Samurai Management Assignment 2025a

 

[a] Grain RF

The Art of Warning

History 150

Midterm Assignment

Samurai Management

The Basics 

Read The Book of Five Rings and watch the Samurai Trilogy(shown in class on Monday-Wednesday-Monday of Weeks Nine and Ten). Write an essay of 2,500-3,500 words (eight to twelve pages) commenting upon some of the many themes found in these very different “documents” and showing their connections to the materials we have studied up to this point in the course. The essay is due by 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 30.

The Pivot

Remember what I said in class about this assignment being a “pivot” experience. In that way, it is the most important assignment of the entire course. Your source letter (Week Five) was meant to get you thinking on new levels about managing yourself, others, and "all under heaven. The rest of the course will center upon taking what we have learned about East Asian managerial thought and bringing it to some of the more famous works of Western management. At the end of the course, you will (as we have discussed) write an introduction to a management book of your own (or one you admire).

[b] Pivot RF

That makes this assignment central to your task. It is as though you are looking back at the first few weeks of the term processing and reprocessing the material, and then pivoting to engagement with the film and the book…with an eye to preparing yourself for the second half of the course. In short, although this assignment asks you to write a review essay about The Book of Five Rings and the Samurai Trilogy, you will be using all that you have learned so far as a backdrop for your work. To the extent that you really make the first half of the course your foundation for this assignment, you will prepare yourself beautifully for what is yet to come.

Review Essay

A good way to approach the assignment is to write a “review essay.”  You have already read several essays from the New York Review of Books, and have seen a number of authorial strategies being employed. In other words, you have a few models in front of you. The basic idea for your own assignment is as follows. A good review essay has a two-pronged approach. It is, on the one hand, a “review” of the book (The Book of Five Rings) and the film (the Samurai Trilogy). Imagine that your essay contains an “embedded set of reviews of each of these, totaling about a page each. In the “rest” of the essay you should show how the themes in the book and the film that can be seen in the wider perspective of management thought, using the other books we have read.

In other words, what do the readings from Sunzi, Sima Guang, Luo Guanzhong, and others have to do with what you have encountered in The Book of Five Rings and the Samurai Trilogy? How about the secondary sources we have read during the first part of the term? What are some of the wider East Asian themes that might contribute to an understanding of Japanese management? Write about it and them.

[c] Background RF

Additional Notes

This assignment asks you to engage the text (and film) at hand, and to review all of the work you have done thus far in the course. It does not require you to do “research,” and substantial outside work will almost certainly be counterproductive. For example, spending two or three pages on the casting and shooting of the Samurai Trilogy would be far less relevant than spending those pages examining how theme of self-management weave its way through the book and the movie (using specific examples). Background information is occasionally useful (and you may have some from previous reading or coursework), but do not make the mistake of providing so much “background” that you don’t deal fully with the assignment itself. 

Write a review essay.

Plot out some of the themes and take notes to make sure you have dealt with the full range of possibilities in the materials. Your skills in spotting themes in your other readings will pay off a great deal in this assignment, as will the general historical and cultural knowledge you have gained from your other sources and from class sessions. 

Reminders

[1] This assignment is meant to tie together much of the work you have done this semester. Just as you must do on quizzes, be sure to use the full range of your “sources” in your interpretations. Strive to "master" the various readings and the ideas encountered in the Great Courses lectures on Confucius

[d] Complex RF

[2] Don’t forget that I will be evaluating this assignment with the assumption that you are trying to explain these matters to “intelligent non-specialists" (exactly the way that New York Review writers must).  That means that I do not want you to “skip” those portions that you know I know. I want you to explain them. I want you to be the expert who is explaining these matters to someone who does not know much about Japan, but is certainly able to follow a complex argument. Imagine, for example, that you are writing for your FYI professor, with moi looking over her shoulder

[3] Follow standard Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) citation form, and use the Rob's writing guide (Writing, History, and Culture) as you proceed. This is a “formal” paper, and the style sheet’s guidelines should be followed closely.

[4] There should be a bibliography of sources (class books and any outside materials that you have cited) at the end of your document. Make sure that it is in proper CMS form.

[5] Please add one illustration that will enhance your paper's arguments.

[6] Good luck. There is more than enough material to write any number of essays. Choose several good points, scenes, or themes. Then write a coherent, well-crafted, essay.

The essay is due by 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 30. Make sure that you put the word total at the bottom of the essay, e.g. “3,182 words.”

[e] Reflection RF