What is the place of recent Japanese visual culture in the larger history of the Japanese art? Can it illuminate our understanding of earlier art and vice versa? This course examines examples of contemporary popular visual culture in order to illuminate fundamental themes common throughout Japanese history. A wide variety of films, photography, paintings, architecture, comics, new media, and design will serve as lenses to focus discussions of ideas about nature and place, personal and national identity, fantasy and virtual realities, humanity and its borders, beauty and ugliness, violence and war, the body, gender, sex, and consumption. The course assumes no previous exposure to the cultures or languages of Japan, and all are welcome to attend. Estimated cost of materials: less than $50. III. 2,3,4