Ph.D. - East Asian Languages and Literatures (Japanese)

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Desiring Schoolgirls: Vision, Gender, And Space In Early-twentieth Century Japanese Fiction And Culture
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2023) Pizarro, Francesca; Ito, Ken K.; East Asian Languages and Literatures
This dissertation examines the diverse representations of the jogakusei in early twentieth century Japanese fiction. It focuses on the various ways schoolgirl characters are envisioned, narrated, and consumed by analyzing how the literary representations produce distinct spaces and, in the process, shape images of the gendered subjects who inhabit them. Each chapter of the dissertation is devoted to close readings of a literary text: Kosugi Tengai’s Makaze koikaze [Winds of the Devil, Winds of Love, 1903], about a schoolgirl imperiled by poverty and unwanted male attention in the city, Tamura Toshiko’s Akirame [Resignation, 1911], about a schoolgirl’s desire for independence and quest for homosocial space, Mushanokōji Saneatsu’s Omedetaki hito [A Blessed Person, 1911], about a narrator’s subject-forming navigation of city space in pursuit of his schoolgirl obsession, and Yoshiya Nobuko’s Hana monogatari [Flower Tales, 1916-1926], a cycle of stories illustrating the space-making practices of schoolgirl same-sex partnership in the all-girls school. The examination of each work foregrounds how modern spaces and places are fashioned through acts of narration and reading. It further contends that such practices in turn affect how gendered identities and images were remembered, represented, and imagined. In its study of schoolgirls, the dissertation foregrounds how their image is constituted by and within narrative representations of space. Through the metaphor of vision and modes of seeing, which extends to acts of narrating and reading, the dissertation seeks to illuminate how literary texts and their reading practices produce gendered identities and engender spaces.
Exploration of a way to teach WA and GG in L2 Japanese with the notion of identifiability
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2022) Hata, Keiko; Kanno, Kazue; East Asian Languages and Literatures
The thesis examines the effect of the instruction using the notion of identifiability (e.g., Hasegawa 2015, Iwasaki 1987) to teach the Japanese particles, WA and GA, especially, the functional differences in discourse between these particles. The particles, WA and GA, are introduced in early chapters of a beginning textbook in L2 Japanese, and yet the distinction between these particles in discourse is a challenge to even second language learners (L2ers) who are at an advanced level (e.g., Koguchi 2017, Sakamoto et al. 1995, Takanashi et al. 2017, Yagi 1996). Whereas many previous studies on the acquisition order of particles (or accuracy order) report that L2ers are able to use WA in a target-like manner at the early phase of their study (e.g., Doi & Yoshioka 1987, 1990, Sakamoto 1993, Yagi 1992, 1996, 2000), learner strategies for the use of the respective particles and for the selection between the particles have been detected (e.g., Koguchi 2017) and the early acquisition of WA has been questioned. In addition, Laleko & Polinsky (2016) see that factors of the difficulty in the use of WA and GA stem from processing difficulty. The preliminary study of this thesis examines whether learners of Japanese whose first language is English (L2ers) use the animacy of a noun phrase in the subject position and/or predicate types of a given sentence as cues to choose between WA and GA. This study also investigates whether the difficulty in the use of these particles by this population can be explained by the Contextual Embedding Hypothesis (e.g., Laleko & Polinsky 2016). The data were collected with a multiple-choice questionnaire. Results show that these L2ers likely rely on the animacy type and the predicate type for their particle choice. Also, the cause of difficulty is identified as processing difficulty due to the memory load required to connect ongoing discourse with prior discourse. The current study examines whether the instruction with the notion of identifiability helps L2ers to reduce their reliance on the animacy type and predicate type as cues to determine between WA and GA. Participants were provided instruction of WA as an identifiable marker and GA as an unidentifiable marker, with some exercises (i.e., categorization task and fill-in-blanks task). The instructional effect was measured by the gain scores in the post-test score. Results indicate that there was a positive effect on GA, but not so much on WA. One of the possible explanations for these outcomes is that the notion of identifiability helps L2ers to reduce their reliance on their learner strategies, especially for choosing WA; consequently, they learn to choose GA more frequently after the instruction. Another potential explanation is that the instruction is effective for those who are still in process of acquiring the particles.
