This thesis is an attempt to understand the concept of ma 間 as it appears traditionally in Japan and how it may be applied to literature as an analytical framework. Ma is most simply defined as an empty space, but has a long history of artistic connotations in various fields, such as architecture, music, and poetry, that may theoretically be applied to literature as well. First, I look at the historical and theoretical background of the concept of ma as it exists in the visual, musical, and literary arts. I consider how ma was first used when it was developed in the eighth century, how it was used prior to World War II, and how it has been used since World War II. I also look at Western theories that I believe could be used to further analyze the concept of ma – namely, the Iceberg Theory and the study of hermeneutics. I use the information in this portion to develop my thesis statement: that ma as an aesthetic term is primarily concerned with encouraging audience participation with the piece of art and that such participation with literature can be facilitated by certain writing techniques, including use of symbolism, juxtaposition, and understatement. Then, I look more closely at three works that I consider prime examples of ma in literature: Takekurabe by Higuchi Ichiyō, Yukiguni by Kawabata Yasunari, and Riaru wārudo by Kirino Natsuo. These works span a wide time range – from the late 1800s to the early 2000s – but all contain themes of disconnect, transition, and confusion, as well as specific writing techniques, that encourage reader participation through introspection. Additionally, I have included a glossary at the end for any Japanese words, with their hiragana and kanji counterparts, that a reader might be unfamiliar with.

During Japan’s Edo period (1600-1868), popular literature began to take on a variety of physical formats and develop into various genres. Because many authors of this period were familiar with and producing creative works in a number of these genres, there was much crossover of content, format, and style. Authors were experimenting and playing with different ways to represent and give information about their characters through devices such as the dialogue they wrote, the illustrations included in the works, asides in the images, and many more. In this thesis, I explore the myriad ways authors of Edo period popular fiction employed creative visual and textual techniques to present authentic, realistic characters, focusing on the script itself: kana and kanji,ruby (glosses), page layout, text size, diacritical marks and other non-character markings, and spelling, etc. I have separated the period into three chronological sections: 1600-1750, 1751-1804, and post-1804. In the first section, I discuss how the early Edo kanazōshi (“kana booklets”) incorporate content and visual elements that are developed in later works. Because the genre label kanazōshi is arbitrary and inadequate, these books can be seen as a jumping off point for many of the later popular fiction genres. I then describe the connection between the kanazōshi and the ukiyozōshi (“books of the floating world”), showing that the authors’ creation of humorous yet (to varying degrees,) accurate character types seen both in the main and minor characters was directly influential on later works. In the second section, I discuss issues with the term “genre” as applied to Edo period fiction and examine the burgeoning visual techniques used by authors in dangibon (“sermon books”), kibyōshi (“yellow cover books”), and sharebon (“books of wit and fashion), ultimately showing that Inaka shibai (1787), though labeled a sharebon, operates as an inter-genre bridge between this literary incubation period and the post-1804 genre kokkeibon (“funny books”). In the final section, I look closely at the more fully developed techniques used in the kokkeibon in order to show an evolution in the representation of dialogue in this latter stage of development.

The center of this thesis proposal is a translation of the first book of AUGUST Software’s Eustia of the Tarnished Wings 穢翌のユースティア, a 2011 dark fantasy visual novel. As visual novels are practically unknown in English or Japanese academic writing, this thesis will provide an introduction to the medium’s history, as well as common display and organizational formats of the medium; a literary overview of Eustia of the Tarnished Wings and its characters and themes of choice and sacrifice; and a discussion of translation methodology and goals pursued in the accompanying excerpts. The translation presented consists of selected excerpts from the Prologue of Eustia of the Tarnished Wings, introducing the main characters, the floating city-state of Novus Aether, and the uneasy social climate of the city. Presented scenes are selected on the basis of plot or thematic relevance or translational interest, as well as scenes that are necessary to contextualize plot or character developments discussed in the critical introduction. This thesis will serve as an introduction to a developing medium that has been overlooked by most academics in the field of Japanese popular culture, as well as a look at the utilization of choice mechanics and branching story structure to In addition, it will present a personal methodology of and approach to translation as related to Eustia’s many and varied characters, social strata and situations, and maintaining individual and consistent voices for different characters and a first-person narrator in fiction.

Through examining the positionality of Hayashi Fumiko as well as the changing socio-political, economic and historical contexts in which she lived in, I look to better understand how Hayashi navigated through the patriarchal systems of society as a woman writer. This thesis includes a survey of the Meiji, Taisho and Showa periods as well as a comparative analysis of Hayashi's prewar, interwar and post-war works.

This study is an initial attempt to investigate the relationship between the portrayal of Japanese OL or “Office Ladies” in different media: formal scholarly studies on OL and informal sources such as recruiting lectures, online articles, and Japanese magazines that target OL, specifically CanCam, Sweet, and JJ. The term OL has generally been used to describe a short-term low-paying clerical position, requiring minimal skills, for young women primarily age 20s to 30s. The OL position can thus be seen as a gendered profession with little corporate mobility. However, most of the websites and magazines for these working women feature articles on the latest styles and are full of fashionable attractive women advertising the latest designer goods and the up and coming designer must-have brands of the season. With the skyrocketing of the Japanese economy in the pose-WWII era, women have become the country’s primary consumers, and OL appear to be playing a central role in this new consumer-heavy culture. Thus using both scholarly and primary sources, this thesis will explore this gap between the reality of OL and the romanticized version portrayed in these magazines. Although scholarly sources often depict the OL lifestyle to be tedious, gendered, and overall unfavorable for workingwomen in Japan, my thesis hopes to explore the positive aspects of the OL lifestyle as well and examine the reasons why women buy into this OL culture via these magazines and sites.

The findings of language attitude studies amongst learners of English have consistently demonstrated that native speakers of English are accorded higher evaluations in terms of status/prestige, whereas non-native speakers of English are often rated high in terms of social attractiveness/solidarity. For the majority of language attitude studies, the inclusion of native speakers of English in speech evaluation experiments has served as useful for investigating the complex attitudes towards English speech among English language learners. However, over the past two decades there has been a growing argument that the unprecedented spread of English language learning has led to questions over the ownership of the English language and the functions for its study, with many arguing that English is no longer learned primarily to communicate with native speakers of English, but as a means to communicate between those that do not share the same first language. Despite this, few studies have focused solely on attitudes held by English language learners in the expanding circle towards one another. Moreover, informants in language attitudes studies amongst English language learners have often been limited to informants of homogenous national groups, thus making direct comparisons between the multitudes of language attitude studies across national groups difficult.

The first half of my thesis are my translations from Yumi Hirosawa’s Onna O Aisuru Onnatachi. The first translation is excerpts from a high school girls journal documenting her realization and acceptance of being lesbian, and her time with her first girlfriend. The second translation is a report by a freelance writer on three different lesbian bars in Shinjuku Ni-Chome. The most notable bar is an onabe bar called Little Prince. Onabe in the simplest terms are women who dress and act like men. Onabe are important to the research portion of my thesis because they allowed me to research how masculine identities among Japanese women are formed. The documentary Shinjuku Boys interviews three onabe. From them it is made clear that being an onabe is not as simple as presenting as a man but is a complex relationship with one’s body, societal norms and parental pressures. We learn that onabe is different than being trans - which some would say is Onabe’s Western equivalent - yet various part of those identities can line up. Secondly the cultural phenomena Takarazuka and the women that play the otoko-yaku, or men's roles, makes clear the idea of what masculinity is and how women should wear it on their bodies. Even though the otoko-yaku and musume-yaku hyper-perform gender their exaggeration helps clarify how the women from Queer Japan: Personal Stories of Japanese Lesbians, Gay, Transsexuals, and Bisexuals grappled with their sexuality and gender. Lastly, the fictional stories from Sparkling Rain: And Other Fiction from Japan of Women Who Love Women coupled with the firsthand accounts from Queer Japan further develops the idea and struggles of masculine women’s bodies. In my thesis I aim to look at how masculinity is written onto Japanese woman's bodies both by themselves and others, and the struggles that they encounter because of their deviant sexual and gender identities. In my thesis these are the research questions I aim to answer: What are the modes in which queer women push away masculinity? Yet how do they perform and enforce it? How do these women view or interpret other women who are more masculine? How does having a masculine identity affect one’s perception of themselves? How do these women cope with being both lesbian and masculine of center? Why are the otoko-yaku women of Takarazuka praised for their daily performance of masculinity while onabe are scrutinized for it? And if both are forms of entertainment, mainly for other women, why is one more acceptable than another?

Com esta pesquisa, de cunho documental e bibliográfico, fundamentada em princípios da Historiografia da Linguística, retomamos o problema da influência (Koerner, 2014) com o objetivo de investigarmos o processo através do qual o filólogo alemão Johann Joseph Hoffmann (1805-1878), primeiro catedrático de Língua Japonesa do mundo ocidental, na Universidade de Leiden, romanizou o idioma japonês. Ao examinarmos a obra de Hoffmann, percebemos que o mesmo, ao indicar ao leitor a maneira pela qual romaniza o japonês, faz referência ao sistema criado pelo linguista e egiptólogo prusso Carl Richard Lepsius (1810- 1884), divulgado em Das Allgemeine Linguistische Alphabet. Grundsätze der Übertragung fremder Schriftsysteme und bisher noch ungeschriebener Sprachen in Europäische Buchstaben (O alfabeto linguístico geral. Princípios para a transliteração de sistemas estrangeiros de escrita e de línguas ágrafas para o alfabeto latino), obra publicada em alemão (1854 e 1855), em inglês (sob o título Standard Alphabet for Reducing Unwritten Languages and Foreign Graphic Systems to a Uniform Orthography in European Letters, em 1855), e novamente em inglês, em segunda edição (1863). Ao cruzarmos referências nas obras de Hoffmann (Winkelgesprekken in het Hollandsch, Engelsch em Japansch / Shopping-dialogues in Dutch, English and Japanese, de 1861 e A Japanese Grammar, Second Edition, de 1876) e de Lepsius (Standard Alphabet, 1863), percebemos que um autor alude à obra do outro. Nossa hipótese é que Hoffmann teria adotado e melhorado o sistema descrito na primeira edição (1855) de Standard Alphabet, ao ponto de influenciar o próprio Lepsius, que teria aceito as modificações propostas por Hoffmann, o que teria culminado com a publicação da segunda edição inglesa (1863) de seu Standard Alphabet. Após a comparação entre as obras dos autores citados, confirmamos a hipótese levantada. / This research, grounded on Historiography of Linguistics principles, and taking into consideration the problem of influence (Koerner, 2014), aims at analyzing the process through which the German philologist Johann Joseph Hoffmann (1805-1878), first professor of Japanese Language in the Western Hemisphere, at Leiden University, romanized that language. By taking a closer look at Hoffmanns work we found out that, when informing the reader the way by which he romanizes the Japanese language, he makes reference to the system created by the Prussian linguist and egyptologist Richard Carl Lepsius (1810-1884), made public in Das Allgemeine Linguistische Alphabet. Grundsätze der Übertragung fremder Schriftsysteme und bisher noch ungeschriebener Sprachen in Europäische Buchstaben (The general linguistic alphabet. Principles for the transliteration of foreign writing systems and non-written languages into the Latin alphabet), a book published in German (1854 and 1855), in English (under the tittle Standard Alphabet for Reducing Unwritten Languages and Foreign Graphic Systems to a Uniform Orthography in European Letters, in 1855), and again in English, in second edition (1863). When conducting a cross-reference research in the works by Hoffmann (Winkelgesprekken in het Hollandsch, Engelsch em Japansch / Shoppingdialogues in Dutch, English and Japanese, from 1861; A Japanese Grammar, Second Ed., from 1876) and by Lepsius (Standard Alphabet, from 1863), we noticed that the authors refer to the work of each other. Our hypothesis is that Hoffmann would have adopted and improved the system described in the first edition (1855) of Standard Alphabet, to the point of influencing Lepsius himself, who would have accepted the modifications made and proposed by Hoffmann, culminating in the publication of the second edition (1863) of his Standard Alphabet. After contrasting the works of the above-mentioned authors, we confirm the hypothesis raised.

Com esta pesquisa, de cunho documental e bibliográfico, fundamentada em princípios da Historiografia da Linguística, retomamos o problema da influência (Koerner, 2014) com o objetivo de investigarmos o processo através do qual o filólogo alemão Johann Joseph Hoffmann (1805-1878), primeiro catedrático de Língua Japonesa do mundo ocidental, na Universidade de Leiden, romanizou o idioma japonês. Ao examinarmos a obra de Hoffmann, percebemos que o mesmo, ao indicar ao leitor a maneira pela qual romaniza o japonês, faz referência ao sistema criado pelo linguista e egiptólogo prusso Carl Richard Lepsius (1810- 1884), divulgado em Das Allgemeine Linguistische Alphabet. Grundsätze der Übertragung fremder Schriftsysteme und bisher noch ungeschriebener Sprachen in Europäische Buchstaben (O alfabeto linguístico geral. Princípios para a transliteração de sistemas estrangeiros de escrita e de línguas ágrafas para o alfabeto latino), obra publicada em alemão (1854 e 1855), em inglês (sob o título Standard Alphabet for Reducing Unwritten Languages and Foreign Graphic Systems to a Uniform Orthography in European Letters, em 1855), e novamente em inglês, em segunda edição (1863). Ao cruzarmos referências nas obras de Hoffmann (Winkelgesprekken in het Hollandsch, Engelsch em Japansch / Shopping-dialogues in Dutch, English and Japanese, de 1861 e A Japanese Grammar, Second Edition, de 1876) e de Lepsius (Standard Alphabet, 1863), percebemos que um autor alude à obra do outro. Nossa hipótese é que Hoffmann teria adotado e melhorado o sistema descrito na primeira edição (1855) de Standard Alphabet, ao ponto de influenciar o próprio Lepsius, que teria aceito as modificações propostas por Hoffmann, o que teria culminado com a publicação da segunda edição inglesa (1863) de seu Standard Alphabet. Após a comparação entre as obras dos autores citados, confirmamos a hipótese levantada. / This research, grounded on Historiography of Linguistics principles, and taking into consideration the problem of influence (Koerner, 2014), aims at analyzing the process through which the German philologist Johann Joseph Hoffmann (1805-1878), first professor of Japanese Language in the Western Hemisphere, at Leiden University, romanized that language. By taking a closer look at Hoffmanns work we found out that, when informing the reader the way by which he romanizes the Japanese language, he makes reference to the system created by the Prussian linguist and egyptologist Richard Carl Lepsius (1810-1884), made public in Das Allgemeine Linguistische Alphabet. Grundsätze der Übertragung fremder Schriftsysteme und bisher noch ungeschriebener Sprachen in Europäische Buchstaben (The general linguistic alphabet. Principles for the transliteration of foreign writing systems and non-written languages into the Latin alphabet), a book published in German (1854 and 1855), in English (under the tittle Standard Alphabet for Reducing Unwritten Languages and Foreign Graphic Systems to a Uniform Orthography in European Letters, in 1855), and again in English, in second edition (1863). When conducting a cross-reference research in the works by Hoffmann (Winkelgesprekken in het Hollandsch, Engelsch em Japansch / Shoppingdialogues in Dutch, English and Japanese, from 1861; A Japanese Grammar, Second Ed., from 1876) and by Lepsius (Standard Alphabet, from 1863), we noticed that the authors refer to the work of each other. Our hypothesis is that Hoffmann would have adopted and improved the system described in the first edition (1855) of Standard Alphabet, to the point of influencing Lepsius himself, who would have accepted the modifications made and proposed by Hoffmann, culminating in the publication of the second edition (1863) of his Standard Alphabet. After contrasting the works of the above-mentioned authors, we confirm the hypothesis raised.

This thesis analyses the experiences, memories, and events of the World War II mass incarceration of Japanese Americans to determine what changes this traumatic event engendered in the gender roles of Issei and Nisei women. The events of incarceration separated families and broke down traditional societal norms leaving a deeply emotional and psychological scar upon the Japanese American community. Ironically, new opportunities arose for Issei and Nisei women as both a result of the effects of the mass incarceration upon the Japanese American community and because of governmental pressures such as labor shortages and the cost of housing over one hundred thousand prisoners. Issei women stepped into authority roles after the arrests of Japanese American community leaders and, in some cases, asserted their authority as mothers to stay in the United States against their husbands wishes. Nisei women were offered more opportunities in higher education and careers which allowed them to choose if they wanted to pursue an education or a career. These opportunities also allowed women more choices for marriage. While the decision of when to marry during the war years seems split between immediately before, during, and then in the years following the war, there is also a consistent pattern of women waiting to marry until after they had finished their education or worked for a few years. These patterns differ from both Issei and older Nisei women who often married early. World War II and mass incarceration is an extremely painful event that left deep wounds upon the Japanese American community, however it also gave Issei and Nisei women opportunities to choose what roles to fill and when.