In July 1935, one of Ernest Thompson Seton’s animal stories, “Lobo; the King of Currumpaw，” was published in Dôbutsu Bungaku (Animal literature) Magazine. This work was the Japanese readers' introduction to Seton. His works were collected into book form as Dôbutsu-ki, and gained great popularity in wartime Japan.

　However, the acceptance ot Seton’s works was quite different in the U.S. Even though Seton’s works widely circulated among urban American readers at the beginning of 20^th century, his reputation was seriously damaged by two significant events: the “Nature Fakers”controversy and the decline of the Nature-Study movement. Today, most of Seton's publications have gone out of print and he has often been called “America's forgotten artist-naturalist.”

　In this paper, I will compare the receiption of Seton’s animal stories in Japan and America, and determine why they were so favorably accepted in one country and not the other. I will argue that the social placement of Dôbutsu-ki was also closely related to the trend of Japanese wartime education in the 1930's, specifically in regards to the pedagogical argument concerning 'science study' and the governmental censorship of children’s readings. Also, there existed the unreasonable premise that animal stories should be categorized as children’s literature. In this paper, I will also investigate the world-wide contexts existing behind this premise.

Vera; or The Nihilistsis Oscar Wilde’s first dramatic work. Privately published in 1880, the play was to be performed first in 1881,a year marked by the assassinations of Tsar Alexander II and American President James Garfield, and terrorism worldwide. Cancellation three weeks before its opening undeniably reflected lack of public acceptance for the play, which hints at a sympathetic rendering of the Tsar’s assassin. An American production in 1883 similarly ended in failure, and Vera has not been performed in the United States or Britain since.

　Vera was introduced to Japan for the first time in November 1911. Translated by critic and novelist Uchida Roan as ‘Higeki Kakumei Fujin’，it was serialized over two months in the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun, a leading daily newspaper. In January that same year, well-known anarchist Kotoku Shusui had been charged with high treason for planning the assassination of the Meiji Emperor (1852-1912) and sentenced to death. The secrecy surrounding the hearings and the hasty execution had a major unsettling effect on society. After collecting information from many people involved in the case, Uchida concluded that the charge had been fabricated by the authorities.

　In an unprecedented translator's foreword published three days before the translation began to run, Roan stated that the play made no political statement, but the fact that Roan and the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun collaborated in publishing the translation to the very end can be considered as expression of protest at a time when freedom of speech was clearly in danger. The fact that in Japan the play was included in the collected works of Oscar Wilde published in Japan in 1920 and published again as a monograph in 1932 can be seen as an indication of the high level of public interest in the Kotoku case.

　Ippei Okamoto’s “The Picture Story of Botchan” appeared in the 1917 December issue of Chuobungaku (Shunyodo) as a serial, and was published consecutively until the July issue of the following year. Characteristically, each picture included a 300 to 400 character excerpt from the original story and was published in sections. In short, Botchan was a story recollected from different layers of “memories,” and in order to represent these “memories”, the narrator manipulated the narration and wording by intentionally changing its position. Ippei was constantly conscious of the narrator's position within the story and this was represented through his pictures.

　On the other hand, Koichiro’s Cartoon Botchan (Shinchosha, 1918) created his own version of the original and in the reconstructed narration he attached a 160 character text to the 102 pictures in the work. Accordingly, Koichiro’s work maintains a constant distance between the narrator and the main character, and in this recreation each picture appears as if it were a scene from a theater production.

　Ippei’s attempt to represent as close as possible the sensory experience and its memories through an acute reading of Soseki’s narration, alternating from close-ups to a bird’s-eye view of the text, and Koichiro’s abstract version of the original Botchan, merging the several positions possessed by the narrator into a single third-person narration, are meaningful, even if unintentionally so, because they clearly represent the controversy that has since resulted over the interpretation of Soseki’s Botchan.

　The fact that the movies, plays, television dramas and other such genres utilized in reproductions of Botchan have since then shied away from using Ippei’s picture and text expression, and have instead chosen to adopt Koichiro’s more fixed composition, should be noted, and I intend to continue my analysis in this area.

　After finding its way from folklore themes into the Gothic novels of the late 18th century, the motif of the Doppelgänger developed into German Romanticism’s favorite subject of the double personality. E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “Trinzessin Brambilla”(1821) and E.A. Poe’s “William Wilson”(1839) both presented a story of an ego-centric main character experiencing a metamorphosis through meeting with and confronting his Doppelgänger. Romanticism, in its burst of subjective imagination, tried to rebuild communication between the symbolic realm of the human subconscious and the conscious.

　The two novels represented this rebuilding in the interactions between the main character’s ego and its Doppelgänger. The whole story of Hoffmann’s work and the climax of Poe’s were both situated in the Roman Carnival. This external, illusionary world of festivity reflects the internal confusion of the ego. Festivity transforms reality into a different realm where the a-logos makes a fool of the logos. This is the right topos for a story of the alter ego as treated by Romanticism. And Italian festivity, with all its theatricality, enables the most direct expression of the very motif of the alter ego by providing a paradigm of a transforming identity. In addition, both novels give a crucial role to the mirror, which is a device inseparable from the alter ego. Thus, the two texts are similar in their basic scheme.

　They are, however, completely different in the ways they look at two characteristics of Doppelgänger and festivity, namely repetity and subversity. The narrator of “William Wilson” never goes beyond his closed ego and ultimately falls into an eternal sequence of repeated self-references. In this endless repetition of self-talks, subversity makes the counter-ego loom larger as something that threatens the ego. Conversely, “Prinzessin Brambilla” presents subversity as something that provides opportunities for the ego to break up and renew itself. And repetity functions as the driving force that carries the ego upward toward a higher self in the psychic movement between its two forms.

　The concept of “Deaf Culture” recognizes the deaf as a linguistic minority who use sign language. In fact，some deaf describe themselves as “Deaf ” with a capital “D,” just as African Americans use the word “Black” to express their pride in being black. This concept questions the values of the hearing majority that are being taken for granted. Just as notions of “heterosexuality” have been created from the perspectives of “Gay Culture” the values of hearing society can be also relativized as “Hearing Culture.”

　In discussing the relationship between “Deaf Culture” and “Hearing Culture,” this paper focuses in particular on the experience of people whose parents are deaf. These people are called “Coda” which stands for “Children Of Deaf Adults.” Coda can hear physically but culturally are associated with the deaf. For example, some Coda acquire sign language as their first language. These Coda, who mediate between their parents and the hearing majority, have much in common with second generation of immigrants. Not only do they interpret languages but they also translate cultures and mitigate cultural conflict. However, mockery by and pity from hearing people make Coda feel embarrassed or inferior about their background. This sense of shame and low self-esteem can lead to a sense of guilt.

　Through the analysis of autobiographies and essays of Coda, this paper tries to describe the cultural friction between the hearing and the deaf. By doing so, it also suggests that cultural borders are not always associated with nationality or geographic distribution.

　In the 1820s, Russian poetry, led by A.S.Pushkin, consisted of its own poetic language and form. At the same time, many Pushkin imitators appeared. Some Russian poets began to search for a new poetic style, and they looked to foreign countries. In the first half of 19^th century, Russian literature accepted diverse elements such as Byron, Ossian, Schiller and so forth. We can not ignore German romantic idealism，especially F.W.J. Schelling’s philosophy. Comparing poems of F.I.Tiutchev (1803-1873), who had friendly relations with Schelling in Munich, and works of the Society of Wisdom Lovers, which published the quarterly literary and philosophical almanac Mnemosyne (1823-1825) and popularized Schelling’s philosophy in Russia, this paper examines the ways Russian poetry accepted Schelling’s philosophy.

　Until now, many researchers have mentioned that Schelling’s natural philosophy and his view of the union of human beings and nature influenced the poems of Tiutchev and the Society. But this paper indicates that for Russian literature there is a more important theme，“Self-knowledge and nature” . Self-knowledge is one of the essentials of Schelling’s philosophy. D.V. Venevitinov (1805-1827)，the leading poet of the Society, thought that humans, being united with nature, must obtain Self-knowledge. But he died young and his ideas were not fully expressed in his poems and by other poets in the Society. Tiutchev wrote the poem “Self-conscious”(1848-1850) based on Schelling’s idea of Human Freedom and Evil. In this poem, a human being, faced with nature, is conscious of his own being. It seems that Tiutchev represented Self-knowledge as Venevitinov thought.

　Tiutchev’s concept of “Self-knowledge and nature” influenced later Russian writers. Through Tiutchev’s poetry，Schelling’s philosophy indirectly continues to live in Russian literature.

　There are significant similarities in the versions of the Urashima legend as told by Lafcadio Hearn and by Washington Irving. As a matter of fact, Hearn was so taken by Chamberlain’s version of “Urashima” that when he wrote “The Dream of a Summer Day” he attempted his own analysis of the Urashima legend.

　Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” is often described as an American “Urashima” story by several scholars, including Mori Ogai. Hearn felt the same way but indicates Irving’s “The Adalantado of the Seven Cities” has more similarities than that of “Rip Van Winkle.” Hearn suggests, “There is another, much more like the story of 'Urashima' than 'Rip Van Winkle' is... I am sure that... you will agree with me... that it bears a very strong resemblance to the story of 'Urashima.'”This commentary is crucial if we intend to understand Hearn’s ideas concerning the Urashima legend, as well as one of the main motifs of his own stories.

　Hearn’s greatest interest in “Adalantado” was its theme of betrayal, which is also true of “Urashima.” However，there is no such element in “Rip.” This is why Hearn indicates an association with “Adalantado” to the Urashima legend rather than “Rip.” Specifically, the betrayal between men and women is a key aspect to consider in the analysis of Hearn in works such as Yukionna and his interpretation of the Urashima legend.

　In the process of globalization many peripheral regions have undergone a trans-formation of original native culture under the high pressure of a major metropolitan culture: this phenomenon may be referred to as “creolization” in its wider meaning.

　Inhabitants of Taiwan were obliged to learn Japanese under Japanese colonial rule (1895-1945). Ikeda Toshio, a Japanese schoolteacher, who married a Taiwanese, tried to collect Taiwanese folktales. Because of their Japanization, Taiwanese children of the 1930s wrote down, in Japanese, folktales that had been told to them in Taiwanese by their parents. Nishikawa Mitsuru (1908-1999) selected and rewrote these compositions and published 24 of them in Kareitō Minwashū in 1942. The book was retranslated into Chinese and a bilingual edition appeared in 1999 from Zhiliang publishers in Taipei under the same title with the same Chinese characters, but this time to be pronounced Hualidao minhuaji. This circuitous homecoming of folktales reminds us of the homecoming of Creole folktales, which were collected and rewritten in English by Lafcadio Hearn (1850- 1904) in Martinique and were later retranslated into French or of the homecoming of “Yuki Onna”（a Snow Woman) and other Japanese ghostly stories, which were collected and rewritten by Hearn in English and were later retranslated into Japanese.

　In this paper “Hexian”（a Clam Woman)，a Taiwanese folk tale retold by Nishikawa，is compared with “Yuki Onna，” retold by Heam，for the similarity of their respective meanings in the cultural histories of creole Taiwan and creole Japan. This paper will demonstrate the process by which people living in peripheral regions try to discover their identity in folklore which has often been collected and recorded by outsiders.