Joshua Scott Mostow

Torikaebaya monogatari (The Changelings, the late 11th century) is a late-Heian court tale about a half-sister and half-brother whose gendered roles get switched when they are still a child. The story primarily features the female protagonist, who needs to keep her anatomy secret in the society of other male aristocrats and of her principal wife. Her hardships resulting from this secret and the threats of the scandal drive much of the plot forward.Ever since Fujioka Sakutarō, a Meiji-period scholar, judged this tale as perverse and decadent, modern scholarship on this work has been extremely limited both in number and in theme/approach. This trend changed, at least in Japan, with the emergence of gender and feminist studies in the 1980s, and in 1992, Gregory Pflugfelder wrote an article titled, “Strange Fates: Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Torikaebaya monogatari.” After more than two decades since, this article still remains as one of the few English scholarly works that exclusively feature the tale. Written only two years after the publication of Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Pflugfelder does not fully develop his own suggestion that the gender in the late-Heian period is perhaps better thought as performative. My paper takes this as the point of departure and attempts to apply Butler’s theory as a heuristic device. Butler’s performative gender deconstructs substantive identity and re-constructs it as produced by cultural intelligibility. This premise leads my paper to focus on the reception of Torikaebaya by its contemporaneous readers, represented by the author of Mumyōzōshi (An Untitled Book, 1196-1202). A close reading of the relevant section of Mumyōzōshi suggests an important conceptual distinction between the real and realistic that informs my textual analysis of Torikaebaya. And finally, this paper offers a close reading of Torikaebaya to argue that its female protagonist’s role as a male courtier is carefully sustained by the tale’s textual strategies, such as her interior monologues, to contain her presence on the margins of what is intelligibly feminine.

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The increasing use of both computers and the Internet in universities and other Higher Education institutions in recent decades has had widespread effects on the EFL education programs (Kim, 2008; Terrill, 2000). The appearance of new forms of digital media, online learning communities, science simulations and electronic software presents new learning opportunities for EFL learners, which do not require the constant intervention of a teacher or which can be pursued outside the framework of a formal educational institution (Reeder, 2012; Warschauer, 1996). Computer and internet technologies are in many ways driving self-directed approaches to learning. We are starting to see a change in our understanding of self-directed learning as a set of specific abilities to access and effectively employ different learning environments with technology playing an important facilitative and enhancing role. The focus of this study is materials analysis of a Self-Study Listening Project (SSLP), which was implemented in the context of CALL EFL class at a Japanese university. This study uses an exploratory case study approach to address its two questions: (1) is SSLP, as documented in the CALL-course syllabus, likely to promote autonomous learning inside and outside the classroom? And (2) is SSLP, as documented in the CALL-course syllabus, likely to promote the development of the EFL listening skills? The materials analysis of SSLP revealed two main findings: (1) SSLP is likely to have impact on development of the interdependent autonomous learning skills of students; (2) SSLP is likely to have impact on development of the listening skills of students; a balanced strategy approach to listening instruction was taken in the course of implementation of SSLP; top-down and bottom-up approaches to listening were utilized; the use of various audiovisual materials coincided with multiple cognitive, metacognitive, and socioaffective activities.

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This project examines joshiyō ōrai-mono (popular educational publications for women in early modern Japan) as cultural commodities in the transmission of knowledge in relation to three areas: texts/illustrations, commercial publishers, and readers as clients. It also seeks to understand that woodblock prints have the characteristics of repeatable commodities. The project focuses on two encyclopaedia-type joshiyō ōrai-mono books: the 1814 edition of Onna daigaku takara-bako or The Treasure Box of the Women’s Greater Learning, and the second edition of Onna daigaku oshie-gusa or The Elementary Textbook of the Women’s Greater Learning, published in the mid-1840s. Comparing the two books reveals some notable issues. First, the commonality of the contents and physical characteristics of the two books shows that their publisher, Izumiya Ichibē, reused the texts, and copied the design of Takara-bako, a best-selling ōrai-mono, to produce his new book Oshie-gusa. Second, previous scholarship that has developed the literary genre framework for early modern print books cannot always explain the encyclopaedia type of popular educational materials because of their cross-genre characteristics. Third, Takara-bako emphasizes knowledge of waka poetry for female readers as well as providing the list of major female occupation catalogue in that period. Fourth, Oshie-gusa increased the practical contents such as Yin-yang divination and male-female compatibility as a handbook of marriage and family. Fifth, both books stress clothing-related matters, advocating not only household responsibilities but also female virtue based on neo-Confucianist ideology. The comparative analysis of Takara-bako and Oshie-gusa as cultural commodities has demonstrated the commercialization of knowledge in the Tokugawa period (1603-1868). Understanding the mechanisms of commercialization of printed knowledge can help us understand knowledge transmission that is de-commercialized or commercialized in different ways in electronic environments.

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The increasing use of both computers and the Internet in universities and other Higher Education institutions in recent decades has had widespread effects on the EFL education programs (Kim, 2008; Terrill, 2000). The appearance of new forms of digital media, online learning communities, science simulations and electronic software presents new learning opportunities for EFL learners, which do not require the constant intervention of a teacher or which can be pursued outside the framework of a formal educational institution (Reeder, 2012; Warschauer, 1996). Computer and internet technologies are in many ways driving self-directed approaches to learning. We are starting to see a change in our understanding of self-directed learning as a set of specific abilities to access and effectively employ different learning environments with technology playing an important facilitative and enhancing role. The focus of this study is materials analysis of a Self-Study Listening Project (SSLP), which was implemented in the context of CALL EFL class at a Japanese university. This study uses an exploratory case study approach to address its two questions: (1) is SSLP, as documented in the CALL-course syllabus, likely to promote autonomous learning inside and outside the classroom? And (2) is SSLP, as documented in the CALL-course syllabus, likely to promote the development of the EFL listening skills? The materials analysis of SSLP revealed two main findings: (1) SSLP is likely to have impact on development of the interdependent autonomous learning skills of students; (2) SSLP is likely to have impact on development of the listening skills of students; a balanced strategy approach to listening instruction was taken in the course of implementation of SSLP; top-down and bottom-up approaches to listening were utilized; the use of various audiovisual materials coincided with multiple cognitive, metacognitive, and socioaffective activities.

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The present thesis explores the interrelated linguistic processes of grammatical and semantic broadening as they pertain to the Japanese concept of aware during the initial stages of its development, paying close attention to the 250 year span between the 8th and late 10th centuries which saw its highly limited interjectional use burgeon into the diverse instantiations characteristic of the mid-Heian period (794-1185). As I will argue, it was precisely during this time that aware’s literary usefulness as an interjection motivated a crucial syntactic reanalysis into a bound nominal form that was in turn conducive to its subsequent grammatical diversification, semantic strengthening and even aesthetization. Accordingly, approaching this issue from a strictly functional perspective, I aim to link the linguistic evolution of aware to the growing social import and standardization of Heian poetic practices, taking note of the cross-generic influence between poetry and prose and its effect on aware’s path to diversification. After a brief introduction to the literary and cultural background surrounding the history of aware in Chapter One, I turn to its narrow interjective function in the Kojiki (712), the Nihon shoki (720) and the Man'yōshū (759) in Chapter Two, arguing that it was the very markedness of this linguistic realization that enabled aware to diversify in the first place. In Chapter Three, I then focus on aware’s development as evidenced in the Kokin wakashū (905), using the prose-bound tokens found in the Kana preface to explain the semantic incongruities between the overtly analogous structures found in poetry and relating them to the emergence of aware’s bound nominal form. Chapter Four consequently contextualizes the importance of this development with poetic and prose evidence from the Taketori monogatari (c.901), Ise monogatari (c.930) and Tosa nikki (935). Finally, the Epilogue addresses aware’s status at the turn of the 11th century and discusses the overarching connection between aware’s linguistic evolution and its growing aesthetic status.

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The play Sakura-hime azuma bunshō, written by Tsuruya Nanboku IV in 1817, has often been read as a parody designed to undermine the sacredness of the Buddhist institution during the Edo period. Upon closer reading, however, this play is not just showing the hypocrisy of the Buddhist institution and its followers. Nanboku, through Sakura-hime, is mounting a veiled criticism against the bakufu by elevating what was considered unorthodox religious practices. By rendering the play’s protagonist, Sakura-hime, as a reincarnation of the bodhisattva Kannon, while directly associating her with the Yoshida family and their Shinto practices, Nanboku IV places popular religious ideas on levels equal to state-sponsored religions. Just as the plot of the play could only be resolved through the awakening of Sakura-hime to her divine nature and her intervention, Nanboku IV implicitly suggests that the dire state-of-affairs that plagued the bakufu from the latter half of the 18th century up until the performance of the play in 1817 can only be resolved through a similar divine intervention by a saviour descending from a heterodox belief system. Furthermore, as Sakura-hime becomes the representation of the divine, she also becomes a grotesque figure, the embodiment of contradictory social values, highlighting the arbitrariness of the strict value system that was the cornerstone of Edo society. Salvation and rectification lie within the hands of someone that transcends Edo values, signifying the weakness of the system itself.I argue for this reading of Sakura-hime azuma bunshō by first establishing the historical circumstances that surrounded the writing of this play (Chapter 2). After this, the majority of my argument focuses on outlining the divine nature of Sakura-hime. The textual lineage of the narrative (Chapter 3), as well as the identity of Sakura-hime constructed by key scenes (Chapter 4) will serve this purpose. Finally, a quick look at the role historically played by the Yoshida family and the construction of Sakura-hime as a grotesque figure (Chapter 5), followed by a few concluding words (Chapter 6), wraps up my argument.

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The Edo period (1603-1868) saw the dawn of commercial publishing and theappearance of a Japanese mass market. Amidst these developments, a growing number of intellectuals, from all walks of life, started a cultural and political debate seeking to define the boundaries and center of their nation. A wide variety of schools of thought contributed their particular views to the question but two scholars of Dutch studies, or rangaku, offered one of the most drastic and creative solutions to define “Japaneseness.” The writer-scientist Hiraga Gennai (1728-1779) and the painter-geographer Shiba Kôkan (1747-1818) attempted to articulate Mt. Fuji as the symbol of a culturally and politically integrated Japan through their written and visual works. This thesis attempts to show the various forces contributing to and the process by which these two polymaths came to conceive and then propagate the idea of Mt. Fuji as a national symbol of their country. In order to do so, we will first focus on the life of Hiraga Gennai and the ideas contained in his most famous work of fiction, the Fûryû Shidôken Den (published in 1763), then move to the visual and scholarly output of his spiritual successor, Shiba Kôkan.

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