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For decades, Carol J. Clover’s Final Girl theory in Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film has been repeatedly highlighted in discourse surrounding classic American slasher films' female heroines and victim-survivors. As of late, contemporary Final Girl literature has transitioned to criticizing the limiting nature of the original theory, such as its association with “Western” ideals of middle-class whiteness, heterosexuality, and ability. However, many scholars have taken the Final Girl and applied the theory beyond the image of a fair-skinned, conventionally attractive, and unusually physically capable teenager by finding altered renditions of Final Girl(s) within global horror cinema.This thesis analyses the undiscussed representation of the Final Girl and the gendered representations in Japanese horror cinema. Through an analysis of Director Sono Sion’s Netflix original thriller, The Forest of Love (2019), this thesis locates the differences between this new Japanese Final Girl and Clover’s classic Final Girl, as well as the differences between this new Japanese Final Girl and those identified in scholarship post-Clover, to illuminate issues specific to Japanese gender systems and representational strategies in Japanese horror films. This analysis also reflects on the similarities between Clover’s Final Girl and her potential counterpart in Japanese horror, underscoring the continuing usefulness of Clover’s work as an analytical tool. Chapter One focuses on the definitions that make up the groundwork of this thesis, such as Clover’s Final Girl, contemporary scholarship’s use of the theory, and an introduction to the horror genre. Chapter Two then brings the discussion of the Final Girl to Japanese Studies by highlighting the traits of Japanese horror cinema, the J-horror genre, and Japanese analytical tools that will be used to analyse Sono’s film. Chapter Three moves on to an analysis and discussion of The Forest of Love and determines what analysing horror films from this perspective offers to discourse on Japanese sociocultural issues, especially as the genre forces viewers to feel said issues in a visceral way.

To cater to a larger audience across virtual national borders, video games undergo the laborious process of localization. While localization is necessary to overcome geopolitics, it presupposes that the developers must mediate perceived differences for games to be circulated beyond their country of origin. However, industry localization practices framed as “rational business decisions” might not necessarily accurately forecast what consumers look for in a game. Utilizing the framework of moral economy propounded by Henry Jenkins and Joshua Green, this thesis aims to analyze the mediation of conflicts and mutual obligations between industry practices and fan expectations in the localization of the Ryū ga Gotoku/Yakuza series. The primary sources of the paper are the Yakuza video games, business reports, interviews conducted by multiple video game sites with the producers of the games, and social media platforms airing the views and opinions of both the industry and fans. The first chapter analyzes Sega’s production and dissemination strategies for localization, taking Yakuza: Like a Dragon (2020) as a case study. I argue that industry mediation is carefully orchestrated to earn consumer understanding and cultivate loyalty. The next chapter examines the paradoxical nature of fan self-mediation, specifically through game modifications, and how fans capitalize on the grey area of the moral economy. The thesis concludes that mediation is an inevitable outcome of localization. By examining mediation as an engagement process, one can gain insight into industry and fans’ cultural assumptions and the incentives influencing their attempts at reconciliation. I end with a contemplation on the importance of cultural representations in transnational media and texts and the roles and moral responsibilities of industry and fans regarding the perpetuation of stereotypical cultural narratives.

This thesis explores the use of black and white space on the manga page to portray characters associated with differential amounts of "blackness/darkness" and " whiteness/lightness" and how manga artists thereby relayed messages about social status, desirability, and Japan’s place within international hierarchies configured by race, ethnicity, and gender in the 1970s. Blackness and whiteness on the manga page were sometimes intended to correlate with perceived racial categories as understood by manga artists at that time, but because manga iconography often lacks explicit differentiation between individuals of different races or nationalities, in many cases that correlation was ambiguous or absent. Nonetheless, relative whiteness/lightness or blackness/darkness still relayed messages about relative merit in fictional situations that referenced postwar social issues in Japan: the Women’s Liberation movement and the concern over the renewal of the United States-Japan Security Treaty. The analysis centers on Ikeda Riyoko’s shōjo manga The Rose of Versailles and Tezuka Osamu’s shōnen manga "Black Jack," both from the 1970s. While the analysis of the former does not primarily address racial issues, it reveals that in shōjo manga, the "White" world of fantasy can represent a liberating realm for female readers. In contrast, shōnen manga uses "Whiteness" and "Blackness" to symbolize strength and weakness in a more realistic context, where race, ethnicity, and nationality are explicitly depicted on the manga page. The thesis further examines how these two manga were adapted for the all-women Takarazuka theatre, analyzing depictions of whiteness/lightness and blackness/darkness as portrayed by bodies that are themselves already gendered and racialized.

