"Yuewang Goujian shijia," the forty-first chapter of the Shiji, is one of the most important sources for the history of the ancient state of Yue. However, this chapter has not received serious scholarly examination in the West. Unlike those chapters of the Shiji which have been translated in the Shiji translation project headed by William Nienhauser, "Yuewang Goujian shijia" has not yet been translated into English. This thesis provides an annotated translation of the "Yuewang Goujian shijia." In addition, it has been argued that the history of the Spring and Autumn period in the Shiji is a compilation of earlier sources. The introduction to the translation will specifically look at the relationship of the "Yuewang Goujian shijia" to one of its proposed sources, the "Yueyu xia," which is the twenty-first chapter of the Guoyu. In comparing these two texts, it will be shown that dependence cannot be definitely demonstrated.

Ikumen, meaning fathers with small children who are--or look like they are--actively involved in childrearing are a new phenomenon in contemporary Japan, despite the prevalent images of patriarchic and absent fatherhood. But why and how did yesterday's notorious company soldiers turn into today's ikumen? This dissertation interrogates this supposedly drastic shift in the view and the conduct of fatherhood as a cultural practice on historical, political economic, and linguistic grounds. Drawing on fieldwork, mass media, and historical analysis, I explore how new styles of fatherhood have been constructed and how they embody broader social issues of gender, class, and modernity and globalization. Gender roles in the modern family since the late nineteenth century have been strained, and ikumen will allegedly liberate both men and women to achieve the ideal of "work-life balance" in a "gender-equal society." Examination of various genres of language, from metapragmatic comments to the advertising of nursery items, however, suggests that the ideology of gender roles is naturalized and "male features" are appropriated to lead men into the "female" sphere of the home. I argue that this discourse represents the heteroglossic nature of language, and that our speech, influenced by accustomed thoughts, paradoxically strengthens that discourse despite our intentions. Ikumen are not only connected to concerns about gender, but also are predicated on Japan's historical and ongoing fantasy of modernity and globalization. From the label ikumen, to state and local campaigns for male participation in childcare, to the use of terms of address for parents, the idealized West and its monolithic images of stylish and active fatherhood and romantic couplehood are covertly exploited. As a whole, the ikumen movement ends up creating an "imagined community," in which "globalism" is believed to help one obtain a more authentic and global "self" through childrearing. I argue that the ikumen movement presents the perpetual but concealed power hierarchy of modernity, and that Japan and Japanese people docilely appropriate this historical truth, institutionalizing the counterhegemony as the new hegemony and as a form of cultural capital in the context of a disturbingly low birthrate and a sluggish economy.

Kita Morio has been one of the most successful humorists of Japan's postwar period, but his work has received little attention from scholars. The intent of this study is to provide an introduction to the humorous essays of Kita Morio. In particular, after the principles of the humor mechanism are established, the nature of the essays as a type of I-novel is examined. The focus is then turned to the authorial persona that Kita uses in his humorous essays, and an overview of that manufactured fictional character and the world he inhabits is created. Finally, five individual essays are examined in the context created by the preceding chapters, with particular attention given to the manner in which humor functions in the essays, as well as the manner in which the reader can find comfort in them. Translations of the five essays examined in the final chapter are provided in the Appendix.

Shidō Munan (至道無難, 1602-1676) was an early Tokugawa Zen master mostly active in Edo. He was the teacher of Shōju Rōjin, who is in turn considered the main teacher of Hakuin Ekaku. He is best known for the phrase that one must“die while alive,”made famous by D.T. Suzuki. Other than this, his work has not been much analyzed, nor his thought placed into the context of the early Tokugawa period he inhabited. It is the aim of this work to analyze some of the major themes in his writings, the Jishōki (自性記), Sokushinki (即心記), Ryūtakuji ShozōHōgo (龍沢寺所蔵法語), and the Dōka (道歌). Special attention is paid to his views on Neo-Confucianism, Pure Land thought, and Shinto- traditions which can be shown through their prevalence in his writings to have placed Zen on the defensive during this time period. His teachings on death are also expanded on and analyzed, as well as some of the other common themes in his writing, such as his teachings on kōan practice and advice for monastics. In looking at these themes, it is possible to both compare and contrast him from some of his better-known contemporaries, such as Bankei and Suzuki Shōsan. Additionally, selected passages from his writings are offered in translation.

