SpringerLink
Log in

The West and the Resistance: Stakeholders’ Perceptions of Teaching Shakespeare for and against Westernisation in Japanese Higher Education

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Shakespeare in East Asian Education

Part of the book series: Global Shakespeares ((GSH))

  • 209 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter explores the question ‘Is Shakespeare perceived as one of the powerful global icons through which local education is westernised?’ in Japan. It foregrounds the perceptions of people studying and teaching Shakespeare in Japan in the early twenty-first century. The chapter demonstrates that some of these perceptions around Shakespeare in Japanese higher education are predicated on a binaric understanding of Shakespeare as the ‘foreign’/’other’/west, distinct from the ‘indigenous’/‘our’/East Asian. His foreignness is perceived varyingly from positive to malignant, with reference to the nature and purpose of subject English; the use of western productions in the classroom; and the delivery of a westernized ‘world view’ through Shakespeare. However, other perceptions explicitly or implicitly trouble this supposed polarity, emphasising Shakespeare as (adapted to be) local, regional and Asian, in terms of perceptions of his bawdy humour, affinity with Japanese history and culture, and use of locally-made or -inflected resources.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
EUR 32.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or Ebook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 49.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 64.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free ship** worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 69.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free ship** worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Asian Shakespeare Intercultural Archive (A|S|I|A) (website). Accessed 28 November 2018, http://a-s-i-a-web.org/en/home.php.

  • Bennett, Susan and Christy Carson, Shakespeare Beyond English: A Global Experiment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bergman, Kevin. ‘A Boys’ Drama Club Performs Romeo and Juliet’. Teaching Shakespeare 6 (Autumn 2014): 14. https://www.britishshakespeare.ws/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/TS6_AW_WEB1.pdf.

  • Bhandari, Rajika and Alessia Lefébure, eds, Asia: The Next Higher Education Superpower? New York: Institute of International Education, 2015.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brandon, James R. ‘Some Shakespeare(s) in Some Asia(s)’. Asian Studies Review 20.3 (April 1997): 1–26.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brumfit, Christopher, Jayne Moon and Ray Tongue. Teaching English to Children: From Practice to Principle. Cheltenham: Nelson ELT, 1991.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buckley, Thea. ‘In the Spicèd Indian Air by Night’: Performing Shakespeare’s Macbeth in Postmillennial Kerala. PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 2017.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chan, Kenneth. ‘Teaching Shakespeare to College Students’. Teaching Shakespeare 6. Teaching Shakespeare 6 (Autumn 2014): 5–6. https://www.britishshakespeare.ws/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/TS6_AW_WEB1.pdf.

  • Curtis, David. Teaching Secondary English. London: Open University Press, 1992.

    Google Scholar 

  • Desmet, Christy. ‘Import/Export: Trafficking in Cross-Cultural Shakespearean Spaces’. Teaching Shakespeare 10 (Autumn 2016): 7–9.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dillon, Michael. Contemporary China: An Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elliott, Victoria and Sarah Olive. ‘Secondary Shakespeare in the UK: What Gets Taught and Why?’ English in Education. 2019.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, Viv. ‘English as a Subject’. In The Routledge Companion to English Studies, edited by Constant Leung and Brian Street. London: Routledge, 2014. 3–15.

    Google Scholar 

  • Duty, Lisa and Merry M. Merryfield. ‘Globalization’. In The SAGE Handbook of Education for Citizenship and Democracy, edited by James Arthur, Ian Davies, and Carole Hahn. London: Sage, 2008. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781849200486.n8.

  • Gallimore, Daniel. ‘Shakespeare in Contemporary Japan’. In Shakespeare in Hollywood, Asia and Cyberspace, edited by Alexa Alice Joubin and Charles S. Ross, 109–120. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2009.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gallimore, Daniel. ‘Teaching Sheikusupia’. Teaching Shakespeare 6 (Autumn 2014): 6–8. https://www.britishshakespeare.ws/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/TS6_AW_WEB1.pdf.

  • Gallimore, Daniel. ‘Tsubouchi Shōyō and the Beauty of Shakespeare Translation in 1900s Japan’. Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance 13.28 (2016): 69–85.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goddard, Angela. English, Language and Literacy 3 to 19: English 16–19. Leicester: Owen and UKLA, 2015.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, N. ‘Literacy as Social Experience’. In Teaching English to Children: From Practice to Principle, edited by Brumfit, Christopher, Jayne Moon and Ray Tongue. Cheltenham: Nelson ELT, 1991. 244–259.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hawkes, Terence. Meaning by Shakespeare. London: Routledge, 1992.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hodgdon, Barbara. The Shakespeare Trade: Performances and Appropriations. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  • Honda, Marie. ‘Shakespeare’s Teenage Film Adaptations and Japanese Comics: From 10 Things I Hate About You to Hana Yori Dango’. Teaching Shakespeare 13 (November 2017): 7–9. https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/teaching-shakespeare-13-11933304.