Identity Construction of International Students in Japan: L2 Japanese Speakers' Meta-Awareness of Their Positioning in Interaction
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2022) Hanaoka, Vera Elisabeth Wiener; Yoshimi, Dina R.; East Asian Languages and Literatures
ABSTRACTThis dissertation examines how L2 Japanese speaker international students experience their subjectivity (Harré & Gillett, 1994), that is, how their language use and actions convey their thoughts and feelings, their sense of self, and how they relate to the world around them, in casual conversations with L1 Japanese speaker peers. In order to investigate L2 speaker subjectivity, this study analyzes audio-video conversation and interview data to determine 1) L2-L1 Japanese speaker pairs’ jointly accomplished identity construction achieved through their positioning (Davies & Harré, 1990) in interaction, 2) L2 Japanese speakers’ folklinguistic theories—lay theories about language use— (Imai, Nojima & Okada, 2012; Miller & Ginsburg, 1995) about such positioning, and 3) L2 Japanese speakers’ meta-awareness, evidenced by their descriptions of their theories of how discursive, pragmatic, and semiotic resources are utilized in positioning. The study participants used a) the first-person masculine pronouns boku and ore, and the first-person neutral pronoun watashi, b) the Kansai dialect of Western Japan perceived nationwide as frank and humorous, and c) the boke-tsukkomi (fool-straight man) comedic routine as resources for positioning. Drawing on these three categories of resources, the L2-L1 Japanese speaker pairs construct a relationship through their mutual acceptance of storylines (Davies & Harré, 1990, van Langenhove & Harré, 1999) that form the basis of their positioning. An analysis of the participants’ folklinguistic theories indicated that they had highly descriptive meta-awareness of Kansai dialect, moderately descriptive meta-awareness of first-person pronouns, and rudimentary meta-awareness of the boke-tsukkomi comedic routine. The findings of this dissertation contribute to the scholarship on L2 speaker identity construction and language learning ideology, both through what they elucidate about the participants’ positioning in interaction and their folklinguistic theories about such positioning, and through the investigation of the under-researched demographic of highly proficient international student sojourners. The study’s novel methodology, of interviewing the L2-L1 participant pairs together using a stimulated-recall protocol with video stimuli generated from their conversation sessions, facilitated a situated and detailed analysis of their ideologies surrounding their identity construction. This dissertation provides further concrete evidence that L2 speakers are holistic individuals who use their L2 to form complex social pasts, presents, and futures, and to have interactions and to construct relationships are that “meaningful and consequential” (Firth & Wagner, 2007), laying the groundwork for future interactions and relationships based on shared social history with their L1 speaker peers.
Conversation In Cmc – Tracing Novice Agency From A Language Socialization Perspective
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2020) Ikeda, Maiko; Cook, Haruko; Japanese
This dissertation examines how second language (L2) Japanese language learners exercise their agency in the language learning process in and how that use impacts their development of pragmatic competence within the language socialization (LS) process, with specific focus on selection and usage of sentence ending speech styles through online interactions with native Japanese university students. While the originators of LS carefully conceptualized the LS process as contingent, fluid, unpredictable, contested, and bidirectional (or multidirectional), the pioneer studies of LS have focused on how children and novices are socialized by their caregivers and experts. Consequently, this focus has created misunderstanding that LS emphasizes the reproduction of language, from expert to novice, as a successful and smooth process, where novices are mere passive receivers of knowledge from experts in order to functionally participate in the practices of their target communities. This complex process in which novices ratify, reject, and negotiate has to do with their agency, yet what novice agency is and its implication in the LS process has yet to be examined at any depth due to this narrower interpretation of LS. The present study responds to these challenges by examining how Japanese language learners develop competence to effectively and meaningfully participate in online class activities with native speaker university students over three months by analyzing both learners’ and native speakers’ agentive usage of Japanese sentence ending speech styles. To understand the process of their pragmatic competence development, this study quantitatively and qualitatively analyzes learners’ usage of speech style throughout the online activities in conjunction to semi-structured interviews with participants discussing their pragmatic choices in the data. The analysis on speech style usage shows learners of Japanese exert agency in a v multitude of ways within online interaction with their partnered native Japanese university students through selection of speech style, including strategies such as: shifting speech styles to initiate new context creation, persistent usage of a selected speech style that differs from that of native speaker’s and/or adoption of speech styles in relative synchronicity to native speakers’ selections. These findings indicate that not only do learners agentively select speech style, but also that such agency plays a significant role in their manipulation of linguistic form. Agency that exists extralinguistically, such as participation / non-participation in classroom-prescribed activities, also influences novice’s language learning outcomes. Finally, the findings prove that the LS process is contingent and bidirectional, and that novices, in this case learners of Japanese, actively organize and influence the LS process.
