This will come out as a low rating but I don't mean to completely trash the instructor or his course. A very specific kind of person would really enjoy this course, but most people probably will not.

Stolz is a Marxist (he might quibble over the label, but it's completely obvious) and his grand theory is that the Japanese Empire's expansion was caused by the capitalist forces and stages of development described by Marx and Lenin. Accordingly, a huge chunk of the reading is Das Kapital (and all the boring Marxist economic theory that implies) and a few other communist writers, some during the empire. Stolz is a nice guy, and you discuss the work, but all of it is in the framework of the "capitalist" roots of the empire. If you don't believe that, tough luck.

The class itself is not that hard besides the dense reading; mostly a few papers.