This study acts as a response to questions surrounding the position of women in the Heian court as encountered by earlier scholars. To that end this study examines the construction of the Heian concept of femininity with regard to both women of the lady-waiting and elite classes, as illustrated in diaries and court records. The findings indicate that the aesthetic of womanhood oftentimes related to an ideal of female passivity in romantic relations with men and of selflessness in involvement in major court decisions. This aesthetic was physically manifested in the attention given to the sequestration of women of high rank. However, evidence suggests that this aesthetic did not mean that women were not influential, in part because this aesthetic was an ideal that did not necessarily reflect reality.

This thesis presents an analysis of Japanese modernist texts from the 1930s, with an emphasis on the writings of Takami Jun (1907-1965), Ishikawa Jun (1899-1987) and Dazai Osamu (1909-1948). Rather than discuss these experiments within the problematic of influence and see them as secondary gestures imitating the techniques of Gide or Joyce, I attempt to show that Japanese modernist fiction is deeply implicated in its cultural, political and technological moment. 1 begin with a mapping of the historical and discursive forces behind the so-called cultural revival (bungei fukko) and the revolt against the epistemic regime of Westernized modernity: its soulless positivism, its logic of instrumentality which objectified nature and the historical teleologies which inevitably relegated Japan to a secondary place. I examine the works of Takami, Ishikawa and Dazai in this context, against close-ups of specific material and discursive developments. The transgressions and dislocations of linear narrative in Takami Jun's novel Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot (Kokyu wasureu beki, 1936) are read as radical deconstructions of the deeply ideological discourse of tenko (the official term for the political conversion of leftists) as a regeneration of the self, as the return to a natural organic Japaneseness. The narrative of Ishikawa Jun's Fugen (Fugen, 1936) is structured by dualistic tropes which can be seen as configurations of mediation and unity; I explore the meaning of these narrative strategies against the collapse of political mediation in the mid-1930s and the swell of fascist longings for oneness with the emperor. The marked reflexivity of the stories in Dazai Osamu's first published collection The Final Years (Bannen, 1936) is discussed in the context of the profound anxieties generated by the accelerated logic of cultural reproduction and the technologically altered texture of experience. I argue that in their shared emphasis on discursive mediation and the materiality of language, the texts of Takami, Ishikawa and Dazai become figures of resistance to a nativism which strove for immediate authenticity and abandoned representation for the metaphysics of timeless Japaneseness.

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This thesis is the result of research on the nature of Japan's security policy as pursued by the Ikeda Cabinet during I960 and 1964. The main discussion consists of three parts: internal political impacts on security policy making; external political impacts on security policy of Japan; and Japan's security policy proper. Three political parties are studied as significant determinants of internal political impacts on the decision making structure of the Japanese political system. The rationale is that these political parties provide channels that connect the decision making core and the outer area of the Japanese political system. Therefore, the study of these political parties is a rewarding attempt at observing political inputs that the decision making core of the Japanese political system receives. International exchange of the Japanese political system is investigated in the second part of the discussion. This subject is viewed both as inputs and outputs of the Japanese political system in relation to its international environment. The nature of the external impacts such as military, economic, geographic, ideological or cultural impacts is not specified in the following discussion, but is viewed as a Gestalt, or total being which comprises all the elements stated above. The third section deals with what is usually described as defence policy. A more military aspect of Japan's security policy is studied in this section. In conclusion, a broad generalisation is derived from the survey cited in the main discussion. The conclusion is characterised as the principle of balance in the Ikeda Cabinet's security policy. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

The main task of this study was to examine the proposition that the modernization processes of Japan had commenced during the late Tokugawa period (1804-1867) and that the impetus to social change was not concentrated solely in the post-Meiji Restoration (1868) period. A survey of contemporary literature on modernization enabled us to select a suitable working definition of modernization. For analytical purposes, modernization was defined in terms of the adaptive and reforming efforts by the late Tokugawa ideologues. The definition implied nothing specific about the component processes involved and this permitted us to be free in selecting the component actions within the modernization process. The study of the adaptive and transformation processes consisted of an analysis of five biographies written in Japanese and representative of the ideologues of the late Tokugawa period. For our investigation, the method of content analysis was employed. This allowed the extraction of desired data according to explicitly formulated and systematic rules. The coding scheme employed to analyze the biographical material was designed taking into account our basic proposition. The process of assigning extracted data into the appropriate categories consisted of a dichotomization process whereby the data was recorded in mutually exclusive categories. The interpretative categories selected for content analysis were not based on a specific theory purporting to explain certain aspects of social change but it suggested a model which lent clarity to the study of the linkage between causal forces (societal conditions and formative factors) and the ideologue’s structures of activities. In this model, the underlying assumption was that the causal forces were linked to the observable variations by the ideologue's attitudes, orientations, and concepts. This assumption was supported by the data and the structure of activities gave rise to patterns which tended to be similar although the structural processes themselves varied from ideologue to ideologue. On the basis of our investigation, we concluded that the data obtained from the content analysis of five biographies supported our proposition that the adaptive and transformation processes of modern Japan established their roots during the late Tokugawa period and that the impetus to social change was not concentrated solely in the post Meiji Restoration period. / Arts, Faculty of / Asian Studies, Department of / Graduate

