East Asian Languages and Societies Commons^™

The Lyrics Of Chu : Qu Yuan And His Poetic Allegories : A General Introduction To Chuci, Fusheng Wu

How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast

This episode provides a brief general introduction to Chuci; it also discusses a poem in this repertoire, Xian jun(“The Lord of the Xiang River), and its influence on Li sao (“On Encountering Trouble”) that will be discussed in the next two episodes.

Butoh: From Wwii To The West, Caroline Conner

[Archive] Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

Butoh is an underground dance movement in Japan that explores the human psyche in unconventional and sometimes grotesque ways. It originated out of the devastation of WWII Japan and rails against the rigidity of society as well as traditional theatre and dance forms. It has ties to Buddhism, in that both view suffering as a natural state of the world, and both may lead to depersonalisation (intentionally or otherwise), which is described as a loss of identity or sense of self. Gone unchecked, this detached exploration of the psyche can lead to personality dissolution, which can be especially problematic to …

Striking Chords Ii: Music In Ukiyo-E Prints (2022), Theory & History Of Art & Design Department, Elena Varshavskaya (H791 Instructor)

Ukiyo-e Prints Course | Exhibition Catalogs

"The theme of music in ukiyo-e prints has been explored by the RISD art history students for two semesters (fall 2021 and spring 2022) in a hands-on curatorial format. The resulting exhibition Striking Chords: Music in Ukiyo-e Prints, is on view at the RISD Museum from February through July 2022.

The spring semester project is virtual. However, the approach is similar – to comprehensively study music-related prints in the collection of the RISD Museum and to share the findings with interested audiences, albeit in digital format.

Nineteen prints have been selected. In the exhibition’s virtual space, they are displayed according …

“For Now We See In A Mirror, Dimly”: Dialectical Wholeness In Oshii Mamoru’S Ghost In The Shell, Mari Aida

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

This essay argues that Oshii Mamoru's 1995 animated film Ghost in the Shell, while indicating possible alliances with the political interests of cyberfeminism, ultimately advocates for the oppositional agenda of dialectical wholeness. Foundational texts of cyberfeminism, such as Donna J. Haraway's "A Manifesto for Cyborgs," have criticized narratives of isolation and a return towards a primordial wholeness implicit in Euro-American scientific culture. In the context of these texts, the cyborg symbolizes a departure from such narratives and guides the political project of reimagining epistemological boundaries. However, despite its apparent alignment with such projects, Ghost in the Shell dramatizes and …

The Influence Of The Thirty-Six Stratagems On Chinese Strategy In The Diaoyu Islands, Brent Schuliger

Senior Honors Theses

The Diaoyu Islands are a small, uninhabited archipelago in the East China Sea which has begun increasing in strategic significance due to its advantageous location near Taiwan and along the First Island Chain. The islands are currently under Japanese administration, but the People’s Republic of China considers them historically Chinese and contests Japan’s claim to the islands. A careful examination of China’s actions in challenging Japan’s rule over the Diaoyus reveals the influence of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, a tome of ancient Chinese military wisdom which provides a framework onto which China’s current strategy corresponds. This thesis examines the historical …

A Note On Ursula K. Le Guin's Daoist Interests, Robert Steed

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

This note focuses upon specifying Le Guin’s particular Daoist interests. It also serves as a beginning in mapping out various Daoist concepts that she renders creatively in her literary work, serving as a short primer in Daoist thought and Le Guin.

Learning For Amalgamation: A Multi-Source Transfer Learning Framework For Sentiment Classification, Cuong V. Nguyen, Khiem H. Le, Hong Quang Pham, Quang H. Pham, Binh T. Nguyen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Transfer learning plays an essential role in Deep Learning, which can remarkably improve the performance of the target domain, whose training data is not sufficient. Our work explores beyond the common practice of transfer learning with a single pre-trained model. We focus on the task of Vietnamese sentiment classification and propose LIFA, a framework to learn a unified embedding from several pre-trained models. We further propose two more LIFA variants that encourage the pre-trained models to either cooperate or compete with one another. Studying these variants sheds light on the success of LIFA by showing that sharing knowledge among the …

"A Woman's Lot To Suffer" : Recognizing The Intersectionality Of Oppression And Resistance In Min Jin Lee's Pachinko, Elianna Srikureja

Honors Theses

Min Jin Lee's novel Pachinko (2017) portrays the historically based lives of a displaced Korean family during Japan's colonization of Korea from 1905-1945. The novel's attention to the ways that colonial endeavors complicate Confucian family and national structures exemplifies the interrelation between gender and racial oppression facing Lee's Korean women in both the public and private domain.

