This paper studies the personality of Osayo, heroine of Ōgai' s “Yasui Fujin” (The Wife of Yasui, 1914) in terms of Confucianist teachings, as well as of Rainer Maria Rilke's philosophical idea‘ein Verhältnis außer aller Konvention (a relationship without the bounds of convention)’that he originally expressed in his play “Das tägliche Leben” (1902; translated as Everyday Life in Nine Plays, 1979).

　Mori Ōgai (1862 – 1922) wrote “Yasui Fujin”, a historical short story, based on the biography “Yasui Sokken Sensei” (1913) by Wakayama Kozo. To analyze how Ōgai portrayed Osayo in his work has been an intriguing topic for research. Osayo's personality has been interpreted mainly from the viewpoint of Rilke's belief ‘ein Verhältnis außer aller Konvention': a woman faithfully devoted to her husband.

　Yasui Sayo (1812-1862), who in the work is called affectionately Osayo-san, lived during the late feudal Tokugawa period as the wife of a leading Confucian scholar Yasui Sokken (1799 – 1876) to whom Sayo dedicated herself. With this fact in view, Osayo's personality could be examined in terms of Confucianism, especially of the Analects of Confucius, which has not been done in any previous study.

　Terayama Shuji (1935-1983) was a genre-straddling artist; a poet, critic, dramatist, photographer. Now, with the 25th anniversary of his death, his accomplishments have been well studied including the various activities of his theatre company, Tenjo-Sajiki founded in 1967, or his Tanka and Haiku, which he started to compose in the 1950s. However, in contrast to these solid studies, his works of the 1960s, the time when his activities were not with the theatre company but as a private practice, have not been properly considered. Also, the relation between Terayama and photography has not been well discussed yet.

　In this situation, There Are Battlefields in the City (Machi ni senjyo ari, 1968), which this paper studies, is a great example which covers two problems: “Terayama's works of the 1960s” and “Terayuma and photography”. This is because the book was written during the years 1966-68 and published with photographs taken by Nakahira Takuma (1938-) and Moriyama Daido (1938-), who occupy now a very important position in the history of Japanese photography.

　In this paper, we will examine first the theory of “Dialogue” that Terayama theorized in Postwar Poems (Sengo-shi, 1965). He made it clear in this book that creation should include accidents which even the author cannot anticipate. Next, we will consider the meaning of human collaboration in Terayama's activities during the 1960s and discuss the relation between Terayama and photography. By doing so, we will see how Terayama put into practice his ideal of “Dialogue” in producing the book.

　Hayashi Husao (1903–1975), one of the Japanese writers who converted from Marxism in the 1930s, read the complete works of Byron in 1935 while imprisoned for committing an ideological offense. Hayashi was deeply interested in understanding Byron as he wanted to write the historical novel Sōnen (I.1937, II.1940) based on him. Hayashi first clarified his understanding of Byron in Seinen (1934), the prelude to Sōnen. In Seinen, Hayashi regarded Byron as a liberalist who had a virtuous spirit contradicting his vicious appearance. According to Hayashi, Itō Hirobumi, a young loyalist of the Restoration period and the protagonist of Seinen, had a liberal ideal in common with Byron. When Hayashi decided to make Byron the core of Sōnen, he developed this idea to describe Itō, who grew into a middle-aged, liberal statesman of Meiji Period in Sōnen, as the “Japanese Byron”, by imposing a Byronic evil image on him.

　However, Hayashi's trial was unsuccessful. While it is true that at first Hayashi successfully adapted the image of Manfred, one of the Byronic heroes, to that of Itō in Sōnen, he gave up completing Sōnen. This is because while converting from Marxism into Romanticism, Hayashi lost interest in the Byronic dual image of purity and impurity. Hayashi's reception of Byron shows us how he would bear the tension, conflict, or paradox between the ideal and the real of the Japanese modernization.

　In the essay Yesterday and Today（Kinofu Kefu）by Tanizaki Junichiro, he mentions that the novel Moment in Peking by Lin Yutang was devoid of personal opinions and states that when the Sino-Japanese War was mentioned, Lin was extraordinarily sober, showing no indignation and vehemence. However, what Tanizaki had read was not the original novel but rather a translated version The Days in Peking（Pekin no Hi）by Tsuruta Tomoya. This version dramatically censored and hideously distorted Lin's description of the Japanese invasion and the outrages committed by the Japanese army. With careful and detailed research, Tanizaki's writing can be uncovered as an example of how some of the original descriptions were censored and distorted in the translated version. However, even considering its censorship, Tanizaki's comment to the effect that there were no personal viewpoints throughout the novel is by no means an accurate depiction of Tsuruta's translation. This paper also concerns Japan's social situation during the Sino-Japanese War and further analyzes Tanizaki's comments about China's modern literary works.

　This paper aims to clarify the trends and problems of representation observed in the literary works that Saryan Kim published in Japanese before 1941, and the direction of their subsequent developments in his later works.

　In Section I, I try to depict the mental trends of intellectuals on the Korean Peninsula during the “Japan and Korea as one” period (1937 -1945), and discuss Kim's ordeal as one to secure the representation of difference between Korean and Japanese self in contrast with other intellectuals at that time.

　In Section II, his Hikari no Nakani (In the Midst of Light) and Tenma (Pegasus) are discussed in the light of protagonists’ characters who struggle to reunite the Korean and Japanese divided selves in pursuit of his essential and secure identity. In the last part of these two works the “Japan and Korea as One” issue is commonly shared.

　In Section III, I point out the influence of Kitaro Nishida's idealistic way of philosophical thinking on Kim, focusing on Nishida's distinction between the general and the particular. My point is that Kim's approach to secure a double self as two, Korean and Japanese, equally competing ones might have the risk of re-strengthening the status quo political order of Japan and Korea at that time.

　In Section IV, an interpretive reading of Kim's Komei (Light and Darkness) is shown as an example of his consciousness against the disadvantage mentioned above. Deserving of special attention here is the alienation of the narrator towards a Korean maid by the name of “Toyo” and her marriage problem.

　As a Korean writer who uses Japanese, the case of Saryan Kim is a unique one. He can be understood as a new origin of a representational trend to secure Korean identity in a sense that he tries to avoid stereotyped homogeneous characters.

　Don Quixote was one of William Faulkner's favorite books, which he reread every year. He was interested especially in tragicomic and moral aspects of the protagonist's actions. Faulkner admitted that Don Quixote was similar to Gavin Stevens, an important character in the Snopes trilogy (The Hamlet, The Town and The Mansion), in the sense that both of them devoted themselves to a woman who does not need to be protected. Faulkner found moral and tragicomic elements in the shared proclivity. Analyzing the descriptions of Gavin and comparing them to those of Don Quixote, I attempt to clarify Faulkner's version of quixotism, which throws a light on Gavin's own desire motivating his chivalric and self-sacrificial acts. Faulkner's understanding of Don Quixote seems to be based on a romanticized image of the knight, a hero who still maintains forgotten morality and is willing to make every effort to accomplish his ideal. Yet, Gavin's quixotism has an affinity with comic and satirical aspects of Don Quixote and its critique of chivalric romance. Faulkner's rendition of Gavin is predicated on the critical view of morality built upon an unreal setting. Gavin can be regarded as Faulkner's response to Don Quixote, which should be distinguished from the Romantic reading of the novel in our contemporary age.

　Émile Zola (1840-1902), l’auteur des Rougon-Macquart, tire de la théorie de Prosper Lucas la loi de l’hérédité qui lui fournit non seulement le système de personnages nécessaire à son cycle de romans familiaux mais aussi des thèmes et des épisodes pour chaque roman. Ce sont seulement des épisodes et des thèmes que Nagai Kafū (1879-1959) utilise pour la rédaction des ses premières oeuvres (1902-03) parce qu’il n’a pas d'intention l’intention d’écrire un cycle de romans familiaux.

　C'est dans La Fleur de l'enfer (Jigoku no Hana) que Kafū, en lisant La Bête humaine (1890), roman de Zola où s'observe le mélange de la théorie de meurtre héréditaire et de l’évolution mythique (dégénérescence, atavisme...), et en réduisant l'évolution à l’hérédité, crée un personnage qui se laisse dominer par ses pulsions bestiales. Cependant cette interprétation très particulière de l'hérédité n'est pas reprise par la suite dans les autres oeuvres de Kafū.

　Par ailleurs, dans L'Ambition (Yashin), Kafū décrit le conflit entre la famille féodale et la liberté individuelle en s’inspirant du récit du Docteur Pascal (1893) : la fatalité héréditaire et la libération de cette fatalité. Cette analogie entre la fatalité de l’hérédité et celle de la famille féodale, se retrouve également dans une oeuvre de Tayama Katai (1871-1930) et dans une création postérieure de Kafū.

　La loi de l’hérédité s’est ainsi fait entendre dans le monde littéraire au Japon comme modèle d’analyse des liens familiaux où un effet négatif se transmet d'une génération à la suivante.

