Digital Commons Network^™

"Kore Saa (コレサア)": Visual Representations Of Dialogue In Edo Popular Fiction, Lauren Gatewood

Masters Theses

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 …

The Japanese Church And Cultural Engagement, Sarah Jane Garon

Masters Theses

This thesis addresses the current cultural engagement done by the Japanese church, with particular attention given to music and the arts. Japan has hosted Christian missionaries for over five centuries and yet most of the population do not claim the religion as their own. Much research has been devoted to understanding the history of Christianity in Japan and the relationship between Japanese Christians and non-Christian Japanese culture. However, very little research has been done on the interactions between Japanese Christians and music and art specifically. This thesis, therefore, is dedicated to discovering how Japanese Christians are currently engaging with music …

A Disaggregated Analysis Of Beef Import Demand In Japan, Christina D. Greer

Masters Theses

Japan is an important partner for the U.S. beef industry and a major beef importing country. In 2020, Japan was the world’s third-largest importer of beef products (USDA, 2021). Although the Japanese beef market has been studied, research on the importance of product characteristics in determining import demand has been limited. The goal of this research is to provide a detailed analysis of how U.S. beef products compete in the Japanese market relative to other exporting countries based on prices, product form (chilled versus frozen), and product characteristics (boneless versus bone-in).

This study will focus on three key factors affecting …

The Twenty-Year Occupation: Cultural Reimagination And The American Occupation Of Japan, Phillip Jones

Masters Theses

In the wake of the violence and racial animosity of World War II, the United States carried out an ideologically ambitious occupation of Japan, with the stated purposes of demilitarizing their former enemy and facilitating Japan's reintroduction to the world as an appropriately reformed nation. Between 1945-1952, Japan and the United States engaged in complex and often contradictory processes of cultural reimagination, through which they reimagined the recent past, each other, and their roles in the world. I contend that the Occupation of Japan can only be appropriately understood through these processes, placed within the appropriate historical context. These processes …

Benjamin Smith Lyman: Geologist At The Intersection Of Hokkaido, Japan, And The United States, Benjamin Ashby

Masters Theses

Benjamin Smith Lyman was a geologist from Northampton, Massachusetts, who was contracted by the Japanese government in 1872 to carry out coal surveys on the island of Hokkaidō 北海道. What started out as a standard geological survey, quickly evolved into a lifelong interest in Japan for Lyman. The large collection of letters, books, photographs, and other documents housed under the Benjamin Smith Lyman Collection at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, serve as a primary source on both early relations between the Japanese and the West and the beginnings of the large network of academic writings which today can be classified …

Contextualized Songwriting In The Japanese Church, Katie Ann Mcwilliams

Masters Theses

The Christian Church of Japan has very few songs written in their own language and style. Most songs are translated from English or another language. While Japan is a very westernized country, this is a problem because things can get lost in translation and these songs are not always representative of their musical style. Furthermore, they have a unique voice of worship that is currently missing from the global Church. My research project was intended to identify songwriters and encourage songwriting for the local church with the intention of expanding the Japanese voice in the global context and raising awareness …

Everything Feels Like The Future But Us: The Posthuman Master-Slave Dynamic In Japanese Science Fiction Anime, Ryan Daly

Masters Theses

This thesis is an exploration of the relationships between humans and mechanized beings in Japanese science fiction anime. In it I will be discussing the following texts: Ergo Proxy (2006), Chobits (2002), Gunslinger Girl (2003/2004), and Mahoromatic (2001/2002). I argue that these relationships in these anime series take the form of master/slave relationships, with the humans as the masters and the mechanized beings as the slaves. In virtually every case, the mechanized beings are young females and the masters are older human males. I will argue that this dynamic serves to reinforce traditional power structures and gender dynamics in a …

Imagining A Home For Us: Representations Of Queer Families In Contemporary Japanese Literature, Patrick Carland

Masters Theses

This thesis addresses popular works of fiction written or produced near or after 1989 in Japan and examines the roles that sexual orientation, gender and 20^th century social and discursive history have had on the conceptualization of familial relations in postwar Japan. This thesis will analyze the means by which writers and artists during the 1980s and 1990s have engaged discourses of family in their works and will argue that these writers explicitly use queer (hereby defined as non-heterosexual and/or non-gender conforming) individuals and narratives to question, reshape and propose alternatives to culturally received images of heterosexual marriage and …

Ancient Magic And Modern Accessories: Developments In The Omamori Phenomenon, Eric Teixeira Mendes

Masters Theses

This thesis offers an examination of modern Japanese amulets, called omamori, distributed by Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines throughout Japan. As amulets, these objects are meant to be carried by a person at all times in which they wish to receive the benefits that an omamori is said to offer. In modern times, in addition to being a religious object, these amulets have become accessories for cell-phones, bags, purses, and automobiles. Said to protect people from accidents, disease, loneliness, failure, computer viruses, among many other things, these objects are one of the few material aspects of religion that are a …

Publishing Networks In Edo Japan, Hisako Kobayashi

Masters Theses

The publishing business in the Edo period (1603 – 1868) was very unique since it was divided into two genres: shomotsu mononohon and jihon kusazōshi. Publishers had their specialties and their business strategies varied. In this research paper, I examine the publishing strategies from the view of the network system. First, I state the definition of this network. Next, I study the publishing history of the Edo period to gain a general understanding. Lastly, I examine the network systems of the shomotsu publishers and the jihon kusazōshi publishers. I use examples from Tsutaya Jūzaburō, Suharaya Mohē, Tsuruya Kiemon, …

The Unnatural World: Animals And Morality Tales In Hayashi Razan's Kaidan Zensho, Eric Fischbach

Masters Theses

Kaidan is a genre of supernatural tales that became popular during Japan’s Edo period. In 1627, Hayashi Razan translated numerous supernatural tales from China and collected them in five volumes in a work known as Kaidan zensho, the “Complete Collection of Strange Works.” Hayashi Razan was an influential Neo-Confucian scholar and was instrumental in establishing Neo-Confucianism as a dominant ideological force in Tokugawa Japan. As his teachings and stories reached a wide audience, and the government was supportive of Neo-Confucian ideas in Japan, his Kaidan tales, which contained subtle didactic elements, enjoyed success. However, Kaidan zensho was never translated into …