This paper applies a hermeneutic approach to analyze, and a comparative approach to examine, Bai Juyi’s poems referenced in Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon, Tongguk Yi Sang-guk Chip by Yi Kyu-bo and Kyewŏn Pilgyŏngjip by Ch’oe Ch’i-wŏn. Through exploring Bai’s poetry in these texts, the author discovers how Murasaki, Sei, Ch’oe, and Yi contributed to transculturuation in Korea and Japan. Furthermore, the transculturation demonstrated by these literati shows a diversity of patterns: cultural mobilization from west to east; the emergence of overlapping histories in different eras and locations; a disappeared culture, recovered through being transmitted to other regions; cultural transplantation or transformation resulting from cultural contacts; and cultural products helped to stimulate economic growth. Subsequently, Bai Juyi’s works stand as a testament to the power of great poetry to improve and enhance cultures across a broad span of time and space.

The history of Japanese women who love women is often either ignored by or inaccessible to English speakers. To address this lacuna, I will lay out two case studies of women whose Queerness is potentially useful as models of Queer Japanese womanhood. I examine the narratives surrounding two women, Murasaki Shikibu (c. 973 or 978 – c. 1014 or 1031), the author the Tale of Genji, and Otake Kōkichi (1893-1966), an author, artist, and first wave feminist activist, in order to see how narratives surrounding their Queerness, known or posited, affect or are affected by cultural and religious narratives of identity and sexual values. The only major reading of Murasaki Shikibu as a woman who loved women is that of literary scholar and lesbian feminist Komashaku Kimi in Murasaki Shikibu’s Message (Murasaki Shikibu no Messeji), written in 1991. Her argument is that the interest in women’s bodies Murasaki shows in her diary and Poetic Memoirs was a kind of same-sex desire and that that desire was integral to her message in the Tale of Genji. This argument has never been given significant scholarly attention. As such, I examine this argument and present it in English. Otake Kōkichi, born Otake Kazue, is one of a handful of Queer women from the early 20th century who are regularly discussed in academic literature on Japanese feminist history, but most narratives surrounding her tend to center on a same-sex relationship she had in her youth and ignore the radical nature of her life after marriage. I will present aspects of her life that worked with and resisted various religions and systems of value creation that were competing for influence in twentieth-century Japan. The narratives surrounding Otake and Murasaki as Queer people center the radical nature of their work and lives. Both are discussed as having a kind of embodied politics that resists dominant images of womanhood and sexuality in favour of more liberatory constructions of value and identity. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)