This dissertation investigates the work of Ogata Kōrin (1658–1716), one of the most idiosyncratic artists of Japan’s early modern period. By employing aspects of literature and theater, as well as a focus on Kōrin’s experimentations with the effects of style, materials, and artistic media, I elucidate how his oeuvre is characterized by a continuous strive to test the faculties of painting. Following a chronological approach, the four chapters of the dissertation trace Kōrin’s life and work from his early steps as a painter to the collaboration with his brother Kenzan (1663–1743) during his final years. The chapters are framed by an introduction, a conclusion, and an appendix. The first chapter focusses on Kōrin’s earliest works: two hanging scrolls depicting the medieval poet Sōgi (1421–1502) and Hotei Playing Kemari, as well as a pair of screens entitled Poetic Meanings of the Twelve Months. These works reveal Kōrin’s intellectual indebtedness to late medieval culture and the imperial court. Kōrin’s initial engagement in the arts occurred alongside his first confrontation with medieval ink modes, which laid the foundations for Kōrin’s lifelong understanding of that material. Numerous contemporary sources testify to Kōrin’s passion for the Noh theater. This little-studied, formative period of Kōrin’s life established his aesthetic sensibilities and is thus critical for understanding his art, a connection examined in the second chapter. Kōrin’s perennial engagement with Noh put him in contact with high-level aristocrats, such as the Nijō family, as well as upper-tier clergy at the temples Daigoji and Nishi Honganji. The theater also provides a possible reading of key works by Kōrin, such as his screen painting Irises. The third and fourth chapters explore Kōrin’s diversified dialogue with the material qualities of ink. The third chapter surveys his appropriation of a particular technique, tarashikomi, first championed by Tawaraya Sōtatsu (d. ca. 1640). I propose that Kōrin turned to tarashikomi as he prepared to leave his native Kyoto for Edo, where he was active for around five years. The chapter argues that Kōrin used tarashikomi, a painting method associated with Kyoto culture, to solicit clients in the shogunal capital of Edo. The last chapter is devoted to Kōrin’s collaboration with Kenzan. From the 1710s onward, the brothers created numerous examples of sabi-e, works in iron oxide on square ceramic vessels that emulate the techniques and visuality of paintings in ink. This unprecedented expansion of the boundaries of one medium to envelop another resulted in approximations of traditional ink paintings in ceramics. In the process, Kōrin expanded the paradigm of ink to include an entirely new material component. The appendix includes the first complete English-language translation of the collection of extant Edo-period letters and other documents by and about Kōrin that are contained in the Konishi Archives, held at the Kyoto National Museum, the Osaka Municipal Museum, and various other collections in Japan.

My dissertation, The Female Body, Motherhood, and Old Age: Representations of Women in Hell in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Japan, examines the literary and visual representations of women in hell in late medieval and early modern Japan, with particular attention to the female body, motherhood, and old age. My focus is the late Muromachi and early Edo periods, when a constellation of new hells began to be conceptualized that had serious ramifications for representation of women. I examine a group of otogizōshi texts and hell paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which were disseminated widely through different media (picture scrolls, screen paintings, and narrative texts) and which generated a set of motifs representing women in the afterlife. I relate the emergence of these motifs to the larger history of the discursive construction of the female body and the evolution of representations of hell in premodern Japan. I argue that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, representations of women in hell in these texts and paintings shifted in their focus to domestic relationships, specifically mother-child and wife-husband relationships. This change is best exemplified by the late medieval set of gendered hells (The Hell of Barren Women, The Hell of Two Wives, and Children’s Limbo), which represent the body of the woman from three perspectives: 1) as infertile (as in the Hell of Barren Women), 2) as related to animals (such as the serpentine queen in Daibutsu no go-engi (The Venerable Origins of the Great Buddha) and the serpent-women in the Hell of Two Wives), and 3) as stigmatized or punished for excess desire/attachment in their mother-child and wife-husband relationships (as in the Hell of Two Wives). This dissertation also analyzes woman as erotic object, as mother, and as aging body from a comparative Japan-China perspective. By comparing similar motifs that emerged at approximately the same historical moments—the snake queen falling into hell in Daibutsu no go-engi with the snake queen in “Empress Xi turning into a python,” and Datsueba (Clothes-snatching Hag) with Meng Po (Lady of Forgetfulness)—I am able to highlight distinctive features of these new hells for women as well as compare the differing functions of hell shown by these Japanese and Chinese examples. In Chapter 1, “Women Falling Into Hell in Early Medieval Japan,” I analyze three early medieval tales of women journeying to and from Tateyama hell in the eleventh-century Dai Nihonkoku Hokkekyō genki and twelfth-century Konjaku monogatari shū in order to provide background for my later discussion on the new concerns for women that emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I show how the salvation of the deceased female protagonists depended on the proper rituals being performed by family members and I make clear the significance that motherhood was accorded in early medieval Buddhist tales of women in hell. I then examine how representations of women evolved and became more complex in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the emergence of the Hell of Barren Women, where childless women are punished, and the Hell of Two Wives, in which two serpent women coil their bodies around a man with whom they had become involved in a triangular relationship. In Chapter 2, “Barren Women Hells and Daibutsu no go-engi (The Venerable Origins of the Great Buddha),” I show how the Hell of Barren Women stresses the reproductive responsibilities of women. The representations of the Hell of Barren Women, reflecting a growing female audience in the late Muromachi and early Edo periods, are clear evidence of a belief that it is motherhood that is a woman’s passport to salvation. In Chapter 3, I examine “The Serpentine Queen and the Chinese Tale of Empress Xi Hui Turning Into a Python.” A comparison with Daibutsu no go-engi shows that the Chinese stories about Empress Xi focus more on the feelings and observations of the living, while Daibutsu no go-engi stresses the accumulation and elimination of negative karma. Chapter 4, “The Hell of Two Wives: Transformed Women and the Jealousy of Joint-Wives,” examines the motif of the “transformed woman” found in the Lotus Sutra, the eleventh-century Hokke genki, and the mid-sixteenth century Dōjōji engi, showing how a negative connection between women and the dragon-serpent body was established, and how the animalized female body relates to the question of desire. The entwined threesome in the Hell of Two Wives not only exemplifies a domestic narrative of betrayal and resentment; it also shows a transition from a general stigmatization of the female body towards a more specific condemnation of lust, jealousy, and resentment—which are all gendered female. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, women’s roles evolved to reflect a desire to maintain the stability of family. At the same time, these representations began focusing more on situations in which women’s efforts to control body or mind met with failure. Chapter 5, “Old Women as Keepers of the Borders: Datsueba and Meng Po,” analyzes two figures of hags in hell: Datsueba in Japan and Meng Po in China. While Datsueba watches over the dead as they descend to the depths of hell to receive judgment, Meng Po cares for them as they make their way out of hell to achieve reincarnation. I argue that both Datsueba and Meng Po reinforce the border of hell by depriving the deceased of their social identities, but while Datsueba punishes and purifies the deceased, Meng Po focuses on the transitional stage between death and the next life, and her memory-erasing function shows that, paradoxically, in Chinese hell deceased souls are not liberated from the basic Confucian relationships that are so important to the living.

The publishing business in the Edo period (1603 – 1868) was very unique since it was divided into two genres: shomotsu mononohon and jihon kusazōshi. Publishers had their specialties and their business strategies varied. In this research paper, I examine the publishing strategies from the view of the network system. First, I state the definition of this network. Next, I study the publishing history of the Edo period to gain a general understanding. Lastly, I examine the network systems of the shomotsu publishers and the jihon kusazōshi publishers. I use examples from Tsutaya Jūzaburō, Suharaya Mohē, Tsuruya Kiemon, the Torii School and the Utagawa School. In the end, the readers will understand the various networks had the roles to energize the Edo community, and each network was indispensable among the whole big network system.

This is a study of some of the works of the Japanese novelist, Ozaki Koyo (1867-1903). The aim has been to identify the legacy that the fiction of the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) left in his work, so comparatively little attention has been paid to his life or to works that throw no light on this question, such as his adaptations and translations of western literature. Koyo's fiction was influenced by two distinct literary traditions from the Tokugawa period. His interest in ninjobon, a genre of romantic novel, spanned his creative life and imparted to his works a tendency towards complex romantic plots and a concern for realistic dialogue. For a few years, however, this source of influence yielded to another: Koyo was involved in the revival of the works of Ihara Saikaku which took place in the years around 1890, and this profoundly affected his language and style for several years. Attempts to imitate Saikaku's fiction also enabled him to experiment with uses of the narrator that were foreign to ninjobon writers, and he became progressively more interested in probing the minds of his characters. He took these developments further in his last two novels, stimulated both by the western fiction he had read and by current literary fashions. In Tajo takon he used the narrator to express his rejection of views of marriage imported from the West; in Konjiki yasha he combined the qualities of ninjobon with a study of usury. Apart from revealing some of the areas in which Meiji fiction was indebted to tradition, Koyo's works show that the influence of Tokugawst fiction was not always as harmful as it is often supposed to be.

My project explores the role of affective bonds of a sexual, romantic, and/or mentoring nature between male warriors in the production and maintenance of warrior identity during Japan's Warring States (1467–1603) period. Employing the notion of queer reading as a guiding principle, I examine the traces of intimate bonds between male warriors left behind in poetry, love oaths, personal correspondence, and other documents. I argue that male-male warrior intimacy played a central role, often undervalued by historians due to the conventional disciplinary emphasis on male-female marriage, in the construction of warrior retainer bands and the establishment of warrior alliances. Ranging from the purely hierarchical to the overtly sexual, relationships between warrior youths and their relatively older lords reproduced and reinforced warrior identity, through their violent oathing rituals, recreational activities, and function as a site for cultivating future trusted retainers. A young subordinate could also take advantage of the attention and trust given to him by making demands of his ostensible superior, disrupting the power asymmetries of the lord/retainer bond, or even by openly plotting a rebellion In considering warrior intimacy, the project occasions a reevaluation of the unification process that marks the Warring States period’s central narrative. I contend that the conventional interpretation, which relies on the trope of the Three Unifiers, minimizes the influence of male-male ties on events that effected significant historical change at the macro level, including the circumstances that enabled the Tokugawa clan’s ultimate victory, their vision of the social order, and the form of their sacred authority. I also explore the legacy of these bonds in the Edo period (1603–1868), repurposed as ideals of warrior masculinity and loyal retainership by both samurai attempting to find new purpose in a time of peace and commoners enjoying their newfound wealth and leisure time. Each chapter focuses on an influential warlord and his younger retainer: Ōuchi Yoshitaka (1507–1551) and Sue Harukata (1521–1555); Takeda Shingen (1521–1573) and Gensuke (dates unknown); and Date Masamune (1567–1636) and Tadano Sakujūrō Katsuyoshi (dates unknown), respectively.

