Alice Ashiwa is not a fair TA. Even though I made sure to talk during every discussion section she gave me a B for my participation grade instead of an A, which meant my final grade was an A- and not an A. For essays she gave low B+'s. She refused to give papers a good grade and she said she would grade the last paper harshly in comparison to the first. Professor Hirano is a good lecturer but he needs to make sure his TA's grade papers similarly. The lesson to learn is not to get Alice Ashiwa as your TA, she is unfair and expects people to write flawless essays in order to get an A.

Professor Hirano was thoughtful and patient throughout the class. The chats during office hours and his responses to questions in class were genuine and showed his willingness to help students navigate otherwise difficult and complicated topics. However, the assigned readings and learning materials were sometimes hard to understand and abstract. It is also challenging to fit and fully explain the many ideas and philosophies into a ten-week course.

As a conservative taking the class of a professor in critical theory (basically neo-Marxist in my opinion), I honestly think it's a really fun and insightful class even if you don't agree with some of the conclusions he draws. He's also very knowledgable about the plethora of topics in Japanese history. So you can talk to him about pretty much anything.

People have been giving him lower ratings recently (he used to be 5 stars) because he's cracking down on those premeds who just want to get an A without attending a lecture or doing anything. I'm completely on his side though. He prepares a lot of really engaging lectures Just put an ounce of work into the class and you'll get an A - it's not anything too much.

If you're interested in learning about Japanese history or even historical/myth analysis techniques, I highly recommend this class.

The lectures were concise and organized, the readings weren't too overbearing or numerous, attendance was taken via 1-page paper on readings due before each lecture, there were no exams, the midterm was a take-home research paper with sources provided, the final was the same just without provided sources, the grading was fair, there were extra-credit opportunities. Overall, excellent experience, best history class I've ever taken, would definitely recommend.

If you need a relatively easy and interesting GE, I would highly recommend HIST 9C with Katz. He has an unorthodox method of teaching history where he teaches based on Big Ideas rather than chronologically. This at first was very weird because we started in the 7th century jumped to World War II and jumped back to the 17th century. Nonetheless, his lectures are very informative. The textbook is one of the readings but the class is very manageable without it. Though be warned that your grade will be predominantly determined by the TA. That is because they are the ones who ultimately grade your weekly papers and Midterm Paper. My TA was awesome and made the discussion a highlight of my academic day (Shoutout to Sally !!) Although his grading scheme is strict and doesn't scale/curve, he provides extra credit. His extra credit is presentations from other professors and honestly are very interesting. (These were my favourite part of the course). He also doesn't believe in tests are memorisation which is super nice and made the course relatively low on stress. Though there are a fair amount of readings, some of which are admittedly boring, I would recommend reading them. It's not 100% required but it really helps with participating in the discussion and reading them will make the papers A LOT easier. I only went to office hours a few times but they were very intriguing. Specifically, it is one on one time to talk about any topic really and I often talked about the extra credit presentations.

His grade scheme is as follows:
17% Weekly Participation
9% Section Discussion
34% Midterm Paper 1
40% Midterm Paper 2
---------------------------------------
A 93-100
A- 90-92
B+ 86-89
B 80-85
B- 77-79
C+ 74-76
C 70-73
C- 65-69
F Below 65 or those who miss 6 weekly assignments

Kats' 9C class is a little bit harder than before. Participation is now down to 26% (17 for bi-weekly homework assignments, and 9 for discussion attendance). The midterm and final essay are now extremely influential on the final grade. This was definitely to nerf the A ratio... But hope that it doesn't hurt as bad as it seems. Still, his lectures are extremely engaging and gives good insight to Japanese history.

Professor Hirano is very knowledgeable about the material and an excellent lecturer. The class consisted of two weekly lectures and a discussion. There were reflections due before every lecture graded for completion, two graded papers, and no exam. The class was structured thematically rather than chronologically, which was a fresh way to learn history. I would definitely recommend this class to anyone, whether you're looking for a GE, trying to satisfy a major requirement, or just want to learn about Japanese history!

Professor Hirano is a really engaging lecturer, and I really enjoyed the way he structured his class. He makes you examine the themes in history which allows you to see history in a different lens. The class is not a lot of work just a biweekly assignment for completion and two essays. I really recommend taking this class with him.

Class:
This class is about themes, for example, examining how myths were created and utilized by different governments to achieve their goals, not chronology/historical events. The discussion sections complemented the lectures well and helped us understand the readings better. I would definitely take this class again and I think it's a pretty easy GE.

Professor:
Very engaging lectures, fun to listen to. I feel that I probably could have gotten a decent-ish essay grade without listening to the lectures but doing the readings + looking at lecture slides which Kats uploaded while we wrote our essays + going to my TAs office hours. But the lectures do help you understand the overarching ideas and break down the essay prompts and formulate a thesis.

Grade breakdown:
Weekly assignments: 17 points
The weekly assignments were basically a one page response paper based on the readings due at the start of every lecture. Graded based on completion.
Section discussion: 9 points
These points were based on attendance and 'participation' in the discussions.
1st paper: 34 points
2nd paper: 40 points
Extra credit: We got 3 points extra credit for going to and writing about a symposium and a film screening that complemented our course work, which were extremely meaningful. 8 students also got extra credit because their essay prompts were chosen.

Class:
This class is about themes, for example, examining how myths were created and utilized by different governments to achieve their goals, not chronology/historical events. The discussion sections complemented the lectures well and helped us understand the readings better. I would definitely take this class again and I think it's a pretty easy GE.

Professor:
Very engaging lectures, fun to listen to. I feel that I probably could have gotten a decent-ish essay grade without listening to the lectures but doing the readings + looking at lecture slides which Kats uploaded while we wrote our essays + going to my TAs office hours. But the lectures do help you understand the overarching ideas and break down the essay prompts and formulate a thesis.

Grade breakdown:
Weekly assignments: 17 points
The weekly assignments were basically a one page response paper based on the readings due at the start of every lecture. Graded based on completion.
Section discussion: 9 points
These points were based on attendance and 'participation' in the discussions.
1st paper: 34 points
2nd paper: 40 points
Extra credit: We got 3 points extra credit for going to and writing about a symposium and a film screening that complemented our course work, which were extremely meaningful. 8 students also got extra credit because their essay prompts were chosen.