However, by centering female voices all too often silenced, Lee also depicts resistance modes that subvert such oppression. Using feminist and postcolonial theory, historical analysis, and close reading analysis, this project examines both the construction of oppression and the subversive resistance measures taken …

Xbox In Japan? Understanding The Distinctions Of The Japanese Video Game Market To Increase Microsoft's Competitive Advantage, Sekani Adebimpe

Senior Theses

Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony remain the biggest players in the video game console space. While all three companies have achieved worldwide success, Microsoft’s performance with the Xbox brand in Japan is an outlier for its historically poor sales numbers dating back to its 2001 debut. The purpose of this thesis is to unearth the various cultural distinctions inherent to the Japanese gaming industry that Microsoft must consider to gain a stronger foothold in the country, as well as diagnose the biggest issues facing Xbox with Japanese consumers. To accomplish this, several cultural frameworks were used to assess the differences between …

A Study On The Sports Industry In Edo: Preface To A Study Of The History Of The Sports Industry In Early Modern Japan, Hironori Tanigama

Japanese Society and Culture

This study discusses what sorts of industries developed in Edo during the early modern period and their characteristics, with a specific look at the sports industry. The results of this study are as follows. 1. In the 17th century, the sports industry in Edo targeted the ruling samurai class. Samurai in Edo were fond of sumo tournaments and archery exhibition competitions; both were heavily influenced by the Kyoto area (then the capital). At the time, traditions carried on since the Middle Ages remained strong in the world of sports. 2. At the end of the 17th century, various urban sports …

Pathetic Beauty: Mono No Aware In Hollywood Cinema –To Family And Friends In These Estranged Times–, Aaron Francis Ward

Japanese Society and Culture

Mono no aware is considered to be one of the central-most Japanese aesthetics and distinctive to Japanese identity (Keene 1995; Miller 2011). This aesthetic standpoint finds wistful beauty in the transient, and is most often translated to ‘beauty in pathos’ or ‘the ah-ness of things’ (Hume 1995), as exemplified in the Heian-era classic, The Tale of Genji (Murasaki 1981). To the outside world, mono no aware is most commonly associated with cherry-blossom viewing, where the short-lived existence of the falling cherry blossom is seen as a metonym for contemplation of the beauty in the transience of life itself. Although this …

The Cherry Blossom And Its Influence On Japanese Culture, Gilberto Mejía Salazar

Japanese Society and Culture

The following research is of a documentary approach, and its objective is to analyze the cherry blossom from a social and cultural perspective, to know the importance and influence that this flower has on society and the environment. Thus, the Shinjuku Gyoen Park and Chidorigafuchi Park were taken as a reference, in this sense, it is understood that within the city of Tokyo there are parks and areas whose purpose is to provide various activities to citizens to contemplate nature, and therefore giving a great show to witness the cherry blossom in its maximum splendour. The influence of the cherry …

The Book Of Poetry : The Han Canonization : Dead Deer Meat As A Gift, Zong-Qi Cai

How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast

This episode looks at the concerted effort by three prominent Han commentators to allegorize a poem made up of disjointed or rather conflicting parts. It also reflects on the ironic fact that Han commentators’ allegorizing process itself constitutes a beautiful exercise of literary imagination, foreshadowing the fruitful exploitation of semantic, syntactic, and structural ambiguities by Du Fu, Li Shangyin, and other Tang poets.