La majorité des études sur le thé au Japon se consacre à la cérémonie du thé. Dans cette étude, nous nous proposons au contraire d’analyser l’histoire du thé au Japon du strict point de vue des techniques de culture et de fabrication du thé à l’époque Edo (1600-1868). Dans un premier temps, l’étude se concentre sur l’histoire du thé au Japon depuis son apparition au VIIIe siècle jusqu’au milieu du XIXe siècle. Cette partie abordera l’ensemble du développement de la filière du thé en s’attachant aux points suivants : l’évolution de la consommation du thé sur l’archipel, les différentes techniques de fabrication utilisées et enfin la mise en place des circuits économiques nécessaires au commerce intérieur du thé. Cette étude tentera de comprendre le passage d’une consommation par les élites à une consommation par l’ensemble de la population, ainsi que les implications de cette évolution. Dans un second temps, ce travail se focalisera sur l’étude des techniques de culture et de fabrication du thé à l’époque Edo. De multiples sources historiques sont examinées pour cela : comptes rendus de voyages de savants occidentaux, documents iconographiques divers, mais ce travail s’attache plus spécifiquement à l’analyse des nombreux traités agricoles de l’époque Edo. Ainsi, la description détaillée des différents procédés de fabrication de cette époque permet de comprendre les liens qu’il peut exister entre les différentes techniques, et de réfléchir aux modalités de création et d’amélioration des thés japonais. / Most studies related to Japan’s tea are about the tea ceremony. On the contrary, in this study we are proposing to analyze the history of tea in Japan from the strict point of view of tea culture and manufacture’s techniques in the Edo period (1600-1868). First of all, the study focuses on the history of Japan’s tea from its emergence in the 8th century, up until the mid-19th century. This part will deal with the whole development of the tea sector, focusing on the following points: the evolution of tea consumption on the archipelago, the different manufacturing techniques used and finally the implementation of the economic systems, necessary to the domestic trade. This study is trying to understand the transition from the consumption by the elites only, to the consumption by the entire population, as well as the implications of this evolution. Finally, this study will focus on the study of tea’s culture and manufacture techniques during the Edo period. To do so, we will look at many historical sources: reports and diaries of Western travelers, various iconographic documents, but this thesis will mainly be focusing on the analysis of many agricultural treaties during the Edo period. Therefore, this detailed description of the various manufacturing processes of this period makes it possible to understand the existing links between the different techniques, and to think about the methods of creation and improvement of Japanese teas.

The main concern of this thesis is a literary analysis of Ukiyoburo, a work by Shikitei Sanba, who was a prominent Japanese writer of the Edo period. This thesis contains a fairly extensive treatment of Sanba's life and work. In this part, the highest attention is paid to works of the kokkeibon genre, which made Sanba famous. The theoretical part mainly deals with the narrative analysis, which has been chosen to be the main research method of this thesis. In the analytical part, the presented methods are used to examine mainly the narrative mode, the story, the environment, the characters and the humor of Ukiyoburo, Sanba's most important work.

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

A pair of eight-fold screens entitled "World-Map-and-Twenty-Eight-City" represents a colorful world map with the figures of peoples of the world on one screen. The painting is punctuated by numerous city markers, with the largest indicating the city of Rome. On the other screen, twenty-eight cities of the world and Christian and Muslim kings in ceremonial attire on horseback are depicted. This pair of screens was probably produced in the early seventeenth century. It was most likely painted by Jesuit-trained Japanese painters who had learned western themes and painting techniques: perspective and chiaroscuro. Until the sixteenth century, Japanese experience with and knowledge of the world was limited to its neighbouring lands, such as China, Korea, and India. Beyond the realm of Japan lay worlds formed through fascination and the imagination. In 1543, however, this changed with the appearance of the Portuguese, who journeyed to Japan in the pursuit of new lands to develop trade and to spread Christianity. The Portuguese and their culture had a strong impact on Japanese thoughts and activities, including the creation of many screens with European motifs and new views of the world at large. This pair of screens was drawn upon Dutch prototype made by Petrus Kaerius (1571-1646) in 1609. In my thesis I will examine how "World-Map-and-Twenty-Eight-City" screens performed a two-fold function. I will first examine how the screens marked Jesuit propagation of Christianity in Japan, and second I will examine how the screens articulated what might be called an emergent sense of Japanese collective identity. By this I do not mean identity based on nationalism, which emerged in Japan only in the nineteenth century. Rather, I mean an increasing awareness of the Self in relation to Other, and not only in relation to those outside the geographic confines of Japan but also within. What I intend to explore is how definitions of geography and culture in world map screens, and specifically "World-Map-and-Twenty-Eight-City" screens, prompted viewers to acknowledge a more distinctive Self. The end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries was a transitional moment for both the Jesuits and Portugal. Religiously, the Jesuits were in conflict with the Japanese government and, as well their authority was undermined by Mendicants from the Philippines. These conflicts were compounded further by the spread of Protestantism in Europe. Similarly, after a short prosperous trade in Asia, rising economic and political power of the Netherlands and England gradually pushed Portuguese trade out of Asia. By comparing "World-Map-and-Twenty-Eight-City" screens with "In-and-Around- Kyoto" screens, I argued that the Jesuit's hidden agenda of glorifying Christendom and God's order on earth emerged. Moreover, by comparing this pair with "Four-Continent-and- Forty-Eight-People" screens, I detect the emergence of sense of a Japanese Self, that was forged in relation to the Europeans. Although the screens give the impression of the orderly and peaceful world, they mask the unstable situation which the Jesuits and Portugal were experiencing at the time. In the end, I propose that "World-Map-and-Twenty-Eight-City" screens transformed and reworked the Dutch prototype from a geographical mode to one that is highly decorative. Rather than articulating a Japanese view of the world, the screens maintained the notion of a powerful Catholic world.

