MUSHAKOJI Saneatsu (1885-1976) mentions Sylvia Pankhurst (1882- 1960), a British suffragette, twice in The The Complete Works of Mushakoji Saneatsu (Shogakukan, 1987-91). He sent her ‘A Reply Concerning a New Village' on 8th June in 1922 and wrote in Shirakaba , a monthly magazine for literature and fine arts, in January 1923, that he had received another letter of encouragement from Pankhurst.

　Based on a study conducted in the Newsroom of the British Library, this essay confirms that the English translation of ‘A Reply Concerning a New Village' was published in Workers' Dreadnought, a weekly socialist newspaper edited and issued by Pankhurst, on 21st October in 1922. Although it was an excellent translation of the Japanese text, it omitted the passage where MUSHAKOJI criticised Japanese socialists for their lack of understanding of the New Village Movement.

　On 25th November in 1922, Workers' Dreadnought again mentioned the New Village together with the Llano Co-operative Colony in Louisiana as attempt to realise the communist life. Pankhurst consistently supported the Russian Revolution and social democracy, expressing sympathy with views of Peter Kropotkin, William Blake, Edward Carpenter and William Morris. Thus the criticism of socialism, which MUSHAKOJI expressed in his ‘Reply Concerning a New Village', was removed when it was published in Workers' Dreadnought. Pankhurst understood the New Village Movement of MUSHAKOJI in her own socialist context.

　Tsurumi Yusuke (1885-1973), a politician and writer who actively engaged in public relations and diplomacy from the Taisho up to the Showa era, was also quite an avid reader of the works of Lord Byron (1788-1824), he even wrote Byron's biography. He started reading Byron's poetry around 1930 while on a tour in Europe and America. Inspired by Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812, 1816, 1818), he wrote a travel book entitled The Grand Tour of the West (Oubei Tairiku Yuki, 1933). In the chapter on Italian travel, Tsurumi quotes verses from the fourth canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and overlaps his own outlook towards Italy with that of Byron.

　However, there were differences between Tsurumi's view of Italy and that of Byron. While Byron likened his reduced circumstances to the fall of Venice at the beginning of the 19th century, and to the ruins of ancient Rome, Tsurumi observed the rise of Fascist Italy in the first half of the 20th century under Mussolini's rule, and there he witnessed the heroic spirit of the Italians that matched his ideals of a hero. Tsurumi ignores Byron's decadent ego, while quoting and interpreting the verses of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in a form that is convenient to his own heroism which leads to the causes of expansionism or imperialism.

　Hirotsu Kazuo is known as a liberalist who pursued his activity covering a wide range of fields which include translation, literary criticism, writing novels, publishing business, resistance to literary control by the government before the war, and defending the Matsukawa trial after the war. Thus, in studying his literature, the issues of “freedom and responsibility" become an essentialarguing point related to the root of his literary heritage.

　Until now, the studies on the reception of foreign literature related to the “freedom and responsibility” issues in the literature of Hirotsu had been focused on Russian literature. In this paper, I took up the way of his reception of Bernard Shaw, which has not been paid attention until now and I tried to apply a new interpretation focusing on the concept of “will”.

　The significance of Hirotsu's reception of Bernard Shaw can be summarized in following three points. The first point is the issue of “will". It rejects the absolute trust in the “life force" that was prevalent in the literary circle at that time and relativized the reception of Shaw. Secondly, in relativizing reception of Shaw, he discovered a void of ethics and became aware of the “bankruptcy of character and mind" existing within it. This has triggered the transformation of the Shaw-like “will" issue into a Hirotsu-like “will" issue, and the Hirotsu-like “freedom and responsibility" issue being its core started being viewed as not only just a personal issue, but rather a social issue. Finally, we have to recognize that as a practice of this issue, he tried to criticize Mushanokoji Saneatsu and secured his position in the literature circle.

　Hirotsu made his first step with the reception of the Shaw and recognized that the "freedom and responsibility" issues lay the basis of his own literature. However, further practices related to it were left as future tasks. As a result, Hirotsu started looking for the “freedom and responsibility" issues on the problem of the Other concerning the relations between the sexes.

