This thesis examines the relationship between Japanese pan-Asianists and pan-Islamists from the end of the nineteenth century till World War II. The materialization of pan-Asianism in Japan and pan-Islamism in the Ottoman Empire was a response to the perceived acts of aggression against a fictive and universal West. Both pan-Asianism and pan-Islamism emerged as a reaction to the strong currents of anti-Western discourse. The trajectories of both pan-Asianism and pan-Islamism intertwined with major turning points in international history, such as the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), WWI, and later in the 1930s after the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. Intellectuals involved in both these movements engaged in intense debates about race, civilization, and empire. It was such transnational imaginations that laid the foundations of Japanese-Ottoman interactions. Pan-Islamists, keen on uniting the social, religious, and political recesses evident in the Islamic world, sided with Japanese pan-Asianists in the Early Meiji Era. It was the desire of pan-Islamic intellectuals to join forces with Japan for the purpose of constructing a twentieth century utopia under the banner of Islam, which was suitably modern, spiritual, and able to withstand Western hegemony. According to them, the strength of Japanese pan-Asianism combined with the universality of pan-Islamisms message was an integral force in the awakening of Muslims around the globe. Also, Japanese pan-Asianists were keen to engage in diplomatic discourse with Ottoman intellectuals so as to overturn the Orientalist framework that had condemned the Eastern nations to a status of inferiority by the Occident. This thesis, therefore, connects Japanese history to the world of Islam and investigates how the accepted notions of Orient and Occident, East and West, Self and Other, engineered a relationship between two very different nations. The embracing of Japan by pan-Islamist intellectuals and the affinity of pan-Asianisms message as the Easts answer to the West (as an equal in matters of race, civilization, and culture) is indicative of an association incumbent upon restructuring the global power politics of the time.

This thesis examines the motives behind the Japanese imperial household's decision to invite an American Christian woman, Elizabeth Gray Vining, to the court as tutor to Crown Prince Akihito about one year after the Allied Occupation of Japan began. In the past, the common narrative of scholars and the media has been that the new tutor, Vining, came to the imperial household at the invitation of Emperor Hirohito, who personally asked George Stoddard, head of the United States Education Mission to Japan, to find a tutor for the crown prince. While it may have been true that the emperor directly spoke to Stoddard regarding the need of a new tutor for the prince, the claim that the emperor came up with such a proposal entirely on his own is debatable given his lack of decision-making power, as well as the circumstances surrounding him and the imperial institution at the time of the Occupation. From September 1945 to the end of his term in April 1951, General Douglas MacArthur led the operation of the Occupation. As Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, MacArthur had a considerable effect on the affairs and decision-making processes of the imperial household, whose major concern was the emperor's life and sovereignty that had been at stake since Japan's surrender. To protect the emperor in MacArthur's Japan, the imperial advisers made a series of stratagems to project a new image of the emperor favorable to MacArthur who had a personal aim to Christianize Japan. Given these circumstances, this thesis argues that it is not coincidental that the emperor, or whoever was in charge of finding a tutor for the crown prince, requested that the new tutor be American Christian; the purpose of the new tutor was to provide the crown prince English-language lessons, which, from an objective point of view, could have been conducted by a non-American or non-Christian native English speaker. Ultimately, this thesis shows that the imperial household's effort to invite a new tutor for the crown prince was more politically-oriented than has been interpreted in the past.

Today manga (Japanese comics) pervades Japanese society and reaches a readership that spans from children to adults. Among manga, the works of Tezuka Osamu occupies a special place in the heart of the Japanese masses because Tezuka is considered as the God of Comics. Although Tezuka passed away in 1989, his manga are still widely read inside and outside of Japan. Thus Tezukas manga could potentially influence peoples perception of Japan. In this thesis, I conduct a discourse analysis of Tezukas manga on World War II. Based on Homi Bhabhas definition of nation as a set of narratives, I explore the means used by Tezuka to challenge the official narrative of World War II. My goal is to demonstrate that the States narration of a nation is volatile. I argue that Tezukas World War II manga both challenges and strengthens the official narrative of the wartime Japanese nation. Tezuka challenges the official narrative by giving voice to those who were absent of this narrative, mainly children and war orphans, and depicting the brutality of Japanese officers against civilians. Tezuka also challenges the mainstream narrative by presenting the U.S. occupation of Japan as a neo-colonization period during which American soldiers abused their power. This denunciation of Japanese suffering stands at the core of Tezukas constant call for international peace. Yet this focus on the Japanese suffering also leads to an almost disappearance of the Imperial armys non-Japanese victims. In other words, Tezuka strengthens the official victimhood narrative because he merely addresses the issue of Japanese war crimes. This ambiguity of Tezukas narrative exemplifies Bhabhas idea of individuals agency in the definition of a nation. By examining the representation of World War II in popular culture medium such as manga, this thesis also provides an in-depth understanding of Tezukas works as well as an insight about the ongoing debate surrounding Japans wartime responsibility.