This thesis investigates the re-imaginations of canonical women warrior characters in contemporary Chinese video games, with a focus on the persistent gendered motifs across different versions of the same character in distinct socio-politico-historical contexts. By demonstrating how two women warrior characters are gendered and sexualized through audiovisual representations and interactive mediations, this thesis argues that the idea of “beautiful fighting girls” (sentō bishōjo) in Japanese popular culture is critical to understanding the reconfigurations of women warriors and their aesthetic, political, and moral stake within the Chinese context. The first case study examines the representation of Shenhe in the 2020 role-playing game Genshin Impact by miHoYo as a post-socialist reconstruction of Xi’er from the socialist classic The White-Haired Girl. The second case study explores the reconfiguration of Mulan, a moral paragon of filial piety dating to the 12th century, in the 2015 multiplayer online battle arena Honor of Kings by TiMi. By tracing how the representations of these characters have evolved over time, This thesis showcases that Chinese women warrior characters have reflected the patriarchal ideals of womanhood in changing socio-political contexts and media ecologies. By bringing the Japanese mode of consuming sentō bishōjo into the discussion of the poetics and politics of reimagining women warriors in contemporary Chinese video games, this thesis aims to unveil a transnational, transhistorical, and transmedial subterranean world on how ideal womanhood in contemporary China is constructed and contested.

Women writers in early 20th century Japan were expected to write exclusively on topics considered “womanly” by the men who controlled the bundan, the literary and publishing world. The early fictional works of Tamura Toshiko (1984-1945), an award-winning female writer, caused ambivalent reactions among the critics of her time and in the decades since. Her provocative, sensual expressions and focus on female sexuality were considered properly “womanly,” but therefore weak, by some critics, including feminists of the time, but disturbing by others. In the 1980s Tamura’s work was rediscovered and celebrated by feminist literary scholars and has been the subject of multiple studies since then. This thesis examines Tamura’s groundbreaking short story “Ikichi” (Lifeblood, 1911), published in the inaugural issue of the feminist journal Seitō (Bluestockings, 1911-1916), which relates the reaction of its unmarried protagonist, Yūko, to the loss of her virginity. Previous feminist scholarship has focused on Yūko’s sense of victimhood and shame, but this thesis demonstrates how Tamura uses particular literary techniques to present a much more complex vision of a woman’s resistance toward the social and discursive pressures around female sexuality in the late Meiji period (1868-1912). First, I introduce theories of affect and abjection and show how they aid in revealing the complexity of Tamura’s agenda. Building on Teresa Brennan’s work on affect, I identify the depiction of “raw affect”—that is, feelings and impulses that cannot be captured by language or filtered through intelligibility—as a means by which Tamura shows her protagonist resisting both internalized and external social pressures as she tries to make sense of her first sexual experience. Next, I discuss the sequential process of abjection, as Yūko feels herself to be abjected and then in turn abjects others, to reveal the ways that “Ikichi” explores not only female sexuality and social morals, but also issues of class privilege. The analysis reveals Tamura’s use of literary techniques to expose the powers that restrict women as well as the ways women resist those powers through conscious and unconscious behaviors in their attempt to reclaim a bodily language of their own.

Mishima Yukio (1925-1970) is one of the most influential writers in postwar Japan. His novel Kinu to meisatsu (Silk and Insight, 1964) illustrates the death of an allegorical humanized emperor himself, rather than a young ideologue, and the allegorical emperor who is destroyed in the end is depicted as having ordinary and ugly physical traits instead of representing beauty. In this thesis, I examine how Mishima tackles the theme of the antinomy of mind and body through portraying the death of the allegorical humanized emperor in Silk and Insight. The thesis also explores how Mishima juxtaposes ugliness and beauty in the desire for destruction by comparing Silk and Insight with Gogo no eikō, (The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, 1963), in which he depicts the common theme of patricide. I examine how the difference of ugliness and beauty in the way the father-figure is portrayed in the two novels represents Mishima’s view of the diminishment of the humanized emperor and the mindset of self-punishment in postwar Japan. My thesis also offers an exploration of how Silk and Insight portrays the harmonization of the mind and body split through the relationship between the allegorized humanized emperor and the young intellectual ideologue who causes his death, which shows connections between Heideggerian ontology conjoined with European fascism and Mishima’s philosophy on pure action which is tied up with the essence of Japanese nationalism. Through exploring the link between Heideggerian philosophy and Mishima’s vision of Japanese nationalism, I examine how the overcoming of the mind and body split is pursued not only ideologically, but also in the homoerotic dynamics between the allegorical humanized emperor and the young ideologue. This exploration shows a new perspective on scholarly discussions of Mishima’s vision of the postwar emperor, as well as the recurring theme of mind and body in his works.

