by Carl Falcon
Can comics be used to teach history? Can role-playing grant you a view into a culture? Marnie Jorenby, the head of the Japanese department, thinks so. In her course, Japanese Comics and War, students create characters in World War II Japan and role-play through the characters’ lives up to when the atomic bomb hit Hiroshima.
The students read selections about Japanese culture and individually present various manga (Japanese comics). Through this, they gain an in-depth view of the culture and life in Japan during WWII, Jorenby said.
As a final project, students create comics, essays or short stories about their individual characters and present a testimony to the class, in character, about what it was like being in Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped.
“We discuss both the cultural/historical significance of the manga and its artistic merits,” Jorenby said. To create their final projects, members of the class must understand comic art form as well as Japanese culture.
In class, students discuss readings and listen to lectures, but it is outside of class that they explore their characters. Students are organized in five different Hans (Japanese for neighborhoods). The groups meet and play through various scenarios, such as what to do with a woman who cheated on her husband while he fought in the army, said Jorenby.
“It is sort of like five classes rolled into one,” said David Barnett ‘08. “It’s an art class, a history class, a role-playing game and a craft of historical fiction class.” Barnett described what the class as “gradually unfolding.” Which is appropriate, he said, since those in Hiroshima did not really know what was coming.
“First we learned about the history of Japan during World War II and made our characters, then we split into Hans and began meeting,” said Barnett. The Han meetings (role-plays) are done in the Forum, and the transcripts are posted on the course website.
There is no limit on what kind of characters the students can play; they simply must be culturally accurate. Men must wear citizen’s uniforms, and women must wear workpants (monpei). Besides the clothing, though, students can decide everything else about the characters.
Characters include monks, a tattoo artist, a gunsmith, a schoolgirl, a wounded soldier who sees visions, a kimono maker, a bulldog, a “mythical tiger fish” (a shachi), an orangutan-riding fox god named Baba-Yaga and a cloud, said Jorenby.
Toward the end of semester, students will literally burn their characters. This is intended to simulate the dropping of the bomb. Students will design their own rituals for burning their works. Jorenby said she has normally done this somewhere outside on campus.
Jorenby said her approach to this class is similar to the “recreating the past” program at Bernard College. There are several differences between Bernard’s approach and Jorenby’s, however.
In Bernard’s program, students are limited to historical roles; in Jorenby’s, students create their own characters. While students at Bernard role-play in class, Jorenby’s students meet with their neighborhoods outside of class.
Students are responsible for creating websites for their neighborhoods and characters. These websites have recently become available on the class website (“Project Hiroshima” at http://web.grinnell.edu/courses/jpn/s05/JPN195-01/Comicsandwar.html).
“I hope that this kind of role-playing activity can be adapted to other classes at Grinnell, because I have found it effective in helping students gain a deeper understanding of other cultures and ways of thinking,” said Jorenby. She is already experimenting with adding some role-playing aspects to her Japanese language classes.
Japanese Comics and War meets from 12:30 to 2:05 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday. The class is a 100-level special topic class with no prerequisites. Jorenby plans to offer it again next spring.
Name: Shyouiriki Danika
Occupation: Tattoo artist
Description: An underground tattoo artist who practices the then-banned art of Irezumi (tattooing)
Quote: “I don’t have a home! I don’t even have a shop! I work in the vaginas of geishas everywhere!”
Name: A cloud
Occupation: None
Description: A very philosophical and introspective cloud
Quote: “Colors, Yagazume. I live in a world of light. The rhythm is a wing … for my memory. I am the metaphor. I know nothing.”
Name: Yagazume-Sama
Occupation: Elder sage and keeper of the family apothecary
Description: A fox god who rides on the back of an orangutan named Pongo
Quote: “The drift of waking life can comfort me when the sun is warm and high.”
Name: Shizuko Komatsu
Occupation: Helping her husband with menial seamstressing and tailoring in his shop
Description: A 42-year-old talented woman whose culture does not allow her to practice the art of kimono making, she feels she has brought shame to her husband by being infertile
Quote: “As alone as I often am, I turn to my thoughts for company.”
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