Robots are an increasingly common staple of realistic science fiction. Summer blockbuster movies warn us of the dangers of giving in to hubris by creating machines that are as intelligent and capable as we are, and humorous books provide the wary with helpful tips on how to prepare for the inevitable robot revolution. In Japan, however, this trope is reversed. Instead of being coldly rational enslavers of humanity, unsympathetic to their creators, fictional Japanese robots are just as emotional as their human counterparts and often strive to defend humans and humanity. The roles for robots that are common in American movies almost never appear in Japanese works, and the reverse is true as well. Fictional Japanese robots tend to fall into three categories: being equivalent to humans, being god-like, or serving as a spiritual vessel for gods. For the first category, some robots are so much like humans that their mechanical nature is not even a particularly salient feature. Instead, it is about as important and emphasized as the blood type of a human character. Almost never are questions raised about whether the robot has a soul. This can be seen to be consistent with Buddhist and Shinto beliefs that treat animals as being spiritually similar to humans, while the Abrahamic traditions espouse that only human beings have souls. Since Japanese religions already accept animals as spiritual beings, the extension to robots is a small one. In the second category, giant robots in anime are frequently portrayed as being god-like. They are sometimes built by humans in need of protection, but they also frequently appear as ancient, unfathomable beings. They greatly resemble Shinto gods, being worthy of respect due to their impressive size and power, and existing independently of humanity while being willing to grant the requests of those they have chosen as worthy representatives. Finally, fictional robots that are not gods themselves may serve as spiritual vessels for them, as puppets can serve as vessels for gods in Shinto ceremonies. This allows even those robots that are not spiritual creatures themselves to touch the realm of the holy.

Contrary to popular assumption, the transitional period from the late Edo into the early Meiji period was anything but bloodless. A civil war, known as the Boshin War, ran for over a year from 1868 to 1869, and it pitted the troops of the new Meiji government against a number of adversaries, not all of whom were fighting for the same objectives. This thesis examines in detail the history of the Alliance, the circumstances of its formation, its aims, and its composition. It further analyzes the terminology used by the victors in their writings about the war. Finally, this thesis proposes a radical reinterpretation of our understanding of the Boshin War, and of the Meiji Restoration as a whole.

In 1877, an American educator named William Smith Clark began his one year contract with the Meiji government to head a new agricultural college in Sapporo, Hokkaido. While there, he taught the basics of Christianity to his Japanese students under the guise of moral education. This paper seeks to understand the religious and moral philosophy that was absorbed by the students at Sapporo Agricultural College and how this laid the foundation for two prominent Japanese Christian intellectuals who came out of the Sapporo Band: Uchimura Kanzô and Nitobe Inazô. In order to accomplish this, this thesis first examines William Clarks educational and religious views as influenced by his background, followed by a discussion of what Christian-related activities took place at Sapporo Agricultural College before and immediately after Clarks departure. In the last chapter, the religious elements that were taken away by students like Nitobe and Uchimura from their Sapporo experience will be examined. Such an exercise will show that they and other graduates shared the basic elements of a Christianity run by laymen, with an emphasis on Bible study and a disregard for ecclesiasticism and denominationalism, as well as the addition of a spiritual lineage that they traced to William Smith Clark. Sapporo graduates also adopted a philosophical system that encouraged the development of self-cultivation and independence of thought not unlike that of certain Neo-Confucian schools.

This paper focuses on Dianshizhai Pictorials (1884-1898), an influential pictorial with commercial success, as a case study. By analyzing selected illustrations of Western technology and policy, I will explore why and how the visual functioned as mediation between the new knowledge and the ideals of Chinese traditions. The intellectuals and literati, such as the editors and artists of Dianshizhai Pictorial, were relatively receptive and open-minded towards new knowledge and other innovative aspects of Western culture. But they were also distressed at many of the social changes induced by Western interaction in the settlements, especially the disintegrating effect on the traditional values and mores of Chinese society. My main argument is seeing is not necessarily believing. The Dianshizhai Pictorial was a part of the mediation between Ti (Chinese tradition and values as foundation) and Yong (Western Technology as tools). The editors and readers, and even high ranking officials like Li Hung Chang, wanted to see and use Western technology as effective tools (Yong). However, they were seeing the tools through Chinese minds, interpreting and believing through Chinese tradition and values, which is the basic foundation (Ti).

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This thesis examines the economic implications of using agriculturally based feedstock for bio-energy production in East Texas. Specifically I examined the use of switchgrass, rice straw, and logging residue as a feedstock for electrical power generation in East Texas replacing coal. To examine the effects of such a substitution, an environmental bio-complexity approach is used to analyze the interactions of agricultural, technological, economic, and environmental factors. In particular, lifecycle analysis (LCA) and Cost-Benefit analysis is used. The results show that as we use more bio-energy for power generation, we will get less Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission, which will be an environmental benefit in the long run. The main problem is that cost increases. Current biomass feedstock production costs are generally too high for biomass feedstock to replace coal in power generation. However I find that GHG offset prices can make biomass economically attractive. In particular GHG offset prices and forgiveness for the emissions from combustion based on photosynthetic absorption would raise the price people would be willing to pay for biomass feedstock making it competitive.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 1889. / Includes bibliographical references.