This essay, through a thorough examination of primary and secondary sources, presents analyses of three orchestral works from Hovhaness' "fourth-period," a period of time spanning approximately ten years, from 1960 to 1970. This essay focuses on three works from this period: Meditation on Zeami, Floating World, and Ode to the Temple of Sound, written in 1963, 1964 and 1965, respectively. This essay gathers information from various primary and secondary sources in order to provide performers who are preparing works from this period with a single source of information, bringing clarity to theoretical and musicological problems. Analyses of this sort are made all the more necessary by the fact that there are currently no extant recordings of any of the works being studied here, and that two of the works, Meditation on Zeami and Floating World, have never been commercially recorded. Without an aural precedent and guide to follow, analyses of these musics will be a welcome resource for the conductor preparing a performance.

Adopting historical perspectives, this thesis explores domestic, aesthetic, and cultural conflicts in modern Japan surrounding Masuji Ono, the protagonist in Kazuo Ishiguro¡¦s An Artist of the Floating World, as he looks back on his past. His memory narrative reveals his transformation from an iconoclastic young artist to a militarist propagandist in pre-war time, and finally to an old man who comes to terms with the loss of his prestige through none too reliable remembrances. Reading Ono¡¦s narrative in cross reference to historical texts, I argue that his transformation is in step with Japan¡¦s shift from a thriving nation to a militarist empire, and ultimately to a defeated nation subject to the Occupation after World War II and subsequent social changes. These changes are induced by democratization and disarmament engineered by the American army, which drastically undermine Japanese values, including the apotheosis of the Emperor, patriarchy, and social hierarchy. Forced to redefine themselves in the midst of the drastic social transformation, the Japanese harbor mixed feelings toward the emperor, regarding him as a guardian of the nation and a traitor. This ambivalence is profoundly felt by Ono, whose fall parallels the emperor¡¦s, since his authority as a father and a painting master is interrogated by the younger generation, most notably his daughter. In particular, his interaction with his grandson, who is brought up with American values, registers the Japanese attitudes toward the American, considering the occupier as both a welcomed authority and an alien monster. By examining three prominent authority figures in the novel¡Xfather, master, and monster¡Xthis thesis uncovers Ishiguro¡¦s agenda for negotiating an interface between history and personal memory.

Considered under the theme 'The Floating World', the aim of this research project was to create a written exegesis and a series of artworks, primarily in the form of digital animation and illustration, which investigate decorative and illustrative art practices and their historical lineages. Particular emphasis was given to investigating the links between contemporary decorative/illustrative art practice and the aesthetics and psychology of the Edo period in Japan (C17th - C19th), in which the term 'The Floating World' was used to describe the city of Edo (old Tokyo). The writing concerned with The Floating World is comprised of the following chapters: history; concepts; aesthetics; contemporary adaptations of Ukiyo-e; and gothic romance and associated genres. The outcomes of my Masters program represent a sustained exploration of decorative and illustrative art practice and theory, and incorporate experimentation with associated genres such as magic realism, gothic romance, the uncanny, iconography, surrealism and other metaphorical and abstract representational practices. More broadly, my Masters project is an investigation, both theoretical and practical, into the way drawing and illustration have been a process through which to (literally) give shape to hopes and fears, and to describe understandings of self and the world. I am particularly interested in exploring how, through the act of abstraction and the use of metaphor and decoration, a capacity to 'speak the unspeakable' and 'know the unknowable' are somehow enabled. For example, when contemporary Japanese artist Takashi Murakami decorates Edo-inspired screens with a colourful arrangement of morphing cartoon mushrooms, he conjures up a startling and complex poetic space that juxtaposes traditional Japanese aesthetics and philosophy with the hyper-consumerist characters and ethos of Disneyland, as well as disquieting references to the mushroom bombs that dropped down on Hiroshima and Nagasaki from US planes. A similarly complex space is enacted by contemporary US artist Inka Essenhigh: her oversized canvases seem like sublime Japanese-inspired screens but a closer inspection reveals that the decorative motifs are actually dismembered body parts morphed together to create a savage and compelling metaphor for contemporary America that is all the more disarming for being perf ormed in a seemingly innocuous illustrative style. My research will draw on these examples but will endeavour to create a series of artworks that are particular to an Australian context. This interests me particularly in a time when, as a nation, we appear to be confounded about what it means to be Australian: as a contemporary artist I am interested in how we represent ourselves as a nation, and in exploring the motifs and attributes that we consider to be ours.

