(in English): The topic of this work is the characteristics of the short stories by Kono Taeko. At first I am presenting the methodology - psychoanalysis. Then, I'm describing her life for better understanding of the use of some typical features. Especially the war and the tuberculosis had influence on her work. Subsequently I present possible interpretation of her stories in term of Shintoism (effort to purify) and Buddhism (achievement of liberation). In interpersonal relations Kono Taeko deals mainly with man- woman relationships and her attitude can be considered feminist. In the most comprehensive chapter concerning masochism I am trying to prove with Freud's theory "The child is being beaten" that her work is masochistic. In the end I am generalizing my findings. This work contains Czech translations of examples of her work and contains 68 pages.

Nō é uma arte cênica japonesa em que representação, dança e música misturam-se em apresentações estilizadas onde poucos elementos são trabalhados para o aprofundamento de uma unidade imagética. Apesar de encontrarmos seus primeiros registros em documentos da era Heian (794-1185), a complexificação de todos os seus aspectos ocorreu na era Muromachi (1334-1573), com os esforços de Zeami (1363-1443) e de seu pai, Kan\'ami (1333-1384). Além de desenvolver a atuação e a orquestração, ambos fizeram avanços significativos na composição de peças. Felizmente, o maior artista de nō, Zeami, nos deixou muitos escritos críticos em que detalha todas as pesquisas empreendidas durante sua vida. A partir de um desses tratados e trechos de outros dois, este trabalho buscará analisar o método, estabelecido por Zeami, pelo qual a criação dramatúrgica divide-se em três frentes: shu, saku e sho, \"semente\", \"estrutura\" e \"composição\", respectivamente. Shu é o meio pelo qual se trabalha com a fonte que dá origem à peça e que será inevitavelmente revista pela linguagem do nō; saku é a estruturação musical que possibilita o desvendamento da semente; e sho é a junção de palavras e sons que transmitem essa revelação. Com o apoio de estudiosos e poetas recentes, procuraremos identificar os princípios que regem esses três caminhos e os modos pelos quais eles se unem para a formação de um todo orgânico, onde yūgen, a beleza contrária à imitação da realidade externa, nasce da distribuição de qualidades vivificadas por uma abordagem maleável do tempo chamada jo-ha-kyū. No primeiro capítulo, veremos como divisões e subdivisões das matérias-primas musicais do nō, ritmos e melodias, interagem para a estruturação da peça; no segundo, como a fonte e demais citações são rediagramadas para a realização gradual do material original; e no terceiro, como palavras são organizadas em aglomerados de sons e imagens para a estabelecimento de camadas significantes. / Nō is a Japanese performing art in which representation, dance and music blend into stylized presentations where few elements are handled to create and give depth to an imagistic unit. Although we find its first records in documents from the Heian period (794-1185), the increase of its complexity ocurred only in the Muromachi period (1334-1573), through the efforts of Zeami (1363-1443) and his father, Kan\'ami (1333- 1384). In addition to the development of performance and orchestration, both made significant advances in the composition of plays. Fortunately, the greatest n? artist, Zeami, left us many critical writings in which he detailed all the researches undertaken during his lifetime. Based on one of these treatises and on excerpts of two others, this study will analyse the method, established by Zeami, in which the creation of plays is dividided into three areas: shu, saku and sho, \"seed\", \"structure\" and \"composition\", respectively. Shu is the means by which the artist works with the source that gives rise to the play and that will inevitably be revised by the nō language; saku is the musical structuring that enables the seed to be unveiled; and sho is the combination of words and sounds that convey this revelation. Supported by recent scholars and poets, we will try to identify the principles governing these three paths and the ways by which they unite to form an organic totality, where yūgen, a beauty opposed to the imitation of external reality, is born out of the distribution of qualities vivified by a flexible approach of time, called jo-ha-kyū. In the first chapter, we will see how divisions and subdivisions of the musical primal resources of nō, rhythm and melody, interact to structure a play; in the second, how source and citations are reshaped to progressively recreate the original material; and third, how words are arranged in clusters of sounds and images to stablish layers of meanings.

Entre les années 1600 et 1750 au Japon, de nombreux manuscrits enluminés (Nara ehon et Nara emaki) ont été produits. Ils ont néanmoins fait l’objet d’assez peu de recherches. Cette thèse aborde ce genre en trois temps, à travers l’étude d’un récit, le « Récit de Bunshô » (Bunshô sôshi). Nous considérons d’abord le processus d’élaboration de ces œuvres. Peints par des artisans anonymes, les rouleaux et les codex enluminés sont parfois signés de leur calligraphe ou portent un sceau de boutique. Travaillant pour des boutiques concurrentes, calligraphes et peintres ne forment pas véritablement avec ces dernières un atelier. Les boutiques peuvent également agir comme les maîtres d’œuvre en coordonnant les peintres et les calligraphes. Il a été souvent dit que les rouleaux et les codex enluminés ont été élaborés pour faire partie de trousseaux de mariage (yomeiri-bon). En confrontant les sources historiques aux œuvres conservées, nous soulignons, dans la seconde partie, que cette affirmation est loin de se vérifier. Enfin, nous consacrons un développement à l’évolution de l’iconographie du Bunshô sôshi. Histoire de l’élévation sociale d’un saunier et romance amoureuse entre la fille de ce dernier et un aristocrate, le Bunshô sôshi comporte des scènes problématiques du point de vue de l’échelle sociale. Ces manuscrits comportent également des images spécifiques représentant le jeune héros aristocrate comme un personnage androgyne (wakashu), en combinaison avec des compositions génériques qui rappellent d’autres récits.Ce travail constitue une première synthèse des recherches sur ces rouleaux et livres enluminés en français. / In the years between 1600 and 1750 AC, many anonymous illuminated handscrolls and manuscripts were produced in Japan, which are now collected under the name of Nara Ehon and Nara Emaki. Although they are very numerous, very few is known about them. This study is focused on those related to the tale of Bunshô (Bunshô sôshi) and proceeds in three steps.First, it examines the making process of these scrolls and manuscripts. Although the painters remained anonymous, a calligrapher's signature or the seal of a painting shop can sometimes be found. Calligrapher and painters could be working for several rival shops. Painting shops did not only sell painted scrolls or illuminated manuscripts, but worked the connections between the calligrapher and the painters as well.Then, our study reconsiders the place of illuminated scrolls and manuscripts in marriages' dowries, called yomeiri-bon. From what we know about marriages through historical sources and the surviving illuminated manuscripts, it can be stressed that very few manuscripts can be considered as yomeiri-bon.Finally, an analysis of Bunshô Sôshi's iconography throughout the years says a lot about how this tale was understood. As it tells about social ascension and how a saltmaker's daughter and an aristocrat lived a romance together, there is in this tale some problematic scenes, where the social scale is turned upside down. Also, specific compositions with an androgenic character (wakashu) as the hero are employed with more generic compositions echoing other stories as well.The present study represents a first extensive summary in French about those illuminated manuscripts.

This dissertation examines the discourses surrounding women and writing in the rapidly commercialized publishing industry and media in early 20th-century Japan. While Japan has a rich history of women's writing from the 10th century onwards, it was in the 1910s that the journalistic category of "women's literature" (joryû bungaku) emerged within the dominant literary mode of Naturalism, as the field of literature itself achieved a respectable cultural status after the end of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5). Through a close textual analysis of fictional works, literary journals, and newspapers from the turn of the century to the 1930s, I explore how various women embraced, subverted, and negotiated the gendered identity of the "woman writer" (joryû sakka) while creating their own spheres of literary production through women's literary journals. Central to this investigation are issues of media, translation, canonization, and the creation of literary histories as Japanese literature became institutionalized within the new cosmopolitan notion of world literature. The first chapter explores how the image of the woman writer formed around the key figure of Tamura Toshiko (1884-1945) within the interrelated discourses of Naturalism, the New Woman, and decadence in the 1910s. As the New Woman became a social phenomenon alongside ongoing debates about women's issues, feminist women inaugurated the journal Seitô (Bluestocking, 1911-16) as a venue for women's literature. While this category renders their writings marginal to mainstream literature, it was a progressive, political position that marked their place within the literary world. I examine Toshiko's ambivalent position within this feminist project, and the instability of the media image of the New Woman that was always on the verge of slipping into the decadent figure of femme fatale. The second chapter examines the canonization of the late 19th-century prominent writer Higuchi Ichiyô (1872-96) at the turn of the century as a model woman writer and an embodiment of Japan's past tradition, which cast a threatening shadow on the women of Seitô. Tamura Toshiko's rejection of the New Woman identity and increasing association with aesthetic decadence also came to be at odds with their feminist mission. Seitô women's rejection of both Ichiyô and Toshiko was thus a necessary act in self-proclaiming the birth of the New Woman. As the number of women writers gradually increased in the late 1910s, various types of literary expression emerged beyond gendered expectations, paving the way for the mass expansion of women's writing in the 1920s. As the notion of world literature formed alongside various national literatures during the vast expansion of the publishing industry and translation culture in the 1920s, women began to envision their own alternative genealogy alongside dominant literary histories. The third chapter explores the envisioning of women's literary history by the Seitô writer Ikuta Hanayo (1888-1970) and the British modernist Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), whose feminist imaginations came together through the canonization of the English translation of The Tale of Genji, originally an 11th-century work written by a woman. As the growth of translations created a sense of global simultaneity, I further examine how the rhetoric of gender was central to Japanese literary modernism through the reception of two major British modernists, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, in Japan.

This dissertation examines the ways in which the narrative fiction of early modern (1600-1868) Japan constructed urban identity and explored its possibilities. I orient my study around the social category of chōnin (“townsman” or “urban commoner”)—one of the central categories of the early modern system of administration by status group (mibun)—but my concerns are equally with the diversity that this term often tends to obscure: tensions and stratifications within the category of chōnin itself, career trajectories that straddle its boundaries, performative forms of urban culture that circulate between commoner and warrior society, and the possibility (and occasional necessity) of movement between chōnin society and the urban poor. Examining a range of genres from the late 17th to early 19th century, I argue that popular fiction responded to ambiguities, contradictions, and tensions within urban society, acting as a discursive space where the boundaries of chōnin identity could be playfully probed, challenged, and reconfigured, and new or alternative social roles could be articulated. The emergence of the chōnin is one of the central themes in the sociocultural history of early modern Japan, and modern scholars have frequently characterized the literature this period as “the literature of the chōnin.” But such approaches, which are largely determined by Western models of sociocultural history, fail to apprehend the local specificity and complexity of status group as a form of social organization: the chōnin, standing in for the Western bourgeoisie, become a unified and monolithic social body defined primarily in terms of politicized opposition to the ruling warrior class. In contrast, I approach the category of chōnin as a diverse and internally stratified social field, the boundaries of which were perpetually redefined through discourse and practice. I argue that literary depictions of chōnin identity responded not to tensions between dominant and dominated classes but rather to internal tensions within commoner society. Fiction written by and for commoners was focused on topics of everyday concern: how to make a living, how one should (or should not) exist within one’s family or community, how to advance (or merely maintain, or imprudently spend and exhaust) one’s social, economic, or cultural capital. I seek to replace the politicized trope of “chōnin literature” with an image of multiple urban literatures: a series of writings and rewritings through which urban writers and readers probed, questioned, and reimagined the range of identities that were possible to them. To do so, I use an interdisciplinary method that draws from recent scholarship in social history and historical sociology on the status group system, building in particular on studies of the social structure of early modern urban space. The two-and-a-half centuries of the Tokugawa reign saw dramatic transformations in how urban identity was conceived. As a result of the increasing integration of early modern society, categories of identity that were once collective, external functions of social relationships and community membership came to be internalized and expressed by the individual as patterns of behavior, taste, and disposition—speech, sartorial expression, habits of consumption, aesthetic tastes, lifestyle, and so on—and the circulation of print media itself was part of these shifts, communicating new social and aesthetic norms across boundaries and to new readers. The readings that I develop in this dissertation are situated at key turning points in this overarching narrative. By contextualizing my close readings in relation to the shifting matrix of discourses, practices, spaces, and media forms shaping chōnin identity, I reveal how techniques of literary characterization were both shaped by and used to understand the contemporary urban world. In Chapter 1, I offer a polemical reading of Nippon eitaigura (Japan’s Eternal Storehouse, 1688), a collection of stories of commercial success and failure written by Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693). Ihara Saikaku has often been taken as the archetypal chōnin author, and among his works, Eitaigura in particular is most regularly used by both historians and literary scholars alike as a document of chōnin values. Instead, I show the ways in which Saikaku’s text retains traces of the social diversity, class tensions, and shifting values within a heterogeneous and stratified social body. I argue that this text represents a dramatic shift in chōnin consciousness, wherein the nature of chōnin identity, which was originally a function of the urban ward (chō) as a local and organic urban community based on the concrete social relations of its members, is rewritten by Saikaku into a universalizable category of values and economic practice, prioritizing the interests of the house (ie) over the community of the chō. One of the main ways in which the identity of the chōnin house was figured was in terms of a “house trade” (kashoku or kagyō), a term used to refer to the livelihood associated with a given household, while certain forms of identity performance and trespass were possible through cultural training in the leisure arts (yūgei). In Chapter 2, I use this binary as context for a study of the life and writings of Ejima Kiseki (1666-1735). Kiseki was born into a wealthy Kyoto merchant house, and had taken up writing as a form of leisure, but in his lifetime he saw his family business decline and was forced to make a living as a writer and publisher of fiction. His writing likewise depicts eccentric and profligate chōnin protagonists driven to dereliction by obsessive involvement in leisure practices. Focusing on Seken musuko katagi (Characters of Worldly Young Men, 1715) and Ukiyo oyaji katagi (Characters of Old Men of the Floating World, 1720), I argue that Kiseki playfully inverts the hierarchy of work and play in an attempt to imagine new possibilities of chōnin self-definition. In Chapter 3, I examine the confrontation between bushi and chōnin concepts of social and cultural capital in the context of the Edo pleasure quarters. Here I focus on the sharebon (witty booklets), a genre of short, satirical fiction that grew in close dialog with the guidebook literature of the pleasure quarters, and the figure of the “sophisticate” (tsū or tsūjin): the paragon of urban fashion and savoir-faire. Where existing scholarship has assumed that this term refers to a concrete, specific leisure subculture, I argue that the tsū was an empty signifier used by authors of differing social positions to make competing claims for the nature of cultural capital, setting bushi intellectual ideals of classical erudition, written language, and specialist knowledge against chōnin cultures of improvisational wit, spoken language, and conspicuous consumption. I also argue that the sharebon itself played an overdetermined role in these dynamics, communicating norms of fashion and social grace to a wide readership while simultaneously throwing into question the authenticity of social performances based on such mediated knowledge. Chapter 4 shifts to the lower margins of Edo commoner society. Here I offer a reading of the fiction of Shikitei Sanba (1776-1822), focusing on Ukiyoburo (The Floating World Bathhouse, 4 vols., 1809-1813) and Ukiyodoko (The Floating World Barber, 2 vols., 1813-1814), which depict the interaction of a range of generic middle- and lower-class social types in the context of the public spaces of Edo tenement society. Tracing the links between Sanba’s fiction and the emerging performing art of otoshi-banashi (the antecedent of modern rakugo storytelling) and the performance space of the yose, both of which emerged out of lower-class craftsman culture, I argue that Sanba constructs an image of the performative use of the voice as a tactic for navigating and integrating the margins and interstices of status-group society.

