Asian Studies Theses and Dissertations

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Open Access
A Space of Renegotiation: Japanese Shachūhaku Narratives
(University of Oregon, 2022-10-04) Bartholomew, David; Freedman, Alisa
In the past decade there has been a growing interest in representations of shachūhaku, or car camping, in Japanese media. In this thesis, I examine three different kinds of media representations of shachūhaku to understand how these narratives provide the distance from the rhythms of everyday life necessary to renegotiate one’s place within the hegemonies that structure them. Each kind of media that I examine has its own formal considerations, and each one utilizes both the spatial configurations of the vehicle and the narrative arc of shachūhaku to bring different aspects of the quotidian under scrutiny, but they all ultimately engage in this renegotiation, whether it be with the concept of death, gender, labor, or home.
Open Access
American Mindfulness: A Case Study of the Transnational Reception of “Mindfulness – Maindofurunesu” in Japan
(University of Oregon, 2019-09-18) Duong, Anh Tu; Unno, Mark
Over the past few decades, “mindfulness” has become popular and spread throughout the world, from North American to Australia. It has been applied in numerous context: mental health, education, and business, among others. Although mindfulness has its roots in Buddhist meditation practices, it has been removed from its religious contexts and secularized. Significantly, this standardized form of mindfulness, which can be called American Mindfulness, has been reimported back into Asia. In the case of Japan, American Mindfulness has become popular at the public level, and there are prominent Zen Buddhist priests claiming that American Mindfulness is in fact a part of Japanese Zen. Through analysis of the broader Japanese cultural environment and the Japanese Buddhist context, this thesis will explain how Japanese Zen Buddhists come to make their claim on American Mindfulness.
Open Access
Anna May Wong and Hazel Ying Lee--Two Second Generation Chinese American Women in World War II
(University of Oregon, 2012) Sui, Qianyu; Sui, Qianyu; Asim, Ina
Applying a historical approach which contextualizes ethnic and gender perspectives, this thesis investigates the obstacles that second-generation Chinese American women encountered as they moved into the public sphere. This included sexual restraints at home and racial harassment outside. This study examines, as well, the opportunities that stimulated these women to break from their confinements. Anna May Wong and Hazel Ying Lee will serve as two role models among this second generation of women who successfully combined their cultural heritage with their education in the U.S. Their contributions inspired a whole generation of young bi-cultural women of their time. I will argue that, although the second generation had gone through cultural acculturation and resistance toward American mainstream culture, they constructed their new Chinese American identity during World War II through a synthesis of their contribution to the gender relations and ethnic identification in nationalist project.
Open Access
Artistic and Religious Aspects of Nosatsu (Senjafuda)
(University of Oregon, 1985-06) Steinmetz, Mayumi Takanashi
Nosatsu is both a graphic art object and a religious object. Until very recently, scholars have ignored nosatsu because of its associations with superstition and low-class, uneducated hobbyists. Recently, however, a new interest in nosatsu has revived because of its connections to ukiyo-e. Early in its history, nosatsu was regarded as a means of showing devotion toward the bodhisattva Kannon. However, during the Edo period, producing artistic nosatsu was emphasized more than religious devotion. There was a revival of interest in nosatsu during the Meiji and Taisho periods, and its current popularity suggests a national Japanese nostalgia toward traditional Japan. Using the religious, anthropological, and art historical perspectives, this theses will examine nosatsu and the practices associated with it, discuss reasons for the changes from period to period, and explore the heritage and the changing values of the Japanese common people.
Open Access
Aspirational Migration: The Case of Chinese Birth Tourism in the U.S.
(University of Oregon, 2017-09-06) Folse, Brandon; Otis, Eileen
The ways in which individuals navigate the globe today complicates previous conceptualizations of migration and mobility. Once such mode of contemporary movement which challenges scholars is known as "birth tourism." This research considers birth tourism to be a form of "lifestyle migration," which I label aspirational migration. By analyzing the motivations which drive many parents to give birth abroad, I shed light on the complex and risky process, which involves a host of players, including family, friends, and a global birth tourism infrastructure. Through this drawn-out process, which begins well before the decision to give birth abroad and continues into the distant future, I argue that birth tourists and their foreign-born children become aspirational migrants and acquire cosmopolitan capital.
Open Access
Authenticity and the Copy: Analyzing Western Connoisseurship of Chinese Painting through the Works of Zhang Daqian
(University of Oregon, 2014-06-17) Menton, Sara; Lin, Jenny
This thesis examines conflicting attitudes regarding artistic authenticity and differing approaches to connoisseurship vis-à-vis the field of Chinese art and its reception in Europe and North America. Although this thesis examines both Chinese and Western approaches to the copy and highlights different cultural methods, this is not a Chinese versus the West argument. This thesis displays how concepts are combined in the Western art field to reach differing conclusions about a painting's authenticity. Specifically, this thesis analyzes the art of Chinese painter Zhang Daqian (1899-1983) and the debate surrounding Along the Riverbank, a painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection attributed to 10th century Chinese painter Dong Yuan (c. 934-c. 962). Many believe this painting is one of Zhang's forgeries. The controversies surrounding Zhang's art and forgeries reveal diverging conceptions of art education and methods of determining authenticity and the complexities of evaluating Chinese art in non-Chinese academic contexts.