During Japan’s war in China (1931-1945), both Japan and China produced wartime propaganda using popular visual media. This thesis examines how artists portrayed the war in manhua (comics) in China and kamishibai (paper plays) in Japan. The thesis focuses on manhua by the Jiuwang Manhua Xuanchuandui (National Salvation Manhua Propaganda Team, hereafter NSMPT) association, and kamishibai produced by the Nippon Kyōiku Kamishibai Kyōkai (Japanese Educational Kamishibai Association, hereafter NKKK), to reveal the differences between the organizational structures of the NSMPT and NKKK and differences in their visual strategies for depicting the enemy, as well as the similarities in their approach to wartime propaganda. In the introduction, I briefly introduce the historical background of manhua and kamishibai and my main research sources. In Chapter 1, I argue that Chinese manhua had been depicting Japan as an enemy since the May Fourth Movement of 1919. I trace the history of the anti-Japan manhua movement from the early manhua magazine Shanghai Puck to later wartime work by the NSMPT and its offshoots as they fled from city to city to evade the Japanese advance. Chapter 2 illustrates how kamishibai developed from a street performance for children to a tool of wartime propaganda for all ages. In Chapter 3, I analyze in detail visual depictions of the enemy in Chinese and Japanese works. A comparison of the way manhua artists depicted Japanese soldiers with the way kamishibai artists portrayed Chinese soldiers and collaborators demonstrates the different kinds of messages appropriate for the mobilization of the home front in the two countries. At the same time, both use common propaganda techniques such as dehumanization and the presentation of one-sided or inaccurate information. The appendices are comprised of translations of two kamishibai plays.

This thesis historicizes how Japanese children’s literature (jidō bungaku) emerged in the early Meiji period (1868–1912), and examines what elements of cultural and literary discourse inform the early jidō bungaku landmark texts. I seek to demonstrate that the genre of children’s literature emerged from the intersections of the birth of the modern Japanese nation state, the discovery of “the child” (jidō), public education, and literature and language.Chapter 1 focuses on Wakamatsu Shizuko’s pathbreaking 1890 translation of Little Lord Fauntleroy (Shōkōshi), an example of “children’s literature” that did not necessarily conceive children as the primary audience. In this chapter, I examine how Shizuko employs the medium of translation to experiment with the genbun-itchi style, perceived to be a novel and experimental form of literary expression at the time of Shōkōshi’s publication. Shōkōshi constructs the primordial model of “the child” as we understand in the contemporary cultural imagination, the literary personifications of purity and goodness who exists in relation to detached adult observers.Chapter 2 explores three core features of Iwaya Sazanami’s Koganemaru (1891): the gabuntai prose (style), adaptations of canon folktales (narrative form and intertextual engagement), and Edo ninjō melodrama (pre-Meiji tropes). I investigate how Sazanami revitalizes pre-Meiji legacies to compose what he claims is a modern and domestic story for Japanese children, which showcases a carefully engineered image of Japan as a linear, organic, and collective national community. This portrait of Japan is made memorable and persuasive by Sazanami’s conceptualization of “literature” as a private practice outside of the pedagogical context, one that is meant to generate amusement and pleasure. By attending to children’s personal space and pastimes, Sazanami opens new avenues for effectively instilling child readers with the sense of collective national consciousness.The close reading of these two foundational texts will reveal the urgency, rigorous effort, and creative attention invested into writing high literature for children. This will in turn demonstrate that children mattered in the Meiji period—intellectuals and writers esteemed children as a new modern demographic, namely the future of the Japanese sovereign nation, that deserved serious and artistic consideration.