A pair of eight-fold screens entitled "World-Map-and-Twenty-Eight-City" represents a colorful world map with the figures of peoples of the world on one screen. The painting is punctuated by numerous city markers, with the largest indicating the city of Rome. On the other screen, twenty-eight cities of the world and Christian and Muslim kings in ceremonial attire on horseback are depicted. This pair of screens was probably produced in the early seventeenth century. It was most likely painted by Jesuit-trained Japanese painters who had learned western themes and painting techniques: perspective and chiaroscuro. Until the sixteenth century, Japanese experience with and knowledge of the world was limited to its neighbouring lands, such as China, Korea, and India. Beyond the realm of Japan lay worlds formed through fascination and the imagination. In 1543, however, this changed with the appearance of the Portuguese, who journeyed to Japan in the pursuit of new lands to develop trade and to spread Christianity. The Portuguese and their culture had a strong impact on Japanese thoughts and activities, including the creation of many screens with European motifs and new views of the world at large. This pair of screens was drawn upon Dutch prototype made by Petrus Kaerius (1571-1646) in 1609. In my thesis I will examine how "World-Map-and-Twenty-Eight-City" screens performed a two-fold function. I will first examine how the screens marked Jesuit propagation of Christianity in Japan, and second I will examine how the screens articulated what might be called an emergent sense of Japanese collective identity. By this I do not mean identity based on nationalism, which emerged in Japan only in the nineteenth century. Rather, I mean an increasing awareness of the Self in relation to Other, and not only in relation to those outside the geographic confines of Japan but also within. What I intend to explore is how definitions of geography and culture in world map screens, and specifically "World-Map-and-Twenty-Eight-City" screens, prompted viewers to acknowledge a more distinctive Self. The end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries was a transitional moment for both the Jesuits and Portugal. Religiously, the Jesuits were in conflict with the Japanese government and, as well their authority was undermined by Mendicants from the Philippines. These conflicts were compounded further by the spread of Protestantism in Europe. Similarly, after a short prosperous trade in Asia, rising economic and political power of the Netherlands and England gradually pushed Portuguese trade out of Asia. By comparing "World-Map-and-Twenty-Eight-City" screens with "In-and-Around- Kyoto" screens, I argued that the Jesuit's hidden agenda of glorifying Christendom and God's order on earth emerged. Moreover, by comparing this pair with "Four-Continent-and- Forty-Eight-People" screens, I detect the emergence of sense of a Japanese Self, that was forged in relation to the Europeans. Although the screens give the impression of the orderly and peaceful world, they mask the unstable situation which the Jesuits and Portugal were experiencing at the time. In the end, I propose that "World-Map-and-Twenty-Eight-City" screens transformed and reworked the Dutch prototype from a geographical mode to one that is highly decorative. Rather than articulating a Japanese view of the world, the screens maintained the notion of a powerful Catholic world. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate