Japanese Ghosts, Demons, and Haunted Spaces

Japanese Ghosts, Demons, and Haunted Spaces Facts and deadly return after death Rationale Japan is cool. Students love its animated cartoons, are intrigued by its stark differences from American culture, and are curious about its history. They seek Japanese electronics with zeal and have even fallen in love with their card games (Yu-Gi-Oh). However, students know very little else about this island country that has been, at different times in its history, the victim of our gunboat diplomacy, our most enthusiastic fan, our enemy, our outpost, number two trading partner, our ally, and our competitor. Now, Japanese popular culture has more entre with American audiences than at any time in its history. In fact, this author believes that Japan may be the one nation with which American youth culture has a pop culture trade deficit: Japan seems to have little need for our television and children's literature, while we are voraciously consuming theirs. All of these elements combine into a grandiose "teachable moment" for prospective teachers of world literature. ________________________________________ Overview Summary In order to teach students in my 10th grade EnglishWorld Literaturecourse about this fascinating country and culture, I am adopting a strategy based on the teaching of narrative through film. By using selected live-action and animated films, I will be able to guide students through an exploration of essential questions about Japan and its culture that will culminate in a project that displays students' understanding of the ways in which Japanese narratives work as stories and as vehicles through which cultural messages are transmitted. One of the most important tasks a high school English teacher faces is to convince students that texts are crafted, not just written. In order to help students internalize this lesson and, as a result, to enable them to analyze the quality of an author's craft, one must teach them how the elements of a narrative are manipulated. At Wilbur Cross high school, students often come to me in tenth grade without an understanding of author's craft. Students are still looking at stories as existing as if they were born, not made, and are looking at the plot as a series of actions, not necessarily as the interplay of all plot elements. Because of the pressure placed on students to internalize an understanding of author's craft before the CAPT exam, 10th grade English classes are indeed a make-or-break moment for students in this regard. Fortunately, there are methodologies that can help students discover the ways in which authors create texts. Another important aspect of storytelling that students must recognize is that narrative forms are culturally situated: each culture tells stories in a way that develops along with the culture itself. By examining the culture of a text, readers can compare and contrast their own culture's symbolic meanings with those of the culture of origin. In our case, by looking at the ways that Japanese storytellers use beliefs about space and place in their culture, we hope to engender an appreciation for Japanese perspectives on the natural environment as a setting for stories. Unfortunately, telling students that we are going to study the where, when, and feel of stories isn't usually persuasive in and of itself. Students, though, do love the supernatural. Japanese cultural history lends itself easily to a study of the relationships of setting and the supernatural, especially supernatural characters. This, then, becomes an interesting angle from which one can activate the imagination of students. Goals There are two types of goals for this unit. First, we will explore the following two questions: � How do artists tell stories about the supernatural in literature and film? � Do different cultures have different ways of telling stories? The key to this approach, I believe, is actually engaging in a shared inquiry. What do the students really think when we reach the end of the unit? How can I, as a teacher, get them to ask authentic questions that they really want to answer, and then get out of their way? By asking the students to explore the supernatural, a topic that students are very likely to have their own questions and theories about, it is possible to anticipate the kinds of question that students will ask. This helps the teacher and students maintain a shared framework for inquiry that allows them to build upon their validated theories confidently while continuing to hypothesize about the supernatural. The second goal in this unit is to teach students how to apply a cultural studies approach to what they read and view. I will discuss this approach in considerable detail in the following section: strategies.