Bachelor of Arts in Japanese

University of California - Santa Barbara

As a student in the Japanese program, you’ll undertake extensive language training and interdisciplinary coursework related to Japan. You’ll take courses that are expansive in scope both temporally and geographically, encompassing the premodern, modern, and contemporary periods. You’ll study Japan and its people, history, literature, and culture in their domestic and transnational contexts, drawing on diverse frameworks from the humanities and social sciences. The Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies offers the essential tools to delve deeply into these complex cultures of China, Japan, and Korea. We teach the languages and scripts of East Asia. We offer our students ways to think about the experience of modernity, colonialism, nationalism, and state formation, and how they relate to traditional cultures. We train our students in techniques to discover old and new literatures and arts as well as introducing them to films, media, and popular culture. We discuss the religious traditions (including Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism) and intellectual discourses (including political thought and the sciences) that have shaped visions of the world and everyday life in East Asia for centuries some have been rejected during modernization, but some are still alive and part of East Asian cultures.

College of Letters and Science