Known colloquially as “3.11,” the triple disaster that struck Japan’s northeastern region of Tōhoku on March 11, 2011 comprised of both natural (the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and resultant tsunami) and humanmade (the nuclear meltdown at the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant incurred due to post-earthquake damage) disasters. In the days, weeks, months, and years that followed, there was an outpouring of media reacting to and reflecting on the great loss of life and resulting nuclear contamination of the nearby land and sea of the region. Thematically, food plays a large role in many post-3.11 narratives, both through the damage and recovery of local food systems after the natural disasters and the radiation contamination that to this day stigmatizes regionally grown food. This thesis seeks to examine the new meanings of food in three Japanese-language texts produced after 3.11.First, I examine Kawakami Hiromi’s (1958 - ) “Kamisama” (1994) and its rewritten version “Kamisama 2011” (2011) to consider the textual construction of human and animal bodies and their interaction with food and environment through a salted fish, made newly inedible in the 2011 version, to consider the new potential of food after 3.11. Next, I examine loss and anxiety tied to geographical place, as well as the portrayal of “truth” in the post-3.11 chapters of Kariya Tetsu’s (1941 - ) controversial and long-running manga about food, Oishinbo (1980 - present). Finally, I consider the ways that post-3.11 thought has influenced the representation and issues of food in “Iganu no ame” (2014), a short science fiction story by popular idol and writer Katō Shigeaki (1987 - ), in order to consider ways that precarity now includes shifts and changes in eating after the triple disaster. In these three texts, I find common themes of memory and intimacy through food, mistrust toward the “official” positions on the safety of food after 3.11, and the articulation of new anxieties in the present and future of eating.

Yuri is the genre of Japanese manga and anime that focuses on romantic and sexual relationships between girls and women. Although what is perceived to be its counterpart, yaoi or BL, has received a great amount of scholarly attention in the past years, yuri, however, is still a nascent topic in academic discourse. Upon briefly delineating Japanese prewar girls’ culture and its influence on the romantic and erotic spaces found in female-authored manga made for a female audience, several female-authored narratives from the erotic yuri manga anthology Yuri hime wildrose are analyzed in regards to their depiction of relationship dynamics, the female body, and the space in which both are explored. These yuri narratives are considered in relation to Audre Lorde’s ideas of the erotic to show that despite their lack of explicit lesbian identity and social realism, they manage to carve out a positive erotic space that is ultimately empowering for female readers.

Can female readers perceive empowerment through sexually explicit, fictional stories that feature depictions of misogynistic relationships or encounters? In this thesis, I will attempt to answer this question by examining English- and Japanese-language examples of sexual writing for women, specifically the genre of women’s erotica (erotic fiction for a female audience). I will describe how women’s erotica in both languages is predominantly populated by female authors, and will argue that this allows readers to perceive sexual empowerment even when encountering storylines that feature female protagonists disempowered by male characters. The knowledge that the author is a woman perpetuates a belief on the side of the reader that the female protagonist is safe, and that she will enjoy the sexual acts that take place within the story. To illustrate this point, I will compare the recently-published Fifty Shades of Grey with Toraware no yoru (Captive night), a 1990s example of “ladies’ comics” (sexually explicit Japanese manga created for a female readership), which was re-published in e-format in 2009. I will demonstrate how the female sex of the authors enables readers to feel in control and empowered despite the often submissive role of the stories’ protagonists. I will also argue that both works have been marketed and framed in a manner that alludes to Japanese- and English-language autobiographical sexual writing that developed from the early 20th Century. I will establish how the confessional nature of these works helped construct a shared reality between reader and author in regards to sex and womanhood. The solicitation of stories from ladies’ comics readers and the emergence of Fifty Shades of Grey from the fan fiction community re-enforces the perception of a women-only space where text is influenced solely by a dialogue between female author and female reader. Although this female-centred space may in itself be a source of empowerment, the sustainability of such a space is precarious in the virtual environment, where the gender of author and reader cannot be guaranteed.

