Noh is often described as a drama of the exploration of the soul. This focus on the human soul is largely attributed to Zeami Motokiyo ä (c. 1363-c. 1443), the greatest playwright in the history of noh drama. This thesis, however, attempts a more comprehensive examination of the characteristics of noh plays by including works by Kanze Nobumitsu (1435-1516). Zeami and Nobumitsu wrote several demon noh plays, which are plays whose primary characters are demons. There are significant differences in characterization and dramaturgy between Zeami's demon noh in the early Muromachi period, the era of noh's founding, and Nobumitsu's onitaiji-mono noh (demon killing noh) in the late Muromachi period, two generations later. In this thesis, I analyze three works by each of those two eminent noh playwrights in order to identify similarities and differences among their works and to compare their styles, structure, theatrical conventions, and use of literary sources. Each of these playwrights represents his era in Japanese literary and political history. By examining socio-cultural aspects of these plays, this thesis will illuminate the changes in Japan's core values over a span of two generations. Nobumitsu's demon noh plays represent these shifting core values among his patrons who were, like Zeami's, comprised of samurai elites. The social ethos of unification and inclusion in the cultural circle of shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358-1408) significantly impacted Zeami's plays. For his patrons like Yoshimitsu, the integration of the aristocratic aesthetics into his plays was essential. Zeami emphasized aristocratic beauty, mysterious gracefulness (yugen), spiritual salvation, and the Zen Buddhist tenets of non-duality, creating complex, humanized demon characters. However, the warrior elite changed significantly in two generations. Nobumitsu's major patrons were powerful warlords during the period when private ambition and revenge prevailed among the samurai and political and military authority was much more fluid than in Zeami's era. For Nobumitsu's patrons, samurai's bravery and resourcefulness were crucial. His waki warrior heroes engage in spectacular combat on stage, fighting and killing powerful, evil demons and kill them. Regional warlords presented these plays to impress their allies, rivals, and their own retainers to expand their prestige in the age of chaos. New developments in Nobumitsu's noh, make his plays more kabuki-like than Zeami's noh had been. Later forms of theater, kabuki and puppet theater (ningyo joruri) assimilated noh's aesthetics by adapting some noh and kyogen plays throughout its history. Noh drama provided compelling characters and fictional worlds for a variety of plays in kabuki and puppet theater. As early as the mid-Muromachi period, Zeami created humanized demon characters which later playwrights of later genres appropriated for their plays. Nobumitsu created spectacular stage which re-shaped theater and prepared the way for later developments of kabuki and puppet theater in Edo period (1600-1868).

Transitions from the first kabuki performance abroad in Russia in 1928 to the recent performances around the world show various changes in the purpose and production of kabuki performances overseas. Kabuki has been performed as a Japanese traditional art in the U.S. for about 60 years, and the United States has seen more kabuki than any other country outside of Japan. Those tours were closely tied to national cultural policy of both Japan and the USA in the early years. The first kabuki tour to New York in 1960 helped to reestablish the U.S-Japan relationship after the war. However, recently kabuki performances in the US have shifted into entertaining and educational events with regional rather than national import. This thesis will investigate productions of large scale Grand Kabuki (Shochiku corporation performers and management) and small scale kabuki related events in the United States, demonstrating how the purposes and the productions have changed throughout the 21st century as compared to the 20th century. The investigation will focus on (1) event management (2) program selection (3) technology (4) audiences' knowledge and experience. After Chapter Two introduces international kabuki tours in the early stage, Chapter Three will explore the two large-scale U.S. tours in the 20th century: the first U.S. tour in 1960 and the 1990 tour which covered widest area in the USA. In the 21st century, three large scale productions came to the U.S. over six times. Heisei Nakamura-za (troupe) visited New York in 2004, 2007 and 2014. Chikamatsu-za came to three cities in 2005. Kabuki joined the Japan kabuki festival in Las Vegas in 2015 and 2016 with two different productions. Chapter Four will investigate these large-scale tours and Chapter Five will look into small scale Shochiku-related kabuki events using Portland, Oregon as a sample city. Shochiku organized kabuki events in Portland in 2002, 2009, and 2017. These events included dance performances, make-up demonstrations, and in 2017 a costume exhibition. Research on small scale events is also important to understand new ways to present kabuki abroad.