  • Honda, Marie. ‘Undergraduate and Lifelong Learners of Shakespeare’. Teaching Shakespeare 6 (Autumn 2014): 19. https://www.britishshakespeare.ws/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/TS6_AW_WEB1.pdf.

  • Houlahan, Mark. ‘Girdles ‘Round the Earth: Globe to Globe (or “There and Back Again”).’ Paper presented at the ‘Rethinking the Global’ Seminar of the Shakespeare Association of America Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA, April 2018.

    Google Scholar 

  • Joubin, Alexa Alice. Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kawachi, Yoshiko. ‘Introduction: Shakespeare in Modern Japan’. Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance 14.29 (2016): 7–12.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kobayashi, Akio, Let’s Read English Poems. Tokyo: NHK Publishing, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kodama, Keita, ‘Introducing Shakespeare to Young EFL Learners’. Teaching Shakespeare 16 (Autumn 2018): 11–13.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koizumi, Yuto. ‘First Year Shakespeare Through Film’. Teaching Shakespeare 6 (Autumn 2014): 15. https://www.britishshakespeare.ws/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/TS6_AW_WEB1.pdf.

  • Igarashi, Hirohisa. ‘Improving Understanding Through Shakespeare’. Teaching Shakespeare 16 (Autumn 2018): 5–7.

    Google Scholar 

  • Iwabuchi, Koichi, Stephen Muecke, and Mandy Thomas. Rogue Flows: Trans-Asian Cultural Traffic. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jameson, Fredric. Nationalism, Colonialism and Literature: Modernism and Imperialism. Dublin: Field Day, 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelts, Roland. Japanamerica: How Japanese Popular Culture Has Invaded the US. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee, Hyon-u, Shim Jung-soon, and Kim Dong-wook, eds, Glocalizing Shakespeare in Korea and Beyond. Seoul: Dongin, 2009.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lei, Bi-qi Beatrice, Judy Celine Ick and Poonam Trivedi, eds. Shakespeare’s Asian Journeys: Critical Encounters, Cultural Geographies, and the Politics of Travel. London: Routledge, 2016.

    Google Scholar 

  • Linkon, Sherry Lee. Literary Learning: Teaching the English Major. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lo, Jacqueline and Helen Gilbert. ‘Toward a Topography of Cross-Cultural Theatre Praxis’. The Drama Review 46.3 (2002): 31–53.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Machi, Saeko. ‘The Appeal of Gender-Crossing in Twelfth Night’. Teaching Shakespeare 14 (Spring 2018): 14–15. https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/teaching-shakespeare-issue-14-11933306.

  • Machi, Saeko. ‘Beyond the Language Barrier’. Teaching Shakespeare 7 (Spring 2015): 12–13. https://www.britishshakespeare.ws/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/TS7_AW_WEB2.pdf.

  • Mahbubani, Kishore. Has the West Lost It? A Provocation. London: Allen Lane, 2018.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martin, Anthony. ‘Editorial’. Teaching Shakespeare 13 (November 2017): 3. https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/teaching-shakespeare-13-11933304.

  • Massai, Sonia. World-Wide Shakespeares: Local Appropriations in Film and Performance. London: Routledge, 2006.


    Google Scholar 

  • Matsuyama, Kyoko. ‘Teaching English Literature in Japanese Universities: Teaching Unfamiliar Materials with Familiar Resources’. Teaching Shakespeare 13 (November 2017): 4–6. https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/teaching-shakespeare-13-11933304.

  • Matthewman, Sasha. Teaching Secondary English as if the Planet Matters. Abingdon: Routledge, 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  • Minami, Ryuta. ‘“No Literature Please, We’re Japanese”’: The Disappearance of Literary Texts from English Classrooms in Japan’. In English Studies in Asia, edited by Masazumi Araki, Lim Chee Seng, Minami Ryuta and Yoshihara Yukari. Kuala Lumpur: Silverfish Books, 2007. 145–165.

