of syllabi that showcase pedagogies aimed at the deconstruction of concepts such as “Japan,” “Japanese,” or “Japanese society” while at the same time offering skills of inquiry that transcend the topics being deconstructed. This handbook is a source of ideas from colleagues in a variety of disciplinary and institutional settings, who are tackling the same issues current or future teachers who plan to use case studies from Japan in their lectures.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHYIoannis Gaitanidis is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Global and Transdisciplinary Studies, Chiba University, Japan. Ioannis’ research focuses on contemporary crossings between therapy and religion. His monograph, Spirituality and Alternativity in Contemporary Japan: Beyond Religion? (2022) was published in Bloomsbury Advances in Religious Studies. Since 2013, he has been involved in managing the Japanese Studies curriculum at Chiba University. These efforts of thinking about Japanese Studies pedagogy from the ground up led to the publication of a co-edited/co-authored textbook, Kuritikaru Nihongaku: Ky.d. gakush. o t.shite Nihon no sutereotaipu o manabihogusu (Critical Japanese studies: Unlearning Japanese stereotypes through collaborative learning, 2020, Akashi Shoten).
Gregory S. Poole is a professor of social anthropology at the Institute for the Liberal Arts, Doshisha University, Kyoto. Greg’s area of research focuses mostly on topics within the anthropology of education and his books include three co-edited volumes, Foreign Language Education in Japan: Exploring Qualitative Approaches (co-edited with Sachiko Horiguchi and Yuki Imoto, 2015, Springer), Reframing Diversity in the Anthropology of Japan (co-edited with John Ertl, John Mock, and John McCreery, 2015, Kanazawa University), and Higher Education in East Asia: Neoliberalism and the Professoriate (co-edited with Ya-chen Chen, 2009, Brill), as well as a monograph, The Japanese Professor: An Ethnography of a University Faculty (2010, Brill).