This thesis explores the playful world of Keroro Gunsô, a manga-turned-anime comedy that is immensely popular in millennium Japan and starting to gain popularity on a global scale. Drawing from a parody of Japan’s military aggression during World War Two, the anime plays with the public memory about Japan’s imperial past and the binary opposition between war and peace, invader and the invaded, and ultimately, patriarchy and matriarchy. This paper will examine the text of Keroro Gunsô as a symbolic site of what Mikhail Bakhtin called “carnival,” a discursive space for renewal, festivity and laughter freed from ordinary social restrictions and conformity. I would argue that Keroro Gunsô offers a playful fantasy for Japan’s “post-postwar memory” (as Carol Gluck calls it) to deal with social anxieties associated with Japan’s imperial past and its tragic defeat in the war. I will start my argument by looking at the increasingly significant role of carnival/festival anime in today’s global culture. Then, after a brief reading of the story of Keroro Gunsô, I will locate its text in the framework of “carnival” to examine its carnivalesque features: the attack against historical facts through parody as well as the reversal of Japan’s patriarchal hierarchy through the mobilization of its symbolic characters. Finally, I will examine how Keroro Gunsô embraces/celebrates Japan’s playfully weak, irresponsible, and ultimately, emasculated identity as a response to the social anxieties surrounding Japan’s defeat in World War Two. Through the alternate reading of this incredibly popular comedy, this paper attempts to explore a different side of Japanese society encapsulated in this carnivalesque anime behind its humor and festival laughter.

This thesis explores the construction and mutability of the Japanese race and ethnicity in the print comics of Dr. Tezuka Osamu (1928–1989), Japan’s “god of manga” and the creator of such beloved series as Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion. By investigating three of Tezuka’s mature, lesser-known works from the 1970s and 80s, I will illustrate how Tezuka’s narratives have been shaped by his consciousness of racial issues and his desire to investigate the changing nature of Japanese identity in the postwar era. First, the works are contextualized within the larger manga history of the 1960s and 70s, specifically the gekiga (lit. drama pictures) movement that heralded more mature and sophisticated stories and artwork. Chapter one analyzes Ode to Kirihito (1970–71, 2006 English), and introduces Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection to show the ways in which Tezuka bestializes his ethnically Japanese protagonists and turns them into a distinct class of subaltern. Chapter two examines intersections between race and war narratives using Adolf (1983–85, 1995–96 English), Tezuka’s WWII epic about the Jewish Holocaust. The concept of hybridity is utilized and the case is made that Tezuka ultimately denies his racially mixed characters the benefits of their Japanese identity. Chapter three investigates the manifestation of Japanese masculinity in Gringo (1987–89), one of Tezuka’s final works. In this chapter, Japanese identity, masculinity, and sexual ability are linked to the national sport of sumo wrestling. A discussion of diasporic communities is included in order to discuss how the Japanese race is conceptualized as it moves through different geographical and cultural spaces.

In this thesis I explore the current literary culture of Japan by examining the commercialization and politicization of junbungaku, “pure” literature. In particular, I focus on the most prominent award for new authors, the Akutagawa Prize, which is widely acknowledged as authoritative. My intention is to shed some useful light on the role of publishing company editors as the masterminds of the publishing industry. Chapter One provides an overview of issues surrounding junbungaku and taishū bungaku (“mass-oriented literature”). At present, junbungaku is defined in opposition to taishū bungaku, but ambiguities and boundary issues remain. This survey will enable us to identify the situations where the notion of junbungaku is defended as authoritative and how its relationship with the Akutagawa Prize increases its legitimacy. Chapter Two examines the origin and history of junbungaku, and discusses how the notion has changed over time. I also address questions such as what junbungaku is and how it can be defined, and uncover how junbungaku came under question as the Akutagawa Prize became more successful and began to overshadow junbungaku itself. The ultimate purpose of the Prize is to sell books and magazines; this affects not only literature but to some extent Japanese society as a whole. Chapter Three therefore deals with the Akutagawa Prize and junbungaku as a business. I examine the “Akutagawa Prize industry” led by the editors and Bungeishunju Ltd., including the nomination, selection, and announcement processes; distribution and sales; winning works; and judging. I analyze the process from the viewpoint of the publishing houses and editors. Finally, in the Conclusion I argue that the Akutagawa Prize endangers the very concept of pure literature by tying it to a commercial enterprise, compromising writers by making them dependent upon the financial goals of a corporation, which trains a reading public conditioned to accept the Prize as authoritative to receive the work in particular ways through the process of commercialization and commodification. As a result, “amateurization” is inevitable. I also examine the implications of this project for future research on Japanese literature and on the intersections of Japanese literary culture and commercial literary awards.