This essay investigates the colonized self in Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World and The Remains of the Day, by analyzing the novels from a postcolonial perspective. Furthermore, it discusses how and why Masuji Ono and Mr. Stevens are affected by Japanese imperialism and British colonialism. Through a close reading of the novels, this essay argues that the protagonists are ‘colonized’ by their own countries, and eventually also ‘imperialized,’ or influenced, by America following the Second World War. Ono is ‘colonized’ by his colleague Matsuda, while Mr. Stevens is ‘colonized’ by his employer, Mr. Darlington. Later on, they are both ‘imperialized’ through the American occupation and influence.

M.A. / This study was prompted principally by two events: reading Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day (1989), and encountering Pico lyer's Time article "The Empire Writes Back" (1993). lyer argues that the late twentieth century has been witness to an important event in the world of literature: the emergence of a new generation of writers writing in English, but not necessarily originating from British-colonial (or postcolonial) backgrounds. Among the writers lyer mentions are Vikram Seth, Michael Ondaatje, Ben Okri and - most notably - Kazuo Ishiguro. Ishiguro was born in Japan but emigrated with his parents to the United Kingdom at the age of six. This study focuses on his biculturalism and the impact that his mixed upbringing has had on his style and thematic concerns. This forms the principal focus of the first part of the study. The influence of Japanese writers, that of Japanese film and, finally, that of the European literary tradition are looked at in turn. The core of this study is a comparative analysis of Ishiguro's first three novels: A Pale View of Hills (1982), An Artist of the Floating World (1986), and The Remains of the Day (1989). Here certain common pre-occupations are identified and discussed - chiefly, Ishiguro's concern with memory, with constructions of the past, and his use of "unreliable" first-person narrators. It is argued that Ishiguro returns insistently to these thematic concerns in his first three novels, and that they can therefore be seen as constituting a three-part exploration of the notion of memory, of "reconstructing" the past. A separate chapter briefly examines Ishiguro's most recent work, The Unconsoled (1995), in which these themes are once again present, although they are bodied forth in a strikingly different style. The purpose of examining this novel is mainly to illustrate its formal and stylistic divergence from the first three (far more successful) novels - a divergence which in turn serves to throw into relief the thematic integrity of the first three novels. The study concludes by drawing together the discussion of the first three novels before moving on to a consideration of Ishiguro's place in what has become known as "New Internationalism". Here it is argued that Ishiguro's work has important resemblances to that of other writers loosely grouped into this literary movement and that he deserves his place among this illustrious group of writers who are changing the face of world literature written in English.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse unreliable narration and its motivation in the two novels by Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World (1986) and The Remains of the Day (1989) using the taxonomy of Zuzana Fonioková and James Phelan and Mary Patricia Martin. In its theoretical part, this thesis explores the concept of unreliability in contemporary narratology, furthermore, it studies self-deception and memory, two phenomena essential for understanding the motivations for unreliable narration. The practical part consists of an analysis of the textual signals of unreliability, which proves the complexity of Ishiguro's narrative strategies. The thesis concludes that the climax of both the novels is created through the spelling out of the narrators' self-deception, which is the cause of their unreliability in the first place. KEYWORDS Kazuo Ishiguro, unreliable narration, self-deception, memory, An Artist of the Floating World, The Remains of the Day