This paper examines the effectiveness of corrective feedback on learners of the Japanese language. The current study had a total of 25 students who agreed to participate, consisting of both advanced and intermediate levels. There are six main types of corrective feedback established and defined by Lyster and Ranta (1997), this study focused on two particular types, recast (a category of implicit) and elicitation (a category of prompt). Comparing a particular feedback or a category of feedback with another has been one of the ongoing topics in the field of second language (L2) learning. The present study is intended to examine which feedback works better for the learners in terms of repairing their mistakes and to investigate which learner group shows a better effect on each feedback. The results suggest that elicitation is more beneficial to L2 learners than recast in reformulating their utterance. The reason for this is likely that elicitation is not as implicit as recast; thus, the learners had a better opportunity to notice elicitation that was given when they made a mistake. Interestingly, this outcome also provided a comparison between the advanced and intermediate groups. Both repaired their mistakes more after elicitation was given, but the advanced group did better. Since each group displayed almost the same moderate rate of repairing for recast, what truly differentiated one group from the other was elicitation. This result suggests that learners who have more knowledge of the target language will benefit from elicitation.

Sino-Mongolian

This practice-based research examines, analyses and responds to the use of nostalgia as an ideological mechanism in the development of Japanese national identity and as an integral aspect of modernity. In discussions of the construction of national identities, whether in terms of 'narrative' or material culture, 'image' and 'vision' have generally been used as metaphorical terms. This thesis investigates the use of nostalgia in photography as a de facto visual construction of national space. Three groups of archive photographic material are examined; landscapes of the late 19th century genre of Yokohama shashin, or tourist photo, pictorial photography of the Taishö-period (1912 - 1926), and propaganda photography produced in Japanese-occupied Manchuria from the 30s and 40s. Nostalgia is then investigated in contemporary sites of leisure and consumerism, where it is considered as elemental in attempts to redefine the identity of Japan as a post-industrial society. In exploring the use of nostalgia in different historical periods and styles of photography, the primary objective of this research is not to provide a critique of the formal attributes of these images. It is rather to examine, both theoretically and visually, nostalgia's reoccurrence as a mechanism of historical erasure, in which each manifestation posits its own version of authenticity.

This thesis analyzes the periodical literary magazine ShūKaku [Harvest], a Japanese-language magazine published between 1936 and 1939. The purpose of this analysis is to advance scholarship on pre-World War II Japanese American literature and to explicate the connection between early Japanese American literary aesthetics and the literary periodical format from a transnational perspective. Drawing on established scholarship about early Japanese American literature, historical background, as well as theories from a range of disciplines including transnational, Asian Americanist, and spatial studies, this thesis argues that ShūKaku served as a "space" in which Japanese American writers from different positions—including geophysical, generational, and ideological—could present, theorize, and debate different versions of "Japanese American literature." By dedicating itself to iminchi bungei [immigrant literature], a literary aesthetic movement devoted to representing Japanese American life "as it is," the magazine accommodated a range of works with diverse forms, subjects, and perspectives. Studying these diverse works over the course of the magazine's lifespan reveals not only the different ways in which Japanese Americans conceived of themselves as subjects, but also how they conceived of their own literature, and how those conceptions shifted over time in response to economic and political pressures that resonated from global to local contexts. This thesis additionally extends existing scholarship about ShūKaku by analyzing yet unexplored themes and topics present in the magazine. Part literary analysis and part translation project, this thesis joins a few other scholars in bringing early Japanese American literature into contemporary literary discourse. But many works written by Japanese Americans prior to 1942 remain understudied and undertheorized. Further research will help enrich modern understandings of Japanese American history and may illuminate new ways of reading and theorizing not only pre-World War II Japanese American literature but internment era and post-war Japanese American literature, as well.