Open Access
Can Xue's Spatialized Vision: Buildings and the Exploration of the Soul
(University of Oregon, 2012) Pi, Popo; Pi, Popo; Groppe, Alison
This thesis centers on the question of how the representation of buildings opens up possibilities for investigating Can Xue's fiction as literature with universal concern about humanity. It explores the significance of Can Xue's employment of buildings in her works from three aspects. The first aspect regards buildings as the reflection of the structure of the soul. The second aspect situates buildings in their relationship with residents and explores the connection between the buildings/residents relationship and that of body and soul. The last aspect sees buildings as the microcosmic projection of Can Xue's fictional space. This study places textual constitution at the center of investigation through the approach of close textual analysis. It marks an attempt to reconsider the method of literary investigation in the field of modern Chinese literature which has been dominated by cultural and historical approaches.
Embargo
Capital's Chinese Pigpen: Political Ecologies of Pig Production in the People's Republic of China
(University of Oregon, 2016-02-23) Conant, Abram; Buck, Daniel
This thesis analyzes contemporary political ecologies of pig farming in the People's Republic of China, as well as emergent discourses of “meatification” and the industrialization of Chinese agriculture more broadly. Situated within these extensive, heterogenous, and dynamic assemblages, which I contextualize in historical-geographical terms throughout Chapter I, I narrow my argument to three relatively neglected problematics that occupy subsequent chapters: the role of pigs in the affective construction of modernity, the microbiological zones of insecurity intertwined with industrial pig production, and the re-valorization of urban food waste through peri-urban pig farming, including so-called “garbage pigs.” Animated by broad political, ethical, ontological, and epistemological concerns about society and ecology, culture and technology, and food and the mass-production of commodified organisms, this research helps demonstrate how fraught relationships between pigs, people, and place participate in the politics of "modernity" in the People's Republic of China.
Open Access
Changing Rurality in Contemporary China: Double Commodification of the Countryside
(University of Oregon, 2024-01-09) Wu, Shuxi; Buck, Daniel
This thesis examines contemporary rural transformations in China. I suggest that a different spatial relationship among production, reproduction, and consumption is in the making, grafted onto the urban-rural divide. A different urban-rural relationship is also in the making, shaped by changing divisions and integrations of labor that go into production, reproduction, and consumption. I argue that these two processes are occurring through a double commodification of the countryside, which produces what I call “rural commodity” and “rural-as-commodity”. “Rural commodity” refers to the ways in which products of rural labor are absorbed into urban-centered accumulation processes. “Rural-as-commodity” refers to how rurality itself has become an object of desire and exchange. These two forms of commodity collaborate to transform the urban-rural division of labor in China to facilitate accumulation. I focus specifically on rural tourism and media representations of new rurality to illustrate how these two forms of commodification converge.
Open Access
Chinese Perceptions of the Environment
(University of Oregon, 1997-06) Fang, Hong
How to protect the global environment and how to obtain a sustainable development are the major concerns of the international community today. China, with the biggest population and the highest economic growth rate in the last decade, has become the center of the concern. This thesis presents and analyzes some contemporary Chinese perceptions of the environment. It tries to provide a historical origin and a cultural context for these Chinese perceptions of the environment. Everybody in China today has become the daily decision maker for the environment. Since the Chinese perceptions of environment, in some degree, decides the Chinese environmental behaviors, an understanding of these perceptions is important for China's environmental law enforcement and the promotion of public participation in China's environmental protection.
Open Access
Chinese Perceptions of the Environment
(University of Oregon, 1997-06) Fang, Hong
How to protect the global environment and how to obtain a sustainable development are the major concerns of the international community today. China, with the biggest population and the highest economic growth rate in the last decade, has become the center of the concern. This thesis presents and analyzes some contemporary Chinese perceptions of the environment . It tries to provide a historical origin and a cultural context for these Chinese perceptions of the environment . Everybody in China today has become the daily decision maker for the environment . Since the Chinese perceptions of environment, in some degree, decides the Chinese environmental behaviors, an understanding of t hese perceptions is important for China's environmental law enforcement and the promotion of public participation in China's environmental protection .