　Cette étude propose d’examiner les significations de l’expression de la couleur bleue qu’on peut observer dans les trois premiers recueils de poèmes de Kitahara Hakushû(1885-1942) : Jashûmon(1909), Tokyo Keibutushi Sonota(1913) et Omoide(1911), du point de vue de l’acceptation de Maurice Maeterlinck(1862-1949). Dans les arts symboliques européens, en général, la couleur bleue remplit une fonction importante. Hakushû lui-même nourrissait un vif intérêt pour l’expression des couleurs, notamment celle de la couleur bleue; il est donc fort probable qu’épris de l’expression de cette couleur, particulièrement présentée dans les oeuvres de Maeterlinck, Hakushû l’a adoptée dans ses propres créations.

　Tout d’abord, dans un certain nombre de poèmes composés autour de la publication de Jashûmon, le bleu, symbole du désir amoureux, représentation de l’ennui, peut être observé. Ultérieurement, dans les poèmes écrits durant la période de “La Société de Pan”(1908-1911) et inclus dans Tokyo Keibutushi Sonota, se succèdent de nombreuses descriptions des paysages du littoral de Tokyo dépeintes d’un bleu évoquant la dévastation des villes. A travers son essai, on peut constater que Hakushû ressentait, dans les nuances de bleu visibles dans les oeuvres de Maeterlinck, la solitude qui habite les étrangers vivants dans les villes, sentiment qu’il partageait.

　Dans le prologue du recueilOmoide figure “les souvenirs, lumière parée de bleu”: le bleu devenant une couleur importante dans la symbolisation du monde. Le présent et le monde des souvenirs se trouvent en relation par le biais de deux types de bleu. On peut supposer que les motifs et les coloris de Maeterlinck ont contribué à l’imagination poétique de Hakushû.

　Plus tard, la diminution nette de l’expression du bleu dans ses créations ira de pair avec une baisse de l’influence de la poésie occidentale. A l’instar de L’Oiseau bleu de Maeterlinck, où un oiseau bleu guide les pérégrinations du héros, le bleu fut certainement pour Hakushû la couleur qui l’aiguilla vers l'affirmation de son identité en tant que poète.

　Lu Yishi (1913-) was a poet who devoted himself to literary activities from August 1942-1945 in Shanghai. This paper will concretely examine how Lu Yishi , in the area ruled by Wang Jingwei's regime which supported Japan, carried out his literary activities dealing with Japan as well as finding common ground with Japan. The first chapter demonstrates the interchange between Lu Yishi and Japanese writers in wartime Shanghai by examining the image of Lu Yishi depicted in the literary works or diaries of Ikeda Katumi, Takami Jyun, and Hotta Yoshie. The second chapter examines the situation when Lu Yishi attended the Third Meeting of the Great East Asian Writers held in Nanjing. Lu Yishi read a poem at the opening ceremony for the meeting and showed his respect for Wang Jingwei too; however, he published an essay in the newspaper minimizing the significance of this meeting. The third chapter examines the broader relationship between Lu Yishi and Japanese literature. The conclusion points out that, although Lu Yishi served as an official for Wang Jingwei's Nanjing government, he was markedly inactive in his job; though he did write political poems for Wang Jingwei's regime, he did not collect these poems in his books. In the conclusion, the author also demonstrates that despite such a harsh circumstance as that of occupied Shanghai, Lu Yishi cautiously wavered between resisting or cooperating with the Japanese and had to compromise with them a great deal, all the while pursuing his aesthetic ideals.

　In Chap.14 of Soseki's Sorekara (And Then) it is related that Daisuke, the protagonist, was once given the nickname ‘arbiter elegantiarum' by Michiyo's brother. Although the term not only indicates Daisuke's character but also works as a keyword to the novel, its immediate source has not been identified so far. This Latin phrase literally means ‘a judge of matters of taste’, and its origin is traced back to Tacitus’ Annals, Bk.XVI, Chap.18, as ‘elegantiae arbiter’ , the epithet of Petronius, the consul elect and chosen companion of Nero. He is also known as the author of Satyricon, a marvellous piece of Menippean satire.

　Soseki's library includes five works with the phrase in the text: Life of Addison by Dr Johnson, A History of Criticism by Saintsbury, Quo Vadis by Sienkiewicz, Gryll Grange by T. L. Peacock, and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Marginalia in these copies, as well as lectures and comments by Soseki, prove his close reading of them. Also he took much interest in the personality of Petronius, and was deeply impressed by his way of death depicted in the last chapter of Quo Vadis. It is to be noted that this novel and Sorekara show remarkable resemblance in some important passages. This paper aims to clarify what Soseki implied with the phrase in Sorekara, and to consider the influence of Quo Vadis, among others, on Soseki's portrayal of Daisuke as an ‘arbiter elegantiarum’ .