From 1958 to 1959, Mishima Yukio published a series of satirical essays titled Lessons in Immorality, in the magazine Weekly Morningstar. Lessons in Immorality was made into a television series, a stage play, and a film. Famous in the West for writing serious novels, Mishima's work as a humor writer is largely unknown. In these essays Mishima writes in a very comic style, making liberal use of hyperbole, burlesque, and travesty, in order to parody and satirize contemporary Japanese morality. Mishima uses humor to create a world in which Mishima Yukio, iconoclastic author and pop-culture figure, is an arbiter of his own honest and just morality that runs counter to the norms that Japanese at that time considered to be honest and just. Additionally, Mishima used Lessons in Immorality as a forum to discuss some of the serious concerns that are central to his famous novels. Because Mishima was writing for young men and women, he wrote about his complex philosophical and aesthetic ideals in a very humorous and accessible style. Thus, in addition to displaying Mishima's talent as a humor writer, these essays also give the reader fresh perspectives on Mishima's serious literature. In this paper, I will present the writing styles, rhetorical tools, and philosophical discussions from Lessons in Immorality that I believe make the series essential reading for anyone interested in Mishima or postwar Japanese literature.

The dominant part of the research on the “Yûgao” (The Twilight Beauty) story of the Japanese eleventh-century classic the Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji) is philological and often excludes a general literary analysis. This story has also been related to Japanese and Chinese literary influences, thereby placing the text in its literary context. The present study is an attempt to relate it more to theories to which it has hitherto been unrelated and thereby formulate a descriptive stylistics in a decontextual perspective. This aim also includes a look at how the theories confronted with the “Yûgao” story may be affected. First I introduce the problematics of context versus decontext by means of a survey of metapoetical texts about the monogatari (tale, narrative) genre with special regard to the Genji Monogatari. Next I analyze the characters and the setting, primarily using a narratological method. This is followed by an analysis of the story’s themes and motives. Chapter 5 looks at compositional elements, while the starting-point for the succeeding chapter is the interpretation of the “Yûgao” story as more or less a fairytale, and thus not as advanced  a narrative as the latter part of the work. I shall, in contrast, argue that there are quite a few aspects of this story that do not fit into the model of the folktale. In Chapter 7 decontextualization as a concept turns from the story as such to address another concept, namely metaphor. Here the meaning of metaphor is expanded in order to include concepts that are not necessarily seen as such. Subsequently, I investigate the symbolic system surrounding the moonflower (yûgao) image. Lastly, the concept of decontext is taken a step further to survey how the genre of the Genji Monogatari has been transformed in the process of translation into the Tale of Genji. The main conclusion is that the “Yûgao” story combines tragic themes with comic motifs to build a symbolic narrative with characters hovering between roles.

