This is a study of Japanese folding screens decorated with a variety of cartographic imagery of European origin. The central argument of this work is that Japanese cartographic namban screens made during the period considered in this dissertation can assist us to further understand the marked Christian eschatological character of the pictorial programmes decorating these screens, reflecting European contemporary hopes about the messianic coming of a universal Christian King, and about the Christian future of Japan at the onset of Shogun Tokugawa Hidetada's ban against Christianity (1614). By taking into account the use of folding screens as diplomatic gifts, this research seeks to argue that the hybridity of namban cartographic screens reveals as much about the expectation of Jesuit missionaries towards the evangelization of the Japanese archipelago as they did about how Japanese artists and observers understood European cartographic knowledge within a pre-existing local ritual use of maps and cartography. This dissertation is composed of four chapters. In chapter one I describe the material qualities of folding screens, the architectural environments in which they were displayed, and how the practice of donating folding screens as diplomatic gifts was eventually co-opted by the Jesuit missionaries operating in Japan. Chapter two is a discussion on the organization and the passage of the first Japanese diplomatic mission in Europe and the role that European cartography and geographical allegories played in this event. In chapter three I will examine the dissemination of Christian sacred images in Japan and the establishment of a Jesuit school to train Japanese artists in western-style painting. Chapter four unpacks the discussion developed in the preceding chapters and focuses on two specific pairs of namban cartographic screens - the Map of the World and Twenty-Eight Cities (today at the Imperial Household Agency in Tokyo) and the Battle of Lepanto and World Map (today at the Kosetsu Museum in Kobe) - for which I propose a new interpretation.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze various texts from Japanese literary history and extract the instances of trans-gender performances from those texts. I define “trans-gender” behaviors as actions that are culturally expected of the gender opposite that of the gender assigned to the performer at birth. In each text, I identify which character or characters perform actions that go against the expectations of the gender they were assigned at birth. I analyze how their performance is portrayed within the narrative, as well as how other characters in the narrative react to their performance. In this way, nuances are extracted that relate to the trope of gender play in these four historical eras. The literary representations of this trans-gender play respond to the needs and values systems of the time periods within which they exist. In the Heian period, this play is caused by external forces and ends due to sexual acts. In the Muromachi period, the character chooses to perform, but eventually revokes the world. By the Edo period, performance is more widely accepted and culturally ingrained because of the availability of spaces where trans-gender performance is allowed. The performers in Edo period literature usually perform in the context of receiving privileges or being allowed into gendered spaces. Finally, In the Meiji period, heteronormative gender roles are strictly enforced, and the literature reflects negative reactions to non-normative behavior. Trans-gender performers in the Meiji period are often punished in the narratives they inhabit.

Children’s literature flourished in Edo-period Japan, as this dissertation shows through a survey of eighteenth-century woodblock-printed picturebooks for children that feature children in prominent roles. Addressing a persisting neglect of non-Western texts in the study of children’s literature and childhood per se, the dissertation challenges prevailing historical understandings of the origins of children’s literature and conceptions of childhood as a distinct phase of life. The explosive growth of print culture in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Japan not only raised expectations for adult literacy but also encouraged the spread of basic education for children and the publication of books for the young. The limited prior scholarship on Edo-period Japanese children’s books tends to dismiss them as a few isolated exceptions or as limited to moralistic primers and records of oral tradition. This dissertation reveals a long-lasting, influential, and varied body of children’s literature that combines didactic value with entertainment. Eighteenth-century picturebooks drew on literary and religious traditions as well as popular culture, while tailoring their messages to the interests and limitations of child readers. Organized in two parts, the dissertation includes two analytical chapters followed by five annotated translations of picturebooks (kōzeibyōshi and early kusazōshi). Among the illustrators that can be identified are ukiyoe artists like Torii Kiyomitsu (1735-1785). The first chapter analyzes the picturebook as a form of children’s literature that can be considered in terms analogous to those used of children’s literature in the West, and it provides evidence that these picturebooks were recognized by Japanese of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as uniquely suited to child readers. The second chapter addresses the ways in which woodblock-printed children’s literature was commercialized and canonized from the mid-eighteenth century through the latter years of the Edo period, and it shows that picturebooks became source material for new forms of children’s culture during that time. The translated picturebooks, from both the city of Edo and the Kamigata region, include a sample of eighteenth-century views of the child: developing fetus, energetic grandchild, talented student, unruly schoolboy, obedient helper at home, young bride-to-be, and deceased child under the care of the Bodhisattva Jizō. / East Asian Languages and Civilizations

Kumano bikuni (the Buddhist nuns of Kumano) are itinerant female religious performers who were particularly active between the 16th and 18th centuries in Japan. Travelling across the country, they promoted the syncretic belief of the Kumano mountains, popular pilgrimage sites that have attracted a variety of people regardless of class, gender, and religious affiliation. To raise funds for temples and shrines there, they performed etoki (literally, picture deciphering) that addressed the everyday concerns of the masses, and especially women. Conceptualizing Kumano bikuni as mediators who bridged the religious world and the masses, this thesis examines how Kumano bikuni reflected perspectives of the audience at etoki performance and responded to diverse interests of different groups. / Graduate / 0320 / 0332 / 0453 / chihiro_620@hotmail.com