Gerald Figal
Associate Professor of History
and Japanese Cultural Studies
Email: gerald.figal@vanderbilt.edu
Phone: 615-322-4712
Office: 241 Buttrick Hall
Office Hours: MW 10:30-Noon
My fields are modern Japanese history and cultural studies and postwar
Okinawa.
I received my Ph.D. from the East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Department at the University of Chicago in 1992. My publications include Civilizations
and Monsters: Spirits of Modernity in Meiji Japan (Duke,
1999) and articles on amateur Japanese historiography and on war memorials
and tourism in Okinawa. I just completed a book manuscript -- "Beachheads: War, Peace, and Tourism in
Postwar Okinawa" that is forthcoming from Rowman & Littlefield Press in 2012. I'm currently researching another project on the
idea of monsters in contemporary Japanese media and consumerism. My first publication related to that project appears in Mechademia 5: Fanthropologies: "Monstrous Media and Delusional Consumption in Kon Satoshi's Paranoia Agent." My courses
range from surveys in Japanese cultural and social history to thematic
courses in Japanese popular culture, anime, and the city of Edo-Tokyo. When I am not teaching or doing research or parenting, I am collecting, restoring, and using vintage film cameras, building pinhole cameras, and playing in the darkroom with chemicals of various grades of toxicity.
This course explores significant areas in the cultural and social history of Japan since the 1930s. The emphasis of the class is not on descriptive accounts of Japanese culture; rather, it is on historical analyses of Japan’s culture and society. Although WWII is embraced by this course’s time span, we are not covering the details of the war as such. Rather, we will to a large degree be examining how the cultural and social history of Japan’s recent past has been deeply colored by a ceaseless coming to terms with the mental and material effects of war and defeat in the Asia-Pacific War (1931-45), from the initial shock of defeat and postwar rebuilding to Japan’s mergence as a global economic power (despite its current lingering recession). Since these effects have been widespread throughout daily life in Japan, our investigations will be referenced to spheres of everyday life as depicted in literature, film, journalism, memoirs, and other forms of cultural production and consumption.
Asian Studies 115F: Self & Cyborg in Japanese Animation (Fall 2011)
Can one be human in a non-human body? At what point do technological enhancements to the body diminish one’s humanity? To what extent can an artificial intelligence develop a sense of self? What is the relationship between body, mind, self, and identity? How do visual and electronic media construct and deconstruct self identity? Does reality matter if a simulation is realistic and you don’t realize it’s a simulation? Who are you? These are but a few questions that this course tackles through the medium of Japanese animation (anime), examples of which are well-known for taking up challenging philosophical and psychological issues such as these. The subset of anime that this course focuses on represents some of the most thought-provoking work created for feature-length theatrical release and for TV series broadcasts in Japan. We will look at the works of Kon Satoshi (Magnetic Rose, Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Paranoia Agent, Paprika); Oshii Mamoru (Ghost in the Shell, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, Avalon); and Nakamura Ryutaro (Serial Experiments Lain). We will also view The Matrix in relation to cyberpunk anime. Outside screenings on Monday evenings required.
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