This thesis explores conversion to Christianity in contemporary Japan. Christianity is widely regarded as having failed to make any impact on Japanese culture, and to be a foreign body (indeed in the opinion of some an irritating foreign body) that has failed to accommodate with or indigenise itself in Japan. And yet, Japanese people continue to choose to convert to Christianity. What is the significance of this? Are people who convert those who feel excluded from mainline Japanese society, the proof of which is their affiliation with a foreign religion, or can this phenomenon of conversion be understood in a different way? This thesis suggests that it can be, and that the fact that small but significant numbers of Japanese regularly convert to Christianity means that the understanding of Christianity's place in the Japanese religious landscape needs to be re-examined.Theories of conversion are studied, with a view to identifying the particular approaches to analysing and understanding conversion which will be appropriate for the Japanese context. The work of Rodney Stark and William Bainbridge on conversion to a deviant perspective forms the starting point for the study. Cultural and religious norms of Japan are identified, with a view to investigating in what ways and to what degree Christianity in Japan represents a deviant perspective. The history of Christianity in Japan is studied, indicating that at certain times in Japan's history when there is a feeling of national uncertainty and of a lack of social integration there is an openness to Christianity, although at times of national self-confidence there is more resistance to it. Christianity is also compared and contrasted with Japan's New Religious Movements, which may also represent a deviant perspective. Qualitative research among converts to Christianity is carried out. The results of this research show that while there are parallels between conversion to Christianity and to New Religious Movements there are also areas of difference, especially in terms of motives for conversion. Motives for conversion to Christianity tend to focus on what might be termed 'the spiritual', and conversion is experienced in terms of emotional peace, welcome into a Christian congregation, and the promise of salvation to come, rather than the 'health and wealth' or 'this worldly benefits' which are reckoned to be, or to have been, motives for conversion to New Religious Movements. As Shimazono Susumu points out, however, the so called 'New' New Religions also have a focus on spiritual salvation.The conclusion reached is that, though Japanese who convert to Christianity are choosing 'the other' in that their choice is clearly not to stay within the religious mainstream of the country, yet Japanese society is more heterogeneous than is often assumed and actually embraces a range of diverse groups. Christian converts, while being aware of the tensions which they face as a result of conversion, do not feel 'outsiders' in Japanese society. So, while Christianity cannot be said to have indigenised in the way that Buddhism clearly has, yet it should not be seen as an unsuccessful foreign import, but rather, in terms of glocalisation, as a culturally appropriate local expression of a global movement.

"Electronic Surveillance", the mechanical technique to monitor private communications of the suspect is one of the most powerful weapons of the police in modern crime-prevailing societies. In Canada the attempt to set up a legal framework to balance the police need for electronic surveillance against the citizen's right to privacy resulted in the Protection of Privacy Act proclaimed on June 30, 1974. In Japan, in contrast, with no specific legislation governing electronic surveillance, the police refrain from resorting to this enchanting method of criminal investigation. The purpose of this study is to propose a desirable electronic surveillance law in Japan, taking advantage of the Canadian precedent in this field. The introductory portion of this study focuses on the concept of privacy in the West and Japan. Despite the vast difference in traditional privacy consciousness between Canada and Japan, privacy has been recognized as a legally protected interest in both countries. In the first half of the main portion, the study analyzes the Canadian electronic surveillance legislation from the standpoint of the police. While providing the most powerful investigative tool, the law also has had a negative impact upon the Canadian police in that it brought about undue interference, judicial or otherwise, in the operation of criminal investigation. In the last half of the main portion, the study deals with the Japanese system for electronic surveillance. The conclusion reached is that the Canadian legislative precedent can, with some necessary modification, be an appropriate model for Japan, and that Japan should introduce an electronic surveillance system with less intrusive power than in Canada while preserving the traditional independent authority of the police in criminal investigation. / Law, Peter A. Allard School of / Graduate