APDS-100 Read the materials and answer the 10 questions related to it and a critical reflection. – Description
Read Joy Kogawa’s Obasan Download Obasan, chapters 1-39
Watch George Stroumboulopoulos’s interview with Joy KogawaLinks to an external site.
Read Mishima Yukio’s, “Patriotism Download Patriotism”
Read Sakaguchi Ango’s, “A Personal View of Japanese Culture Download A Personal View of Japanese Culture”
Read Murakami Haruki’s, “Firefly Download Firefly”
Read Kobayashi Hideo’s, “On Impermanence Download On Impermanence” and “Literature of the Lost Home Download Literature of the Lost Home”
Watch Chimamanda Adichie’s TED TalkLinks to an external site.
Complete a critical reflection based on these materials.
Your critical reaction should include two parts. You should start by summarizing then analyzing the assigned reading. When analyzing, keep the following questions in mind: how did the writer construct their argument/narrative? Why did the writer make these choices? The second half of your critical reaction is focused on your specific reaction to the piece. As you discuss your reaction, imagine your conversation with the writer. What concepts/ideas/choices that the writer made could you relate to in some way? And why? Or do your experiences conflict with this piece? Do you disagree? How does this piece speak to your own experiences and knowledge? (250-300 words)
Note: You can pick ONE of the assigned readings for this critical reaction.
Please thoughtfully answer the following questions in complete sentences and include relevant textual evidence to support your answers. Aim for quality over quantity in your responses.
1.What is seppuku, and why does the lieutenant commit it in Yukio’s short story? In what way is committing seppuku an act of patriotism?
2.Describe the orientalist view of Japanese culture that Ango articulates. What is the relationship between westernization and modernization? How is vulgarity used as a form of resistance against purism?
3.Compare and contrast Ango and Hideo’s attitudes towards modernization. What role does tradition play in the progression of Japan? Moreover, how has Japanese literature strayed or remained consistent with tradition?
4.Relate “Firefly” to Augé’s concepts of memory and oblivion. How does the memory of the narrator’s dead friend linger with the narrator as he grows up? What does the firefly symbolize?
5.What is Hideo’s argument on impermanence? Hideo concludes his essay stating, “We, moderns, do not understand the impermanence of things…It is because we have lost sight of what is permanent,” (Hideo 434). Why and how have we lost sight of what is permanent? Can culture be preserved (why or why not)?
6.What role(s) does silence play in Obasan? Why did Joy Kogawa write Obasan, and who is her intended audience?
7.How does Naomi’s parents’ marriage deviate from Japanese tradition? What does this divergence indicate about Japanese mentalities as time progresses?
8.How do Naomi and Aunt Emily’s attitudes towards victimization differ? According to Joy Kogawa’s interview, what is the danger of remaining stuck in the “identity of the victim”?
9.What are the contents of Aunt Emily’s package? What does this reveal about Naomi and her family’s past in Canada during WWII?
10. In her Ted Talk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie states, “That is how to create a single story: show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become,” (9:26-9:36). What assumptions do people make about Naomi and her culture in Obasan? What is the wider “single story” constructed about Japanese Canadians during WWII?
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