Exploration of an effective way of teaching the aspect marker -tei(ru) to learners of Japanese adopting a cognitive linguistics approach
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2020) Hamada, Masumi; Hamada, Masumi; Japanese
This dissertation explores a new way to teach the use of the Japanese aspect marker -tei(ru) which occurs in various aspectual contexts (e.g. progressive, resultative, and perfective), to learners of Japanese by adopting a Cognitive Linguistics approach advocated by scholars like Langacker (2008), Lakoff (1987), Tayler (2003), Boers & Lindstromberg (2006), Niemeier, (2008), Tyler (2012), etc. A general finding of previous L2 studies that examined the acquisition order of the progressive and the resultative use of this aspectual marker (e.g. Sheu, 1997; Shirai & Kurono, 1998; Sugaya & Shirai, 2007) is that learners have more difficulties in learning the resultative use over the progressive use. I argue that one source for this reported difficulty may come from the way -tei(ru) is conventionally introduced in many textbooks. This dissertation holds the view that the aspectual meanings associated with -tei(ru) belong to a super-category “continuity”, and within this super-category they themselves form sub-categories which are linked with each other. Based on these assumptions, a new CL-based method of teaching -tei(ru) is developed, in which -tei(ru) is introduced as a “continuity” marker and the resultative is used as the exemplar, anticipating that learners can generalize the use of -tei(ru) to other aspectual contexts. A quasi-experimental study was conducted involving two groups of learners: one group received the CL-based instruction and the other group a conventional textbook-based instruction. Two research questions were addressed (i) whether the CL-based instruction is indeed effective and (ii) whether the effect of the CL-based instruction of one usage allows learners to go beyond that usage and facilitate or support the learning of other usages. The results show that the CL-based instruction is more effective than the conventional instruction for teaching resultative -tei(ru), and that the benefit of the CL-based instruction did extend beyond the original usage covered.
The Usefulness of the Computer-Based Speaking Tasks of the AP Japanese Exam
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2020) Suzumura, Nana; Kondo-Brown, Kimi; East Asian Languages and Literatures
The Advanced Placement (AP) Japanese Language and Culture exam (the AP Japanese exam) is a large-scale high-stakes test targeting high school students in the United States. It is a computer-based test that consists of speaking, listening, reading, and writing sections. The present study focuses on the speaking section which aims to measure examinees’ interpersonal communication skills and presentational skills. The usefulness of the speaking tasks was investigated from a variety of perspectives. Drawing upon Bachman and Palmer’s (1996) model of test usefulness, the present study scrutinized reliability, construct validity, and authenticity of the AP Japanese speaking test tasks. In order to strengthen arguments regarding the usefulness of the AP Japanese speaking test tasks, the present study employed a mixed methods research design. The primary design was a concurrent design (R. B. Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004; Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2006, 2009). The present study also employed a partial sequential design to integrate quantitative and qualitative methods at the analysis stage. Evidence for the usefulness of the test was collected by examining the speaking tasks used for the AP Japanese exam in the past, examinees’ language samples and test scores from the simulation of the AP Japanese exam, and examinee and rater survey responses. Four sets of conversation tasks and two sets of cultural perspective presentation tasks were selected from past test items and used in the simulation test. A total of 111 high school students, from two U.S. states, who were planning to take the AP Japanese exam participated in the present study. Their performance was rated by a total of six raters who participated in the present study: three raters for the conversation task and three raters for the presentation task. From the quantitative strand, generalizability theory and many-facet Rasch measurement (MFRM) (Linacre, 1989) were employed to analyze the test scores and to collect evidence primarily for reliability and construct validity. From the qualitative strand, discourse analysis was employed to analyze test task characteristics and examinees’ performance and to collect evidence primarily for authenticity and construct validity. The present study found that overall the AP Japanese speaking section has a reasonable level of usefulness in that it showed a reasonable level of reliability and it aims to represent more dimensions of speaking ability than other computer-based language tests. Yet it also has some issues related to construct validity and authenticity, especially for the conversation task. In particular, the present study recommends reviewing the amount of contextual information, the proportion of information-seeking prompts and non-information-seeking prompts, and the appropriateness of the conversation scoring criteria in relation to the nature of the conversation prompts. The present study illustrated how intricately different facets of test usefulness can interact. This study exemplified how useful a mixed methods approach can be in collecting more comprehensive evidence for test validation and how that in turn can allow for more meaningful and practical suggestions to improve the overall usefulness of a language test.
The Power of Instability - Medieval Reception and Appropriation of Man'Yoshu as Examined in Poetic Criticism (Karon) and Poetry (Waka) by Fujiwara Kiyosuke and Fujiwara Shunzei.
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2018-08) Citko, Malgorzata K.; East Asian Languages and Literatures (Japanese)
What happens to knowledge when we gain access to new information? It updates and changes, which is why I focus on the instability of “knowledge,” a concept which was much less authoritative in premodern societies than we currently believe; early medieval (11-12th c.) Japan is one of them. This dissertation traces how early medieval reception and appropriation of Man’yōshū (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves, 759-785), the first extant Japanese poetic collection, was affected by the poetic discourse, the instability of knowledge and fluidity of channels through which knowledge is carried, and the existence of various Man’yōshū manuscripts. I deal with two allegedly rival schools (Rokujō and Mikohidari) and two of their representatives (Fujiwara Kiyosuke [1104-1177] and Fujiwara Shunzei [1114-1204]). I examine their Man’yōshū reception and appropriation by analyzing their poetry criticism (karon) and poetry (waka). I see them, however, not only as rivals but, above all, as representing continuous stages in the development of the Japanese poetic tradition. The Mikohidari poets paid much more attention to Man’yōshū scholarship than most current scholarship acknowledges. Moreover, the process of re-imagining waka in the early medieval era started with Kiyosuke, not with Shunzei. The Mikohidari poets took over this process after Kiyosuke’s death, claimed parts of the Rokujō tradition, and established themselves as modernizers of the poetic craft. The two poets and schools had thus much in common, but they utilized rivalry as a tool in pursuit of their goals: to attract potential patrons and shift the direction of the poetic discourse to their benefit. The notion of “rivalry” results from the variability of texts that they owned. In early medieval Japan, Man’yōshū existed in multiple manuscripts of different shapes and there was no one definitive text, which made it a convenient site of contestation. This enabled poets to provide alternative information about it, which implies that the common knowledge about waka or Man’yōshū was more indefinite than we currently believe. I see “Man’yōshū” as a concept, not a singular or multitude of texts, over which poets attempted to gain power through knowledge by legitimizing their line of knowledge transmission.
The Clarté Movement in Japan and Korea, 1919-1925
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2017-12) Arkenstone, Quillon B.; East Asian Languages and Literatures (Japanese)
The Clarté movement was an international writers’ association founded in France after the Great War, which had as its goal the rallying of the intellectual elite of the world in order to prevent further war. The movement had branches in countries from Western Europe to East Asia. Scholars have examined the transfer of the movement to and within East Asia, but have not considered the underlying ideological mechanisms that enabled this transfer. This dissertation sets out to identify these mechanisms, referred to collectively throughout as the Clarté problematic. Borrowing Louis Althusser’s concept of the problematic, the study approaches Clarté as a distinct ideological phenomenon, separate from the movements for which it served as support. Chapter One considers the origins of the Clarté movement in Europe, with a discussion of its founder Henri Barbusse, his experiences in the Great War, and his attempts to create an international of intellectuals. Chapter Two turns to Komaki Ōmi, the founder of Tane maku hito, and highlights his association with Barbusse and efforts to link European anti-war movements with those in Japan. Chapter Three centers on the three-year existence of Tane maku hito. The journal’s efforts at social criticism and action are examined, concerns highlighted in its subtitle, hihan to kōdō; both fiction and criticism are considered. Chapter Four discusses the movement in Korea, specifically Kim Ki-jin’s efforts to replicate Tane maku hito with the journal Kaebyŏk. Chapter Five examines how the Clarté movement (and problematic) fell victim to the international conjuncture, being cast as an oppositional ideology before giving way to Marxism- Leninism. iv In addition to the construction of the “Clarté problematic” as a distinct object of study, the dissertation engages a period of intellectual and literary development of leftist literature that has not received as much attention as the later period of proletarian literature proper. Tane maku hito is traditionally placed at the fount of proletarian literature, but this study scrutinizes this assumption of theoretical continuity, arguing that what the journal was attempting to do was to propagate the Clarté movement, not found the new genre for which it is credited.
That Movie was so Hilarious Ne!' The Development of Japanese Interactional Particles Ne, Yo, and Yone in L2 Classroom Instruction
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2017-08) Hoshi, Saori; East Asian Languages and Literatures (Japanese)
The present study examines the development of L2 interactional competence (Hall, 1999; He & Young, 1998) by JFL learners in an explicitly instructed setting as evidenced by their metapragmatic development and use of Japanese interactional particles ne, yo, and yone in unscripted conversations with NSs and peer learners. More specifically, the study aims to investigate the role of pragmatics-focused instruction in the learners’ ability to participate in a range of assessment activities (Goodwin & Goodwin, 1992) using the particles ne, yo, and yone as resources to co-construct stance and achieve intersubjectivity (e.g., Du Bois & Kärkkäinen, 2012; Kärkkäinen, 2006) between participants in an ongoing interaction. To bridge the gap between the paucity of instructional treatment and the highly frequent use of the interactional particles in mundane Japanese conversation, an instructional approach that incorporated awareness-raising and conversational activities was proposed and implemented in a third semester JFL course for one semester. In order to examine the effects of instruction on the development of interactional competence as evidenced by the learners’ use of particles ne, yo, and yone in the conversation sessions, the study focuses on the following perspectives: 1) learners’ metapragmatic understanding of the variability in particle function and in the meanings that the particles can index; 2) learners’ use of the particles in ways that are consistent with what they were taught, and that potentially extend beyond their instructed learning in terms of form, function, and activity-relevant participation; and 3) the learners’ demonstration of ability to deploy these particles as resources for joint stance taking in the conversations with NS partners and peer learners in linguistically and culturally appropriate ways. Findings from the experimental group learners’ performance from the pre- and post-tests provide evidence that they have demonstrated metalinguistic development of the discourse functions of the particles in the described discourse situations. The conversation data revealed that the learners’ development of interactional competence is evidenced by their increasing ability to attend to, and design their own talk in a way for it to be understood and responded to by the recipient (Pekarek Doehler & Berger, 2016) through the use of the particles ne, yo, and yone for achieving joint construction of stance and intersubjectivity with their conversational partners. Moreover, the learners’ greater understanding and use of the particles through the instruction facilitate the emergence of learners’ agency, which provides the learners with an increased capacity to actively pick up linguistic affordances to develop their personal voice (Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013) to interact more creatively and meaningfully with their conversational partners.
Now Long Ago: Anachronism in Edo and Contemporary Japanese Literature
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2017-05) Smith, Christopher S.; East Asian Languages and Literatures (Japanese)
What is going on in a work a fiction when a samurai uses a cell phone? Anachronisms (things out of their time) such as this are certainly funny, and other anachronisms might be dismissed as mistakes on the part of the author. But are anachronisms really nothing more than errors or cheap comedic gags? This dissertation argues that anachronisms do important work on history, and explores this work that anachronisms perform in Japanese literature. Using theories of postmodern play, juxtaposition, and intertextuality, Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of the diologic, Azuma Hiroki’s theory of the cultural database, and other postmodern theories, I examine anachronism as a literary phenomenon that playfully summons up discourses about the past and reconfigures them in new ways by superimposing them on the present. However, anachronisms are inherently reflexive and playful, and cannot convincingly rewrite the past. They call attention to the work they are doing on history, exposing the absurdity of their project. History, of course, is an important site of social and cultural meaning. It is used as a source of identity, as well as to legitimate power. Anachronism, then, is a way that literature can playfully and self-consciously destabilize sociopolitical narratives and structures based on that history without convincingly rewriting history in its own act of power. I examine the projects being undertaken with anachronism in several texts from the contemporary period (late Shōwa to the present) and the Edo period (1600-1868). The Edo period’s circumstances are very different from those of the contemporary period, and so Edo texts are situated in very different contexts, and are engaged in very different projects. However, the Edo period also saw the maturation of a highly developed textual society, mass printing, and high literacy. Perhaps because of these familiar conditions, anachronism is widely apparent in Edo literature and theatre. Therefore, this dissertation examines anachronism in the Edo period as a literary technique that counterfactually and reflexively juxtaposes past and present to do work on history, while remaining cognizant that the hermeneutics and politics of the Edo period which these anachronisms worked on differ greatly from the postmodern present.

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