LAS330 Researching Japan 1

Autumn 2025/26

20 credits

Module Organiser: Dr Anna Vainio (a.vainio@sheffield.ac.uk)

Overview

This module focuses on the material culture of Japan through which you will develop an understanding the connection between human life and the objects, spaces and landscapes that surround it.

In the first section of the module, you will be introduced to the key theories and concepts on material culture and will explore different methodologies through which we can approach materiality. We will also explore material synergies by delving into cultural symbolism embedded in objects, the materiality in nation-making and capitalism in Japan.

The second unit will focus on the material culture of life and death in which we will explore how different objects, places, and material performances are utilised when people pass across different life stages, and how such matter is used to signify those transitions. We will look into materiality of rituals and ceremonies, disruptive events, and the materiality of loss and afterlife.

We will then explore the materiality of everyday life in Japan, with themes such as housing, homes and consumption patterns sitting at the heart of the third section. You will learn about Japanese architecture, space and landscape design and how through the materialisation of homes and communities we can understand the development of behaviours and patters of life and sociality.

In the final section we will look at the afterlife and the broader context of matter itself. What happens to things when they get discarded in Japan. What counts as waste and when does it become waste? Building on the earlier week's learning around consumption and material meanings, we will also think about the material life cycles in the context of ecology and sustainability.

Throughout the module, you will be encouraged to critically approach the meaning of material culture and its role in human behaviour more broadly, and in the development of Japanese culture, everyday life, and material attachments. You will also be encouraged to challenge human centred approaches to understanding different phenomena and to delve into understanding the integral connections we as human have with the matter that surrounds us.

Topics Covered

Week 1-3: Materiality as research on Japan

• Introduction to materiality as a research focus

• Methods and Approaches to material culture research

• Material meanings in Japan

 Weeks 4-6: Life and death

• Religion

• Catastrophes

• Afterlife

Week 7: Reading week

Weeks 8-10: Materiality of the everyday

• Spaces, places, and landscapes

• Homes and communities

• Consumption

Weeks 11-12: Life cycle of matter (production, waste, debris, recycling)

• Waste and Recycling

• Ecology and Sustainability

Skills developed

• Critical thinking

• Research and independent study

• Methodological development

• Information literacy and identifying evidence

• Communication and academic writing

Study Hours

The University recommends that you spend 200 work-hours on a 20-credit module. This includes:

• Lectures 12 hrs

• Seminars 12 hrs 

• Independent study 176 hrs

Assessment

• Research Essay (80%)

• Blog post 1 (10%)

• Blog post 2 (10%)

If you want to get ahead.....

• Geismar, H. (2011). “Material culture studies” and other ways to theorize objects: A primer to a regional debate. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 53(1), 210-218.

• Meyer, M. (2012). Placing and tracing absence: A material culture of the immaterial. Journal of Material Culture, 17(1), 103-110.

• Collett, A. (2012). 'Lost and found': The memory salvage project of 3/11 (Tohoku, Japan). Social Alternatives, 31(3), 5-10.

• Gould, H. (2019). Caring for sacred waste: The disposal of butsudan (Buddhist altars) in contemporary Japan. Japanese Religions, 43(1), 197-220.

• Daniels, I. (2024). ‘Even a piece of paper has two sides’: multi‐scalar cosmologies of Japanese New Year cards. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

• McVeigh, B. J. (2000). How Hello Kitty Commodifies the Cute, Cool and Camp: ‘Consumutopia’versus ‘Control’in Japan. Journal of Material Culture, 5(2), 225-245.

• Chalfen, R. (2003). Celebrating life after death: the appearance of snapshots in Japanese pet gravesites. Visual Studies, 18(2), 144-156.

• Sand, J. (2020). House and home in modern Japan: Architecture, domestic space, and bourgeois culture, 1880–1930 (Vol. 223). BRILL.