Japan, East Asia, and the Pacific World "Rice as Self" Assignment 2023b

 On this date on Round and Square's History 

[a] Grain RF

Japan, East Asia, and the Pacific World

History 212

Midterm Assignment

Rice, Self, and Society

The Basics 

Read Rice as Self and watch the Seven Samurai (details TBA). Write an essay of 2,500-3,000 words (eight to ten 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, November 5.

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 was meant to get you thinking on new levels about primary and secondary sources, and to help you review the material in your various readings during the first two weeks of this rushed module format. The rest of the module, as you already know (since we are well on our way) will be spent engaging a number of significant secondary texts that have shaped Japanese studies during the last half-century—covering the bulk of the four-hundred years since the founding of the Tokugawa. Later, you will write a "final" paper that asks you to put it all together—primary and secondary materials, as well as the various historiographical and ethnographic(al) arguments that have been employed over the centuries.

[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 modular study, 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 module. In short, although this assignment asks you to write a review essay about Rice as Self and the Seven Samurai, 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 (Rice as Self) and the film (the Seven Samurai). Imagine that your five-page 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 Japanese history, using the other sources we've read.

In other words, what do the sources in McCullough, and Lu have to do with what you have encountered in Rice as Self and the Seven Samurai? How about the secondary sources we have read during the last four weeks? What are some of the wider East Asian themes that might contribute to an understanding of Japan's identification with rice (think about the mythology lectures)? 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 Seven Samurai would be far less relevant than spending those pages examining how themes of rice and community weave their way(s) 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. 

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 the Lu source 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 Japanese sources from Lu's reader, and then to integrate broader understandings from the Chinese and Korean materials we have encountered in the Great Courses lectures.

[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 Writing Guide 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] 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.

Due by 5:00 on Sunday, November 5. Make sure that you put the word total at the bottom of the essay, e.g. “2,862 words.”

[e] Reflection RF