In the 1990s, the fact that Hong Kong cinema thrived in the world market, with both art and commercial films, is a theoretical anomaly. Despite its petite size and lack of government support and protection, it has survived both colonial administration and Hollywood domination. Hong Kong has a long history of prolific filmmaking, and has flourished during a decade full of challenges, and out of proportion to the size of the city and the industry. Hong Kong film is now recognized for its directors’ personal style and action aesthetic. How did this happen? How did Hong Kong filmmaking develop into an efficient system that could survive the harsh conditions of its past and thrive in the competitive environment of the 1990s? Hong Kong’s story is one of paradox and Hong Kong cinema relates that story by embracing paradox in both its industrial system and cultural ideology. This project is a formal, cultural and industrial analysis of Hong Kong cinema in its multiple contexts. Instead of replicating the Hollywood studio system or other national cinema models, Hong Kong cinema, like bamboo surviving by bending with the wind, has developed a flexible system adapted to its habitat, but that also simultaneously created a space for a unique style of filmmaking with a transnational perspective. I will investigate how the cinematic system worked, and how individual filmmakers devised tactics to both work within and push the limits of the system. I will explore what they reveal about the local condition I call “orphan island anxiety”, a deep sense of insecurity underneath the economic miracle, and a paradoxical state that people from a non-conventional nation state experience in an age of universal and normative ideas of the nation. The case of Hong Kong cinema will illuminate for us an industrial model substantially different from that of Hollywood, and a voice that was missing from official Sino-British talks, which reveals a cultural sensibility not found in either Hollywood or in Chinese national cinema. / text

My research investigates the making of new farmers in Chinese risk society. I argue that the socialist peasants are in the transformation into neoliberal new farmers. I define the "new farmers" as a dispositive agricultural population that embodies neoliberal ideologies and practices. The purpose of making the new farmers is to counterbalance the instabilities and risks in post-socialist China and to distribute and redistribute power, wealth and risks via new channels such as new farmers' organizations and enterprises. The new farmers are in the making by different forces to address a variety of risks fermented in post-socialist China. The new farmers are recognized by their education, knowledge of agriculture and social responsibilities; they are categorized by their participation in new farmers' organizations and enterprises; they are promoted and cultivated by the Chinese government; and they are identified and represented via mass media. The individualization of the new farmers serves as a governing tool that turns systemically produced risks into individual risks. It also serves as a normalization strategy that the new farmers build their lives in a do-it-yourself way. Their individualized decisions and choices result in their normalization or marginalization in the making of new farmers in Chinese risk society.

This study aims to explore how English-speaking learners of Chinese acquire Resultative Verb Compounds (RVC). The specific research questions are: Do learners think that change of state is achieved by using an RVC? Do learners assign resultative meaning to V₁-le uniformly or only in certain types of situations depending on how result is expressed in their L1? Lastly, do learners realize that RVCs are a highly productive construction? This thesis provides linguistic analysis that can account for differences in how change of state is expressed in Chinese and English. It also presents a second language acquisition study informed primarily by the sentence acceptability judgement task. In English, result is typically expressed by a monomorphemic verb or by a resultative construction. In Mandarin, the most typical way to convey result is to use RVCs. In addition to differences in such phenomena as event conflation, strength of implicature and the incompleteness effect also constitute key differences between English and Mandarin. It is claimed that the major factor in determining the effect of L1 transfer from English to Mandarin is how change-of-state situations are expressed in English. In response, two experiments were conducted. The subjects were 47 learners and 26 native speakers of Chinese. Statistical analysis (ANOVA) was applied in evaluating outcomes of the experiments. The results show that learners understand that RVCs must be used to describe change-of-state situations. However, learners do not habitually take the aspect marker–le as a resultative marker. Instead, the outcomes of the data analysis are compatible with the interpretation of–le as a past tense marker. The analysis also shows that how change-of-state situations with respect to event conflation are expressed in English has some effect on their understanding of RVC-le vs. V₁-le combinations. Lastly, while learners do not reject the idea that more than one RVC can describe a change-of-state event, they do not have full understanding of this phenomenon.

Yuan Hongdao was an eminent leader of the Gong'an school in the literary circles during the Wanli Reign of the Ming Dynasty. Inevitably influenced by the trend of thought supported by the Confucian scholars who followed Wang Yangming's (1472-1529) intellectual movement of "learning of the mind" and "innate knowing", which was closely correlated with the reinvention of Chan Buddhism, Yuan Hongdao became an advocate of free expression of innate sensibility and an expert in Chan meditation. The Shan hu lin was an expression of Yuan Hongdao's thoughts on Chan practice and self-cultivation and bore a deep meaning of the integration of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. This thesis reveals Yuan Hongdao's association with Chan Buddhism, examines the writing of the Shan hu lin, and analyzes its textual content, in order to demonstrate the revival of Chan Buddhism in the literati circle during the late Ming period.

This dissertation examines the possible influence of language learners' second language (L2) on their perception of phonological contrasts in their third language (L3). Previous studies on Third Language Acquisition (TLA) suggest various factors as possible sources of cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of an L3. This dissertation specifically investigates whether learners' levels of perceptual performance in the L2 is related to their phonological perception of L3 contrasts. In order to examine the perception of Japanese contrasts by non-native learners, I conducted a forced-choice identification experiment (Experiment 1) and AXB discrimination experiment (Experiment 2) with native speakers of English and native speakers of Korean who were learning Japanese at an introductory level. In addition, the Korean participants also participated in a forced-choice English minimal pair identification experiment (Experiment 3). In order to answer the main research question, I examined whether there was any correlation between the Korean participants' perceptual performance in English (L2) and Japanese (L3).There was a positive correlation between the identification of the Japanese word-initial stop voicing contrast and the identification of English minimal pairs. Distinguishing Japanese voiced stops and voiceless stops is widely known to be difficult for native speakers of Korean especially in word-initial position. Therefore, this positive correlation is considered as an indication of a positive influence of learners' L2 on speech perception in their L3. The L2, however, did not influence the perception in the L3 negatively. This result indicates that the participants experienced positive influence from both of their background languages, which supports the idea expressed in the Cumulative-Enhancement Model. Positive correlations were also observed for the discrimination of several other Japanese contrasts and the identification of English minimal pairs. These correlations are considered to indicate an increase in the learners' sensitivity to the speech sounds in general. Different types of correlation results obtained for the identification and the discrimination tasks are considered to reflect the difference in the nature of these perception tasks. All in all, the results suggest that L3 perception is qualitatively different from L2 perception and that the perceptual level in the L2 is related to perception in the L3 at least to some extent.

In Hong Kong, 'green living' (luksik saangwut) is promoted as a way of living that is kind to the Earth and good to the people. It is a grassroots movement that encourages people to take personal responsibility for the environment and the society at large. While most studies of Asia's environmental movements focus on green groups' lobbying tactics and mobilisation strategies, this thesis pays serious attention to individuals' experience of living a green life. Although Hong Kong's green culture is highly influenced by the global appeal to sustainability and environmental protection, its specificities are shaped by the city's social and political climate in a unique historical conjuncture. By focusing on individual experience and their practices of green living in the everyday, I argue that green living in Hong Kong is best understood as 'technologies of the self' wherein new environmental, social, and political subjectivities are formed among the ordinary people. The perceived reciprocity between the act of healing nature and the healing power of nature is an essential element in the formation of green subjectivity in Hong Kong. Not only does green living help people heal and transform themselves, it has also given rise to an embodied politics (santai likhang) that enables people to reimagine a social and political 'otherwise'. Such embodied politics has come to represent a politics of hope that empowers people to confront with the politics of fear that has been looming over Hong Kong since the former British colony was returned to China in 1997. In light of this background, I argue that what the Hong Kong people want to sustain is not just the natural environment, but also the social norms and the ways of living that are thought to distinguish themselves from their counterparts in mainland China.