Jun 6, 2024

The Power of Words

This course examines how words retain power amidst crises, focusing on Japanese and English literature. It explores how words aid in resilience and self-renewal. Emphasis is placed on understanding the role of form in texts and socia interactions to deepen comprehension of expression mechanisms. Students of this course can learn the history of English and Japanese literature, particularly in terms of form as well as how the forms work in written texts and human relationships.

Sep 25, 2015

Interactive Computer Graphics

Computer graphics can be a powerful tool for supporting visual problem solving, and interactivity plays a central role in harnessing the users' creativity. This course will introduce various interactive tools developed in computer graphics research field with their design rationales and algorithms. Examples include enhancements to graphical user interfaces, authoring tools for 2D drawings and 3D animations, and interactive computer-aided design systems. Rich live demonstrations and course assignments will give you insights and skills to design and implement such tools for your own problems.

IGARASHI Takeo (Professor, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo)

Sep 18, 2017

Words Spun Out of Images: Visual and Literary Culture in Nineteenth Century Japan

In their ambition to capture “real life,” Japanese painters, poets, novelists and photographers of the nineteenth century collaborated in ways seldom explored by their European contemporaries. This course offers learners the chance to encounter and appreciate behavior, moral standards and some of the material conditions surrounding Japanese artists in the nineteenth century, in order to renew our assumptions about what artistic “realism” is and what it meant. Learners will walk away with a clear understanding of how society and the individual were conceived of and represented in early modern Japan. Unlike contemporary western art forms, which acknowledge their common debt as “sister arts” but remain divided by genre and discourse, Japanese visual and literary culture tended to combine, producing literary texts inspired by visual images, and visual images which would then be inscribed with poems and prose. Noticing and being able to interpret this indivisibility of visual/literary cultures is essential in understanding the social and psychological values embedded within the beauty of Japanese art.

Robert CAMPBELL (Emeritus Professor)

Apr 14, 2015

Quantum Mechanics of Molecular Structures

Knowing the geometrical structure of the molecules around us is one of the most important and fundamental issues in the field of chemistry. This course introduces the two primary methods used to determine the geometrical structure of molecules: molecular spectroscopy and gas electron diffraction. In molecular spectroscopy, molecules are irradiated with light or electric waves to reveal rich information, including: Motions of electrons within a molecule (Week 1), Vibrational motions of the nuclei within a molecule (Week 2), and Rotational motions of a molecule (Week 3). In the gas electron diffraction method, molecules are irradiated with an accelerated electron beam. As the beam is scattered by the nuclei within the molecule, the scattered waves interfere with each other to generate a diffraction pattern. In week 4, we study the fundamental mechanism of electron scattering and how the resulting diffraction images reveal the geometrical structure of molecules. By the end of the course, you will be able to understand molecular vibration plays an important role in determining the geometrical structure of molecules and gain a fuller understanding of molecular structure from the information obtained by the two methodologies.

YAMANOUCHI Kaoru (Professor, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo)