This course immerses students in an array of common Japanese media forms that subtly reinforce powerful, widely held, and often unquestioned historical, cultural, and political preconceptions underlying popular ideas about Japanese identity. Analysis of the media enables students to hone advanced understanding Japanese language, language variation, and associated underlying Japanese cultural values. Ultimately, however, the course is designed to develop students’ critical analytical skills in discerning and decoding the subtexts of the media, and, by extension, to deepen their awareness of how information in media inherently embodies preconceived values and notions of social hierarchy–in any linguistic or cultural setting.