Here’s an opportunity you don’t find every day: take 1-3 “mini-courses” on Japanese history, on-line, from four famous professors at Harvard, MIT, Duke and Tokyo University. For free. If you have always wanted to say “as my professor from Todai was pointing out…”, this is your chance.

The course is part of the recent move by many universities to offer MOOC’s (massively open online courses) to the public. You can get a good description of the “mini-courses” and how to enroll, by clicking on the links below the course descriptions. The first course starts September 3, so there’s not a lot of time.

“Visualizing Japan: Three Online Mini-Courses by Harvard, MIT, and UTokyo” – a joint course series, offered by HarvardX, MITx, and University of Tokyo on early modern and contemporary Japan
Visualizing Japan (1850s-1930s): Westernization, Protest, Modernity
John Dower, Andrew Gordon, Shigeru Miyagawa, Gennifer Weisenfeld
Class starts September 3 and runs for 5 weeks
Register for free: https://www.edx.org/course/harvardx-mitx/harvardx-mitx-vjx-visualizing-japan-2331#.U8krZ6hN3GU

Visualizing Postwar Tokyo, Part 1
Shunya Yoshimi, University of Tokyo
Class starts November 4 and runs for 4 weeks
Register for free: https://www.edx.org/course/utokyox/utokyox-utokyo001x-visualizing-postwar-1545#.U8k2A6hN3GV

Visualizing Postwar Tokyo, Part 2
Shunya Yoshimi, University of Tokyo
Class starts January 6, 2015 and runs for 4 weeks
Register for free: https://www.edx.org/course/utokyox/utokyox-utokyo002x-visualizing-postwar-1546#.U8k2G6hN3GV