What is JapanLab?

JapanLab is a project funded by the Japan Foundation with matching funding from the College of Liberal Arts. It will run initially from 2022 to 2025. It is a collaboration between the Department of History and the Department of Asian Studies at UT. Kirsten Cather, Adam Clulow and Mark Ravina are the Directors of the program which also collaborates with leading industry professionals. JapanLab aims to reimagine Japanese Studies at UT and in so doing to establish a template that can be replicated at other institutions across the country. It will prepare undergraduates and graduate students for an altered employment landscape by integrating digital dexterities across different aspects of the Japanese Studies curriculum and by creating a specialized space where students will develop a wide array of digital resources built around topics in Japanese history, language and literature. Over the next three years, JapanLab will generate a steady stream of Japan-focused educational video games and other Digital Humanities content that can be used in classrooms across the world.

What kind of projects will JapanLab students complete?

JapanLab students will work on a range of digital projects. So far, we have focused on developing fully functional historical video games (see images below) but from Fall 2022 students will be working on two new projects: Mapping Violence in Medieval Japan and Mapping Play through a Treaty Port. Between 2022 and 2025, we will be recruiting 15 students teams each formed of 3-5 undergraduates. In total, we expect that 60 plus students will pass through the JapanLab process.

Will students get credit for work in JapanLab and how much time will these projects take?

Yes - we are using an internship model in which students receive both course credit and a grade. Students sign up for a COLA internship in digital humanities via registration for LA 320wb required (3 hours of credit and letter grade that counts toward GPA). The expectation is that students will work for 10 hours a week on these projects.

Is this program only for students interested in Japan?

Our primary funding source is the Japan Foundation so all JapanLab students projects will have a focus on Japanese literature or history. However, the key outcome for students is skills in Digital Humanities. As a result, we hope students with a wide range of interests will participate in this program and then carry these skills into projects that extend beyond Japan.

How have students responded to these projects?

The response has been fantastic. All JapanLab teams have been totally immersed in their projects and have learned a huge amount while also producing work of the highest possible caliber. See the video above for representative comments from students.

I don’t teach or research in Japanese Studies. How will this impact me?

We hope you will direct undergraduate students to the JapanLab program as we believe it will enable them to develop crucial Digital Humanities skills. Once students pass through JapanLab, they will be eligible for paid mentorships in which they help successive groups of students develop new projects. In addition, we believe that graduate students would benefit significantly from being involved in the program. Digital Humanities is an increasingly essential requirement for the job market and we believe that working alongside JapanLab student teams would be a significant benefit to any graduate student.

Are you collaborating with industry partners?

Yes - from the beginning we set out to establish connections with leading industry professionals. We are particularly fortunate to count on the support on one of the leading Narrative Directors in the games industry today with experience working on some of the biggest game franchises including Halo. In Spring 2022, we ran a series of workshops bringing students together with industry professionals.

Is there a physical lab space

Yes - the Japan Foundation and COLA have funded a designated space for undergraduates to work on these projects. It will be in Garrison 3.102. It will have 4 workstations for students to work on JapanLab related projects.

Should we really be encouraging our students to develop video games?

We believe so. Today many students arrive in our classrooms because they played historical or literary video games which proliferate across multiple platforms. But crucially we are not proposing to study existing games. Rather we are interested in asking undergraduates to design fully functional video games. The process of designing a game produces a level of familiarity with material that is not duplicated in typical assignments. Crafting a basic plot, designing branching storylines and creating historically accurate artwork represents a significant challenge that drives student learning forward. In Spring 2022, a group of five students worked on a game, Ghosts over the Water, focused on the 1853 Perry expedition to Japan. The final script for this game, which was based on months of research and dozens of sources, was over 120,000 words or more than a typical PhD Dissertation. It takes players through the turbulent last years of the Tokugawa regime and introduces them to a range of key figures. We believe that games creation offers an unparalleled learning experience while also generating resources that can be used beyond the university.

How are you integrating Digital Humanities across the curriculum?

JapanLab will introduce new specialized Digital Skills courses. We will also be providing $3000 grants to modify existing Japanese Studies courses to incorporate Digital Humanities content. The idea is to incorporate Digital Humanities content across the widest possible array of courses.

What are your plans to distribute JapanLab content?

We have made the first JapanLab game, Ako: A Tale of Loyalty, publicly available. It has already been used in classrooms across the world and is available on the key platform for independent games where it has been downloaded hundreds of times. As additional projects come online, we will be making them available on this site. The idea is to make resources produced by JapanLab students freely available for high school and college instructors.