Published in 2024, Teaching Japan is an insightful and comprehensive edited volume that explores how Japan is taught across various disciplines, institutions, and geographical contexts. The book, edited by Iannis Gaitanidis and Gregory S. Poole, provides an essential resource for educators, researchers, and students engaged in Japanese Studies and related fields.

Listening to our professors, we learn as students that a career in academia consists of three main task fields: administrative work, research, and teaching. However, while administrative work has guidelines, and research on Japan is supported by works such as the edited volume Doing Fieldwork in Japan (Bestor et al. Reference Bestor, Steinhoff and Bestor2003) or more recently, the seminal handbook Studying Japan, edited by Kottmann and Reiher (Reference Kottmann and Reiher2020), it is difficult to find inspiration on how to teach; so far, two of the main sources on Japan-focused pedagogy have been Teaching Japanese Popular Culture (Shamoon and McMorran Reference Shamoon and McMorran2016) and the Japanese-language Critical Japanese Studies (Gaitanidis et al. Reference Bestor, Steinhoff and Bestor2020). Broadening the field of application, Teaching Japan: A Handbook now offers the experiences, opinions, and advice of lecturers specializing in Japan.

The editors consider that all focus on classroom teaching and learning is a form of public engagement, and the teachers’ task is to teach their students how to critically deal with “Japan” instead of furthering or “re-imbedding latent Nihonjinron beliefs” (xvi). Teaching Japan therefore deals with individual solutions on how to approach and break down essentialisms regarding Japan in the classroom. These deconstructions are then used to build up broader disciplinary skills.

The book consists of the experiences of scholars from diverse backgrounds, each contributing to the discussion of pedagogical methods, challenges, and innovations in teaching Japan. The 17 chapters are divided into four thematic sections, with the first three sections representing common approaches to questioning essentialisms and the fourth section focusing on the impact of a curriculum itself. The chapters in Sections One to Three have mostly the same structure, starting with an explanation of the lecturers’ background and research, introducing the class setting, and then going into detail regarding the pedagogic approach, concluded by some final reflections. This structure makes the chapters easy to understand, which is befitting of a handbook.

Chapters in the first section explicitly use essentialisms of Japan and critique them in class by drawing upon the knowledge the students already have. Ayako Sasaki tackles the narrative of Japan as a monoethnic country in her class on migrants and refugees. She has her students read and discuss an elementary school textbook for students in Japan and demonstrates that Japan as an island nation was dependent upon interaction with “foreigners,” which makes a compelling argument for more tolerance towards migration, immigration, and refugees. In the second chapter, Stevie Suan writes about the contents of two of his classes, and how they are designed to have students discuss and think about the concept of “nation” as shown in different forms of media, and how he uses anime as an exemplary category of media that is actually displaying transnational dynamics even though it is the stereotypical “Japanese” media. Yulia Frumer discusses examples from two of her classes on the development of Japanese science and technology in chapter 3, and how she has her students work toward the point that science is not a linear development. Her classes are thus designed to make her students understand “the richness and multidimensionality of science as a human activity” (48). In chapter 4, Isabel Fassbender describes how she teaches about Japanese reproduction politics in a gender context, encompassing gender issues such as the koseki system, which does not acknowledge same-sex marriages, separate surnames, or LGBTQ+ rights issues. As the authors of the last chapter of section 1, Chapter 5, Satoko Fujiwara and Ioannis Gaitanidis describe a course they co-teach on religion in Japan and how they structure the contents around seven dichotomies, such as religion/non-religion or orientalism/easternization. The authors then briefly introduce each binary and elaborate on how they approach it in class.

The second part uses the approach of “Critiquing by Comparing (with Oneself and with Others)” to teach about Japan. Chris McMorran opens the section with his chapter on a course about ethnography on/in Japan. His course material teaches ethnography and is a very helpful read in and of itself. I found his approach of using book reviews in class to give students an idea of scholarship in the field of Japanese studies before having them write their own book review and “ghost protocol” about an ethnography of their choosing very innovative. In Chapter 7, Yuri Kumagai explains how she teaches her students to look critically at narratives of “Japan” and “the Japanese language” by “questioning the given,” based on critical literacy. She designed a task for her students, making them wander Japan virtually using Google Street View and choosing signs for analysis and possibly redesigning. Starting out as quite theoretical, this chapter turned into a wealth of student experiences and hands-on examples. Nana Okura Gagné, the author of Chapter 8, elaborates on how she teaches courses on work and gender with the thematic of historicization and holism as the baseline. This way, she uses “specific content courses as windows into broader theoretical issues and as springboards for cross-cultural comparisons” (129). Concluding the second part, in Chapter 9, Tomoko Tokunaga describes how she and her students deconstruct and reimagine “Japaneseness,” “Japan,” and “Japanese society” in a course on border crossing and Japan. Jennifer M. McGuire authors Chapter 10 and discusses her approach to teaching intersectionality in classes on social inequality in Japan. While the topic in and of itself is interesting, her discussion of the challenges she encounters teaching English-language taught classes at a Japanese university are also very enlightening.