The thesis presents an assumption that literature is inspired by reality (besides other factors), and that specific literary worlds may, to a certain extent, reflect the actual state of society. Historical events around the end of WWII and the consequent rapid social changes in Japan during late 1940s and 1950s had an indisputable impact on literary production at the time. The aim of this thesis is to affirm this assumption through an analysis of selected short stories and novels from the time concerned. The analysis focuses on remarks and on references about the period of time when the prose was written, and also on behavioral and attitude changes of its characters - prototypes of the Japanese society. The direct impact of historical and social transition on literary work may also be traced in the works' themes, motifs and narrative. We can thus, in many cases, follow the development of the Japanese postwar society from 1945 until the late 1950s, when the country started to prosper economically. The selection of the analysed pieces of literature includes two novels which did not only describe the time of their origination, but also had reverse effect on society. The impact hypothesis is thus confirmed and, what is more, we can see a mutual influence exercised by both, the society and art: The...

Nō é uma arte cênica japonesa em que representação, dança e música misturam-se em apresentações estilizadas onde poucos elementos são trabalhados para o aprofundamento de uma unidade imagética. Apesar de encontrarmos seus primeiros registros em documentos da era Heian (794-1185), a complexificação de todos os seus aspectos ocorreu na era Muromachi (1334-1573), com os esforços de Zeami (1363-1443) e de seu pai, Kan\'ami (1333-1384). Além de desenvolver a atuação e a orquestração, ambos fizeram avanços significativos na composição de peças. Felizmente, o maior artista de nō, Zeami, nos deixou muitos escritos críticos em que detalha todas as pesquisas empreendidas durante sua vida. A partir de um desses tratados e trechos de outros dois, este trabalho buscará analisar o método, estabelecido por Zeami, pelo qual a criação dramatúrgica divide-se em três frentes: shu, saku e sho, \"semente\", \"estrutura\" e \"composição\", respectivamente. Shu é o meio pelo qual se trabalha com a fonte que dá origem à peça e que será inevitavelmente revista pela linguagem do nō; saku é a estruturação musical que possibilita o desvendamento da semente; e sho é a junção de palavras e sons que transmitem essa revelação. Com o apoio de estudiosos e poetas recentes, procuraremos identificar os princípios que regem esses três caminhos e os modos pelos quais eles se unem para a formação de um todo orgânico, onde yūgen, a beleza contrária à imitação da realidade externa, nasce da distribuição de qualidades vivificadas por uma abordagem maleável do tempo chamada jo-ha-kyū. No primeiro capítulo, veremos como divisões e subdivisões das matérias-primas musicais do nō, ritmos e melodias, interagem para a estruturação da peça; no segundo, como a fonte e demais citações são rediagramadas para a realização gradual do material original; e no terceiro, como palavras são organizadas em aglomerados de sons e imagens para a estabelecimento de camadas significantes. / Nō is a Japanese performing art in which representation, dance and music blend into stylized presentations where few elements are handled to create and give depth to an imagistic unit. Although we find its first records in documents from the Heian period (794-1185), the increase of its complexity ocurred only in the Muromachi period (1334-1573), through the efforts of Zeami (1363-1443) and his father, Kan\'ami (1333- 1384). In addition to the development of performance and orchestration, both made significant advances in the composition of plays. Fortunately, the greatest n? artist, Zeami, left us many critical writings in which he detailed all the researches undertaken during his lifetime. Based on one of these treatises and on excerpts of two others, this study will analyse the method, established by Zeami, in which the creation of plays is dividided into three areas: shu, saku and sho, \"seed\", \"structure\" and \"composition\", respectively. Shu is the means by which the artist works with the source that gives rise to the play and that will inevitably be revised by the nō language; saku is the musical structuring that enables the seed to be unveiled; and sho is the combination of words and sounds that convey this revelation. Supported by recent scholars and poets, we will try to identify the principles governing these three paths and the ways by which they unite to form an organic totality, where yūgen, a beauty opposed to the imitation of external reality, is born out of the distribution of qualities vivified by a flexible approach of time, called jo-ha-kyū. In the first chapter, we will see how divisions and subdivisions of the musical primal resources of nō, rhythm and melody, interact to structure a play; in the second, how source and citations are reshaped to progressively recreate the original material; and third, how words are arranged in clusters of sounds and images to stablish layers of meanings.

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