    Google Scholar 

  • Minami, Ryuta. ‘Shakespeare as an Icon of the Enemy Culture: Shakespeare in Wartime Japan, 1937–1945’. In Shakespeare and the Second World War: Memory, Culture, Identity, edited by Irena Makaryk and Marissa McHugh. Toronto: University of Toronto, 2012. 163–179.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mizoguchi, Kazuhiro. ‘A Study of Value Education in Teaching History: A Case Study of Teaching Materials in History for Political Literacy’. Research Journal of Educational Methods 20 (1994): 127–136.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morinaga, Koji. ‘Initiating the Language of Shakespeare’. Teaching Shakespeare 16 (Autumn 2018): 13–15.

    Google Scholar 

  • Motoyama, Tetsuhito. ‘Teaching Shakespeare to Law Students’. Teaching Shakespeare 6 (Autumn 2014): 10–11. https://www.britishshakespeare.ws/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/TS6_AW_WEB1.pdf.

  • Oki-Siekierczak, Ayami. ‘The Treatment of Bawdy in Japanese Classrooms’. Teaching Shakespeare 6 (Autumn 2014): 9. https://www.britishshakespeare.ws/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/TS6_AW_WEB1.pdf.

  • Olive, Sarah. ‘Editorial: Teaching Shakespeare in Hanoi’. Teaching Shakespeare 12 (Summer 2017): 3–5. https://www.britishshakespeare.ws/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/TeachingShakespeare12_AW_Web1.pdf.

  • Olive, Sarah. Shakespeare Valued: Education Policy and Pedagogy in England, 1989–2009. Bristol: Intellect, 2015.

    Google Scholar 

  • Olive, Sarah. ‘TNT’s Twelfth Night at Japan Women’s University.’ British Shakespeare Association Education Network Blog, 16 May 2017, https://www.britishshakespeare.ws/shakespeare-in-education/tnts-twelfth-night-at-japan-womens-university/.

  • Olive, Sarah. ‘To Research, or Not to Research? Some Dilemmas of Insider-Outsider Research on Shakespeare in South East/East Asian Higher Education.’ Researcher Stories Blog. British Sociological Association, 5 May 2017, https://bsapgforum.com/2017/05/05/dr-sarah-olive-to-research-or-not-to-research-some-dilemmas-of-insider-outsider-research-on-shakespeare-in-south-easteast-asian-higher-education/.

  • Olive, Sarah. ‘Vox Pop’. Teaching Shakespeare 9 (Spring 2016): 2–5. https://www.britishshakespeare.ws/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/TS9_AW_Web.pdf

  • Oxford English Dictionary Online. ‘Westernisation’. Accessed April 27, 2019. http://www.oed.com.

  • Peel, Robin, Annette J. Patterson and Jeanne Gerlach. Questions of English: Ethics, Aesthetics, Rhetoric, and the Formation of the Subject in England, Australia, and the United States. London: Routledge, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  • Phipps, Alison. ‘Giving an Account of Researching Multilingually’. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 23 (2013): 329–341.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pithers, R. T. and Rebecca Soden. ‘Critical Thinking in Education: A Review’. Educational Research 42.3 (2000): 237–249. https://doi.org/10.1080/001318800440579.

  • Rebellato, Dan. Theatre & Globalization. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Saito Yoshifumi. ‘Globalization or Anglicization? A Dilemma of English-Language Teaching in Japan’. In Globalization and Japanese “Exceptionalism” in Education, edited by Tsuneyoshi Ryoko. London: Routledge, 2018: 178–189.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shellard, Dominic and David Warren. ‘Shakespeare in Japan: A Great! Collaboration’. Shakespeare 9.4 (2013): 373–382.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shudo, Sachiko and Yasunari Harada. ‘Designing a Syllabus for Integrated Language Activities’. Humanitas 47 (2008): 1–12.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suzuki, Shinichi. ‘Encouraging Various Points of View’. Teaching Shakespeare 13 (November 2017): 13–15.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tan, Jee-Peng and Alain Mingat. Education in Asia: A Comparative Study of Cost and Financing. Washington, DC: World Bank, 1992.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, Gary. Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History from the Restoration to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.


    Google Scholar 

  • Thornton Burnett, Mark. Filming Shakespeare in the Global Marketplace. Houndmills: Palgrave, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tink, James. ‘Teaching the History Plays in Japan’. Teaching Shakespeare 6 (Autumn 2014): 12–13. https://www.britishshakespeare.ws/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/TS6_AW_WEB1.pdf.