The pedagogy of the chapters in Section 3 is based on having students create a project to closely engage and critique essentialisms individually or as a group. Here, Neriko Musha Doerr opens with a chapter introducing three intriguing class projects designed to deconstruct cultural binarisms. In Chapter 12, Christian Tagsold describes how he designed a compelling course project in which his students created new informational signs for the Japanese Garden in Düsseldorf to clear up cultural binarisms and other issues on the old signs. In Chapter 13, Satoko Shao-Kobayashi describes her course on issues of racialization, which uses examples of “race” in the media. Her teaching style aims to support students “unpack their beliefs surrounding preexisting social categories and rethink how they interact with them in terms of ideas, behaviors, and actions” (210). Notably, the course is structured in such a way that the active role and the topic shifts: from the professor to the students by having class discussions of course readings and media analyses in the first half, and in the second half, the students designing a movie project themselves; and from American racialized depictions of “Japanese” to “foreigners” in Japan. In Chapter 14, Paula R. Curtis discusses how she uses handmade replicas of mokkan, wooden slips, in a course on writing in ancient Japan to help her students envision “text as merely a single component of broader analyses” (235).

Lastly, the three chapters of part four discuss how curriculum-building can teach critique. Steven C. Fedorowicz opens the section with Chapter 15, in which he analyzes his course “Visual Anthropology of Japan” in a (sometimes auto)ethnographic account. One of the main reasons the course was discontinued after 2014 (or rather changed to a more traditional lecture-type class) was administrative changes that made it near-impossible to continue, which shows how much pedagogy is dependent on university administration and their decisions. Nevertheless, Fedorowicz keeps a positive outlook and, mentioning multimodality as described by Collins et al. (Reference Collins, Durington and Gill2017), points out the possible implications for his Visual Anthropology course in the future. In Chapter 16, Alice Berthon, Alice Doublier, and Charlotte Lamotte describe their experiences teaching the Anthropology of Japan at French Universities and elaborate on accompanying challenges. With this, they discuss the “relevance of using anthropology to teach about Japan in a program that is not intended for future anthropologists” (264). Lastly, Jeremy Breaden and Fusako Ota finish the handbook with Chapter 17, in which they discuss teaching about Japanese workplace communication and organizational culture. This chapter, however, focuses heavily on the results of two studies conducted by Breaden and Ota respectively, in which they interviewed Japanese Studies graduates regarding their workplaces and the impact their studies had on their careers. In some ways, this chapter feels more like a paper about the two studies than about teaching and is the least practical chapter in the book.

One of the book’s major strengths is its interdisciplinary approach. The contributors come from various fields, including history, anthropology, literature, and sociology, offering a well-rounded discussion of how qualitative Japanese studies are taught across disciplines. This variety enriches the volume and ensures that it is not confined to a single academic perspective. Additionally, the book critically examines the institutional and political frameworks that shape Japanese Studies, providing an honest reflection on the field’s historical development and current challenges.

The chapters in Teaching Japan portray a wide range of pedagogical approaches: While some of the courses described follow a more traditional format, i.e., assigned readings and class discussions or student presentations and discussions on readings, peppered with unique excursions, guest speakers, or individual tasks, others approach course design with creative assignments and more. It is aimed at undergraduate studies, and with its various ideas to approach teaching Japan, it is an invaluable resource for newly appointed teachers or lecturers looking for inspiration. Its innovative approach to confronting and utilizing stereotypes as educational tools offers a fresh perspective for educators aiming to foster critical thinking and deeper engagement among students. Even though the classes described are on the undergraduate level, the teaching methods can also be applied to graduate-level courses.

Another significant aspect of Teaching Japan is its engagement with contemporary issues. Several chapters address issues such as the impact of digitalization, global mobility, and shifting academic landscapes on Japanese Studies. These timely discussions are particularly relevant given the increasing integration of online resources and digital humanities in higher education.

While Teaching Japan successfully highlights the diversity of pedagogical approaches, some readers might find that certain chapters are more theoretical than practical. Additionally, the book primarily focuses on higher education. It would be interesting to include a chapter or more discussing how Japan is taught at the secondary school level. Likewise, chapters on how to teach “basic Japanese Studies” such as, for instance, an introductory lecture series about Japanese history engagingly would have been immensely beneficial to those beginning a career in university teaching. Lastly, as mentioned by the editors in their introduction, the handbook’s contributors all have a qualitative background. Including experiences and models on teaching quantitative approaches to Japanese Studies would be a great addition.

Overall, Teaching Japan is a valuable contribution to the field of Japanese Studies and pedagogical research. It provides both theoretical depth and practical insights, making it a useful resource for scholars, educators, and possibly students. The book encourages critical reflection on the way Japan is taught and studied, urging educators to adapt to the evolving academic and social landscape. Despite inevitable limitations, this volume is an essential read for anyone involved in teaching or researching Japan.