This thesis investigates the impact of Superflat theory and practice of the artist and curator, Takashi Murakami. The thesis aims to analyse how contemporary transnational artistic activity functions via the work of Murakami and Superflat artists, including Chiho Aoshima and Aya Takano. From the blockbuster group exhibition, Super Flat, curated by Murakami, which debuted in the United States in 2001 at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, to the 2007-2009 ©MURAKAMI retrospective traveling from Los Angeles to Brooklyn then Frankfurt to Bilbao, the synthesis of ideas is showing the way to unprecedented directions in contemporary art. This investigation also links Murakami’s work to that of American Pop artists Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons and explores how Superflat art functions within and contributes to the already distorted area between parallel structures, such as high and low, fine art and commercial production, or East and West. When peeling back the layers of Superflat, there is a rich, beautiful and violent history. Recognising the fusion of tradition and technology, my research explores how Superflat artists are achieving international success by engaging in multiple outlets of creative expression and collaboration in the continuing context of globalisation and a consumer-driven art market. Images of anxiety and destruction are disguised as playful and marketable characters, and three-dimensional animation figures become cultural icons. Superflat explores the simulated, sensuous, colourful and obsessive “realities” that we inhabit on a global scale and captures a twenty-first century aesthetic. With reference to the representation of violence and disaster in art and popular culture, contemporary Japan’s construction of national identity and the postwar “Americanization” of Japan, this thesis examines how the layering of ideas via cross-cultural exchange produces a new form of hybrid and hyper Pop art.

Text is in Japanese

Ceremonial music in Japan is a type of music used to celebrate special occasions in special places, e.g., to honor the Emperor on his birthday, or for other special celebrations at a shrine. In Japanese, the character for ceremonial music is written 雅楽 (pronounced Gagaku). The character 雅 (ga) means graceful, noble, or excellent. The character 楽 (gaku) means good or beautiful musical sounds. Appearing together, 雅楽 the two parts of this character mean ceremonial music, which is not performed among ordinary people. The ceremonial music is used in the Imperial Court and in shrines, although not every shrine is equipped to perform ceremonial music. During the tenth and eleventh centuries it was used also in the homes of the highest class of military leaders. The basic philosophical implication of ceremonial music in Japan is virtue (morality). In respect to form, content, and thought, the ceremonial music is synthetic in character, which means it is part of a whil in which dance as action is equally as important as the music.

This thesis investigates the representation of asexual individuals in the works of Murata Sayaka, Kawakami Mieko, and Kamatani Yuki, all of whom are contemporary Japanese writers that portray near–suffocating social environments in their depictions of modern-day Japan. Their texts illustrate the augmented demands Japanese society places upon a cross-section of asexual and neurodivergent individuals. Despite the thematic and character–related similarities in their works, I argue that each author presents a unique interpretation of how these asexual individuals interact with—and try to integrate into—wider Japanese society and mainstream culture. Murata's texts demonstrate an unapologetically radical separatism by invoking an idealized queer utopia free from constraining notions of heteronormative sexuality present in Japanese society. In contrast, Kawakami's text suggests a more subtle—yet still subversive—integration of asexuality into society, one where asexual individuals strive for the same rights and privileges as all other citizens but still struggle to obtain acceptance or genuine equality. Kamatani's text, on the other hand, strikes a balance between these notions. Our Dreams at Dusk offers a utopic space for asexual and other queer individuals but does not go as far as suggesting a radical separatism like Murata's texts. Analyzing these texts alongside such seminal Queer Theory texts like Adrienne Rich's "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet, Jack Halberstam's In a Queer Time and Place, and José Esteban Muñoz's Cruising Utopia uncovers the hidden sexualities buried within the texts: Not all asexual characters in the texts are explicitly labeled as such, yet they still occupy closeted lifestyles. This innovative examination of the existence of queer spaces within these works demonstrates the increasing prevalence of the presentation of asexual identities in Japan, allowing for the broader discussion of the invisible queer members of Japanese society.