A Study Of Little John And The Making Of Quasi-Middle Lu Xun, Chongke Zhu, Liping Liang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The Chinese version of Frederik van Eeden's Little John translated by Lu Xun was published in 1928, twenty-two years after Luxun embarked on his literary life, and the influence of this work on Luxun went much far more than a pure translation job. The works in Wild Grass, Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk, and Old Tales Retold by quasi-middle Luxun are directly related with Little John in terms of style, thematic concerns, representations of scene, and fields of imagination. However, despite the influences, Luxun's works had developed their own characteristics and demonstrated the intellectual depth and poetic charm of the …

A Study Of Heidegger's "Interpretation For Van Gogh" From The Perspective Of "Becoming And Manifestation" In The Sensory Structure Of Artistic Works, Yunpeng Zhang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

While Heidegger's "Interpretation for Van Gogh" is influential in academic circles, there are also some challenges, criticism and arguments. In order to deepen the understanding of Heidegger's interpretation, we need to contextualize it in the theory after the turn of his thought. To determine whether the explanation is reasonable and appropriate, we need to verify it by returning to the phenomenon of "becoming and manifestation" within the sensory structure in aesthetic experience of artistic works. If the sensory manifestation of artistic works is poetry, then the aesthetic interpretation is thought. Whether poetry and thought are identical or not should be …

A Study Of Franco Moretti's "Materialism Of Form", Chunrong Qian

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Directly influenced by Galvano Della Volpe's Positivist Marxism, Franco Moretti pursues objective and scientific literary research. The most concrete manifestation is his use of metering method. Of course, Althusser's Structuralist Marxism is the main context for Moretti's entire thought. Though he accepts Lukacs' s proposition that "forms are the true social factor in literature", there are three unique features in his thinking about the proposition compared with other Marxists. Firstly, forms are not conceptual or abstract, nor do they exist for the need of theories. Rather, forms are a part of stylistic theories, stylistic practices and styles. Secondly, forms are …

The Book Of Poetry : The Han Canonization : Romeo And Juliet-Like Rendezvous, Zong-Qi Cai

How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast

This episode features a poem that enacts, through incremental repetition, the unfolding drama of a young woman being torn by longing, hesitancy, love, and fear while a suitor is crushing all physical barriers to have a tryst with her. To sanitize this poem, Han commentators resorted to an allegorizing strategy called “cutting off a section to create a new meaning,” constructing a political allegory on the thinnest of evidence.

“The Power Of Onomatopoeia In Manga” An Essay By Natsume Fusanosuke With Translators’ Introduction, Jon Holt, Teppei Fukuda

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Natsume Fusanosuke is one of the founding critics of manga that pioneered a style of formal analysis of manga in the 1990s. Natsume’s first important foray into his “theory of expression” (hyōgenron) was seen in the collaborate work, Manga no yomikata (How to read manga) in 1995. He later streamlined those ideas in a twelve-episode series Manga wa naze omoshiroi no ka: sono bunpō to hyōgen (Why is manga so interesting?: Its grammar and expression) for NHK television in 1996. The accompanying expanded book (1997) consists of well-ordered, individual essays on elements of manga such as …

The Pagoda, Rohan Kōda, Nariyuki Koda

Zea E-Books Collection

This novel is a landmark in Japanese literature, widely known, read, and beloved. Sometimes known as “The Five-Story Pagoda,” it tells the story of Jubei, a carpenter and craftsman, who dreams of building a pagoda for the Abbot of the Kannoji Temple. Despite his poverty, low station, and poor reputation—he is known as “the slouch”— Jubei’s determined and uncompromising allegiance to his own vision bring him the possibility of raising a great work for the ages … but will it stand against the howling demons of a tropical typhoon?

Rohan Kōda’s The Pagoda (Gojūnotō, 五重塔) first appeared in …

The Book Of Poetry : The Han Canonization : A Love Song And A Moral Exemplum, Zong-Qi Cai

How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast

This episode discusses how the anonymous author of “Prefaces to the Book of Poetry” turned “Osprey,” the first of the 305 Shijing poems, from a lively love song into a moral exempla by means of gender switching. It also explains that such imaginative gender switching was made possible by classical Chinese grammar, especially its ungendered use of pronouns and its frequent omission of sentence subjects.