  • Trivedi, Poonam and Minami Ryuta, eds, Replaying Shakespeare in Asia. London: Routledge, 2010.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tsuneyoshi, Ryoko. Globalization and Japanese “Exceptionalism” in Education: Insiders’ Views into a Changing System. London: Routledge, 2018.

    Google Scholar 

  • Uchimaru, Kohei. ‘Editorial: Teaching Shakespeare in the Japanese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Classroom’. Teaching Shakespeare 16 (Autumn 2018): 3–4.

    Google Scholar 

  • Uchimaru, Kohei. ‘Teaching Shakespeare in Japanese Secondary Schools: A study of Shakespeare’s Reception in Locally Produced EFL School Readers’. MA diss., Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 2016.

    Google Scholar 

  • Umemiya, Yu. ‘Teaching English Stress Pattern Through Shakespearean Verse’. Teaching Shakespeare 20 (forthcoming).

    Google Scholar 

  • Umemiya, Yu. ‘Teaching Shakespeare in the Current HE Context’. Teaching Shakespeare 6 (Autumn 2014): 16–18. https://www.britishshakespeare.ws/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/TS6_AW_WEB1.pdf.

  • Van Parijs, Philippe. Just Democracy: The Rawls-Machiavelli Programme. ECPR Essays Series, 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wetmore, Kevin, Siyuan Liu and Erin Mee. Modern Asian Theatre and Performance, 1900–2000. London: Bloomsbury, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  • White, R.S. ‘Introduction’. In Shakespeare’s Local Habitations, edited by Krystyna Kujawińska-Courtney and R.S. White. Łódź: Łódź University Press, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • Willcock, Hiroko. ‘Western Thought, and the Sapporo Agricultural College: A Case Study of Acculturation in Early Meiji Japan’. Modern Asian Studies 34.4 (2000): 977–1017.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yaguchi, Yu**. ‘The University of Tokyo PEAK Program’. In Globalization and Japanese “Exceptionalism” in Education, edited by Tsuneyoshi Ryoko. London: Routledge, 2018, 131–143.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yang, Lingui. ‘Modernity and Tradition in Shakespeare’s Asianization’. Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance 10.25 (2013): 5–10. https://doi.org/10.2478/mstap-2013-0001.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yonezawa, Akiyoshi and Shimmi Yukiko, ‘Japan’s Challenge in Fostering Global Human Resources: Policy Debates and Practices’. In Globalization and Japanese “Exceptionalism” in Education, edited by Tsuneyoshi Ryoko. London: Routledge, 2018. 43–60.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the British Academy, the British Council, the GB Sasakawa Foundation, York Research Champions Culture and Communications strand, the University of Hiroshima, and Toyo University for funding my research visits to Japan. Thanks also to the Education Department, University of York, for one term’s research leave, which enabled one of my visits to Japan, the flexibilities that enabled a couple more, and its students (also those of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham) who indulged me in conversations about this research. I was fortunate to have multiple opportunities to discuss this work at conferences and seminars. I am hugely grateful to those who invited me, especially Kohei Uchimaru for a seminar at Toyo University, with students planning to teach English in Japan; Umemiya Yu for ‘Shakespeare Day’ at Waseda University; as well as Susan Bennett and Sonia Massai at their seminar ‘Rethinking the “Global“ in Global Shakespeare’ at the Shakespeare Association of America congress in 2018. Uchimaru-sensei also read this chapter with tremendous care and generously offered corrections, caveats and extremely pertinent, additional reading (any errors or omissions are mine alone). I would like to thank the staff and students of the following universities who hosted me, talked with me or otherwise contributed to this research: Japan Women’s, Nihon, Takasaki, Tokyo, Toyo and Waseda. In addition to those academics cited throughout this article, my sincere thanks to Aoki Keiko, Endo Hanako, Rosalind Fielding, Igarashi Hirohisa, Samantha Landau, Matsuda Yoshiko, Ve-Yin Tee, Alex Watson and Laurence Williams. I am profoundly grateful for the British Shakespeare Association’s impetus to found, and its continued support for, the free, online magazine for cross-sector educators, Teaching Shakespeare.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of York, York, UK

    Sarah Olive

Authors
  1. Sarah Olive
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sarah Olive .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Olive, S. (2021). The West and the Resistance: Stakeholders’ Perceptions of Teaching Shakespeare for and against Westernisation in Japanese Higher Education. In: Shakespeare in East Asian Education. Global Shakespeares. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64796-4_5

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation