CONTEMPORARY JAPAN
IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
RESEARCH ESSAY
To be considered complete, this research essay (eight to ten pages in length for students in HIS 373, ten to twelve for those enrolled in HIS 573) must contain a readily identifiable thesis statement, a series of supporting generalizations and appropriate specific examples and illustrations.
When submitted the final essay MUST be accompanied by a portfolio indicating the completion of the preliminary assigmments indicated in this list of RESEARCH ESSAY DEADLINES.
The essay must be analytical in approach (not descriptive) and must conform to one of the following topic approaches:
- Choose a topic to explore that strikes you as an interesting aspect of life in contemporary Japan; explore that topic in depth, first discussing the basic features and characteristics with which it is associated and by which it can be identified as "Japanese". Then subject your description to an analysis focusing on the role played by "the past" on your chosen topic.
In choosing a topic to explore, first seek the help of the instructor in compiling a preliminary bibliography of appropriate sources and in the properly defining your approach so as to prevent taking on too large or too insignificant an issue.
The first portion of your essay should investigate your chosen topic seeking particularly to determine current conditions / circumstances and should endeavor to describe the state of affairs in 2005 -- or, at the very least, the early twenty-first century. Therefore, pick an issue or set of issues to investigate (largely dependent on available resources) on which you can locate current information.
Then, using our discussions of modern Japanese life and those found in the assigned readings as a theoretical base, analyze your chosen arena of contemporary Japanese life with respect to the impact / influence / role therein of tradition (in all its various guises: maintained, rejected, transformed, reinvented).
Consider both positive and negative influences. Look for evidence not only of continuities with the past but discontinuities (ways in which modern Japan consciously rejects past values and ideas).