Taking this class in Fall 2020 during the infamous COVID-19 pandemic, this class is one of the easiest GE classes to take! Seriously, ALL you have to do is write one essay per week (500-700 word) for a total of 10 essays per semester and that's it! You even get to rewrite essays for a better grade (and the better grade will always be chosen, so there is no harm in resubmitting it). The remote lectures are very interesting because of the professor's clarity and occasional humor/sidenotes, especially if you have any interest in Japanese history (I mean, aren't you curious about why samurais came into rise of society, why did Japanese literary culture like mange or anime became popular worldwide, and such?)! As long as you can write fairly decent essays and you understand what the professor is saying, then you're 80% golden (just make sure you learn how to weave lecture information into essays, which the TAs will help guide you). Speaking of TAs, they are very helpful if you don't know where to get started, since they hint to you ideas that need to be discussed (and the deadline of the essays are about 9-12 hours after your Friday TA discussion, so you can technically go to Discussion section and then start writing the essay and still turn it in time). Overall, this class was very enjoyable, low-stressed (even though I am actually a terrible writer), and easy class. Also big thank you to my TA Thai (she was an amazing person :) ) You can essentially earn 5 unit credits for a relatively low-workload environment, so take it if you care about Japanese civilization or to get it for your GE.

Pretty easy GE, would recommend. The structure of the lectures/class was really clear and easy to follow. There's a 500-700 word essay (almost) each week for a total of 10. I'd recommend writing these after discussion because the TA covers the main points that you should aim to discuss in your essay. My only criticism is that the topics felt the same each week, just for a different time period. "Discuss the political, economic, military, social, cultural aspect of ______" It felt dry by the end. I did like how we could choose the topic of the last essay from the TA recorded lectures since there was more variety and unique topics.

I had an extremely good experience in this class. Professor Duthie was a good lecturer and made the material very interesting and easy to understand. I also had an awesome TA, who broke down the weekly assignments very well. There were 10 assignments in this class and they were all the same format. I actually mostly struggled with going over the word count. Overall though, I enjoyed this class and would take it again, as well as recommend it to anyone else. I took this as a GE via zoom.

Torquil was a great professor and I enjoyed watching his presentations and reading the selected text. The TA I got, on the other hand, was super strict with grading and because of that, I ended up getting a B in the class despite understanding all of the course material. Simply writing over the word count was enough to ding points off my paper even though it added to the quality.

This class is an easy and interesting GE!
Professor Duthie is GOAT. I don't know how his class will be like during normal time, but during covid time, we only have 10 weekly assignments to write about the topic discussed in that week. No quiz or exam. We can also revise the assignments and resubmit. TA's discussions are really helpful, since your TA grades your assignment. TA goes over the topic and explains how to write the assignment for each week. Since I got other tough classes, this class literally saves my life. I didn't have time to read the textbook and just watched recorded lectures and attended discussions, but this didn't affect the grade of my assignments at all. So if no time to go over the textbook, lecture + discussion is enough.

The professor’s lectures were really engaging, you can tell that he enjoys teaching. I wish we could’ve gone deeper into the material, but there just wasn’t enough time to do so. I had TA Suong and she was the best, super nice, encouraged participation in a way that didn’t make things awkward, and very understanding about everything going on. Definitely recommend this class, it’s super easy and fun.

Great GE especially if you're interested in Japanese history! Super interesting. Even if you're not interested in Japanese history, still one of the easiest GE I took. No midterm, no final, just an essay every week that you can rewrite for better grades.

If you are contemplating taking this class with Duthie let me put it short for you TAKE THIS CLASS.
As an incoming STEM freshman having no clue what they are doing and having absolutely zero writing skills, this class was the only thing keeping my GPA and my sanity together. If this class was in person I would have made sure to buckle up on the drive to school and use my turn signals all the time.
Homework wise the class only has a weekly 500-700 word essay based on the content of the week. Personally I never once opened the textbook, the class lectures and slides proved sufficient. But i will strongly advise that you attend the discussion where the TAs will give you practically an outline of how to write your essays. With this if you at least give yourself two hours and some knowledge of the topic you can get a A on every essay.
Most important part, NO MIDTERM AND FINAL. Instead of tests the Professor uses these weeks to allow for revision and regrading of the weekly essays.
If I had to take any class at ucla ever again it most definitely will be this one hands down. Shout out to TA Yueying.

I took this class for a GE and overall it was very very easy. There were no exams and all we had to do each week was write a long response answer to a prompt every week with 500-700 words. They weren't essays and the prompts were always very straightforward (basically just summarize that weeks lectures) and only took a few hours to complete give or take depending on how fast you write.

That being said, your grade/experience in this class depends entirely on the TA you have. My TA, Victoria, was amazing and every week our discussion sections were basically summing up the main points of that weeks lectures. She gave us a blank note sheet/diagram to fill out as we went over each point and then on top of that at the end of every discussion she gave us the same exact note sheet with all the notes pre-typed just in case we missed anything while writing...which we never did because it was all written on the board. This meant that I never had to attend lecture and I would just write my responses based purely off the notes from discussion and I pretty much always got 94+ on the writing assignments. However I know some of the other TAs graded harder and people were still able to get A's they just had to work a little more for it. Also, even if you score bad on an assignment you can rewrite it so overall very very low stress class and highly recommend to anyone.

I LOVE PROFESSOR DUTHIE!! he is the sweetest man ever and cares so much about his students like genuinely just want them to succeed. (he also has a cute english accent) this was the first time he did quizzes so it was constantly changing depending on student feedback. the first 3 quizzes were completely doable and the final one was super easy. (i think a lot of people complained to him about how hard the quizzes were). His office hours were on zoom so it was a tiny bit awkward but TA Min was SO NICE!! there was participation for the discussions but as long as you asked 1 question per module you're basically guaranteed full marks:) The paper was not graded harshly at all! I'm pretty sure no one got below a 90%. i learnt a lot from this class too and it was super fun to take! Prof. Duthie does go a little fast and it is a little content heavy but everything was just so enjoyable! He also records all his lectures. The final and midterms were just the papers. (1000 words)
Grade distribution break down:
2 papers - 20%
participation - 10%
small presentation - 10%
4 quizzes - 60% (15% each)
If you have the opportunity to take this class PLEASE DO! (and take it with TA Min:)