　The present paper discusses “Otesei Miraiki" (“Handmade Future Tales"), a serial novel written by Rohan Kōda (1867-1947) and published in Jitsugyo Shonen (Business for Boys, Hakubunkan, 1908-1912) in 1911. It is one of the works penned between 1889 and 1912, when Rohan produced a number of stories to encourage and enlighten the young boys of the late Meiji period.

　The opening of the novel describes a group of boys who dream of success in the world of business and organize what is called “Bansa-kai" (Tea Circle). These boys purchase books together, exchange knowledge, and discuss a variety of topics. One day, they have decided to go see a man, reminiscent of Rohan himself, who is known for his abundant knowledge and commercial ideas for the future. His ideas of new enterprises range from wireless electricity transportation, night banking, the privatization of police, to chicken egg incubators using hot springs.

　Readers might question the actual sources of these futuristic ideas discussed in “Otesei Miraiki". As an investigation of the back issues of Jitsugyo Shonen would unveil, Rohan attempted to incorporate the real commercial trends of the era into the story, while indebted to Samuel Smiles' Self-Help (1859) as the intellectual background. It was a story, as I argue, written deliberately to produce a synergetic effect with other articles and advertisements published in the magazine.

　Kawabata Yasunari's last novel Dandelions centers on a young woman, Ineko, and her battle with “somagnosia", a fictional illness which makes it appear that other people's body is disappearing. At the end of the novel, Ineko becomes unable to see her lover Kuno, suggesting that “somagnosia" is a representation of the novel's style, which combines internally and externally focalized narratives. Accordingly, this paper examines the relationship between style and the body in Dandelions. The absence of a grammatical subject, a common aspect of the Japanese language, is tacitly used to evoke a sensation of an absent subject. Dandelions then adds complexity to this sensation by its unique usage of auxiliary verbs and multiple character's voices.

　To demonstrate this, this paper first analyzes Ineko's father's death scene, in which the narrative is both internally and externally focalized on Ineko, expressing the complicated nature of her fears, which are caused by both visual and non-visual perceptions as well as memories. This paper then argues that the scene can be interpreted as an internally focalized narrative of Kuno and/or Ineko's mother, who heard about the death from Ineko. The text thus grants an independent, singular presence to certain motifs, such as the rock that Ineko's father hit as he fell. Finally, this paper asserts that Ineko's mother's perception of Ineko's skin is a good example of this particular type of presence. The relationship between the mother's words and body illustrates the complexity of bodily sensation as represented by the narrative style of Dandelions.

　This paper will examine the influence of Christina Rossetti's work on the poems of Japanese tanka poet Hiroko Katayama (1878-1957), focusing particularly on the influence of Goblin Market (1862) on Hiroko's series of thirty-six tanka titled Mitsubachi (1910).

　Hiroko's place in the history of modern poetry in Japan has not yet been determined because she published only two collections of her own tanka poetry. Specifically, the characteristics of her early poems and her first collection have not been adequately studied. Nonetheless, Hiroko was an esteemed translator who worked under the pseudonym Mineko Matsumura. She mainly translated Celtic Revival literature into Japanese, including works by W. B. Yeats and J. M. Synge. Therefore, her early tanka poetry should be analyzed from the viewpoint of her reception of English literature.

　The following poem is the last of Hiroko's series of thirty-six tanka titled Mitsubachi .

　The dew of fruits that the demon recommended I eat has left too much thirst, as blood goes wrong on my tongue.

　It is obvious that this tanka was inspired by Goblin Market and readers can reinterpret the meanings of Mistubachi if this influence is considered.

　Hiroko should have been able to decipher the Christian symbolism of Goblin Market because she was educated in a mission school and knew about the spiritual insights of the Christian religion. Further, Christina Rossetti's work could have exerted a powerful impact on Hiroko, who was both a devoted housewife and a woman passionate about living her own life.