Open Access
"Chineseness" in Malaysian Chinese Education Discourse: The Case of Chung Ling High School
(University of Oregon, 2012) Goh, Jing Pei; Goh, Jing Pei; Buck, Daniel
The Chinese education issues in Malaysia appear frequently in political discourse, often featuring contentious discussions of language learning and national education policies. Applying an historical approach to contextualize a political discourse, this thesis examines the politics and transformation of Malaysian Chinese education, in microcosm, at the level of a renowned Chinese school, Chung Ling High School in Penang. It explores and maps the question of "Chineseness" through the examination of the history and development of Chung Ling since its establishment in 1917. This thesis also aims to elucidate the complex negotiation between multiple stakeholders of the Chinese community which took place at different historical junctures in a postcolonial and multi-ethnic nation. I discuss memorial activities for two deceased educationists, David Chen and Lim Lian Geok, which have been readapted into contemporary discourse by different factions of educationists to express their dissatisfactions toward state hegemony on education policies. Lastly, I argue that the persistent pursuit of "Chineseness" is counterproductive to the aim of safeguarding interests of Chinese schools within and outside the national education system today.
Open Access
Constructing a New Asian Masculinity: Reading Lilting Against Other Films by Asian Filmmakers
(University of Oregon, 2016-10-27) Cheng, Feng; Chan, Roy
In western media, Asian men have traditionally represented as either effeminized or emasculated. First providing a historical and ideological account for such representations, this thesis proceeds to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the three strategies that Asian filmmakers have adopted to counter this stereotype: the assimilationistic strategy, the segregationistic strategy and the integrationistic strategy. Eventually, this thesis proposes a new way to cope with dilemma by providing a close reading of a British independent film, Lilting. It argues that a fourth strategy, which is named the dynamic strategy, can be detected. Because in this film masculinity is presented as a fluid quality that flows through different characters and does not attach to race or any other fixed identity, there is no need to struggle against the demands imposed by the white hegemony.
Open Access
Establishing National Identity in the Twentieth-Century China: Traces of Russian and Ukrainian Literature in the New Chinese Literature
(University of Oregon, 2018-09-06) Korovianska, Veronika; Chan, Roy
Russian literature is traditionally regarded as one that served a model and guide for Chinese intellectuals in developing their national literature. It is also recognized that Eastern European literatures drew much attention of Chinese intellectuals in their quest for national identity and modernization. This thesis is aimed at providing a more detailed look at the Chinese- Slavic literary discourse of the 1920’s, focusing on Russian literature as a recognized literary “authority” of the time, and Ukrainian literature as an example of a literature of an oppressed nation, which went under both Russian and Eastern European “labels” at the time. I argue that challenged by a deep social and political crisis, Chinese intellectuals were compelled to develop a unique form of national identity, basing it on two usually mutually exclusive forms of nationalism, which manifested itself in the literary works of the period.
Open Access
An Examination of Modern Expressions of Mindfulness Practice: Pertinent Questions and Potential Pitfalls
(University of Oregon, 2014-09-29) Kane, Matthew; Unno, Mark
This thesis examines relevant questions and potential limitations/risks that arise when mindfulness, a traditional Buddhist religious practice, is implemented within modern Western society. It begins with an examination of mindfulness practice found within the Buddhist tradition, in particular within the Theravada and Zen schools, and moves on to address modern expressions of secular mindfulness practice found in the West. I survey two prevalent cases: mindfulness in the field of psychotherapy and the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program as examples. This thesis concludes with a discussion of important questions/drawbacks that arise in the modern, Western setting: namely, questions about fundamental cultural biases, teaching qualifications, the religious-secular line, commodification, and underlying company/institution intentions, to name a few. I argue that as the field of mindfulness continues to grow, these questions must be taken into account in order for open dialogue to ultimately result in positive development within the field.
Embargo
From Modern Girl to Post-Modern Girl: State, Society, and Self
(University of Oregon, 2016-02-23) Rose, Kimberly; Walley, Glynne
The Japanese state has long attempted to control the choices and behaviors of women through campaigns of moral suasion and social management. These campaigns have varied in terms of their efficacy but have all endeavored to encourage women to embrace the “good wife, wise mother” ideals espoused in ryosai kenbo ideology, often for the purported good of the nation. Leading up to WWII, these campaigns were effective in undermining the Modern Girl and eventually squeezing her out of existence. The bursting of Japan’s economic bubble in the early 1990s, however, created the Post-Modern Girl, who, like the Modern Girl, has particular attitudes about marriage, children, work, and sexuality. Unlike the Modern Girl, however, the Post-Modern Girl has survived nearly three decades since her emergence. This thesis examines these two figures and their converging and diverging trajectories and explores the limits of state control in the lives of modern Japanese women.
Open Access
The Goddesses' Shrine Family: The Munakata through the Kamakura Era
(University of Oregon, 2009-06) Morley, Brendan Arkell, 1982-
This thesis presents an historical study of the Kyushu shrine family known as the Munakata, beginning in the fourth century and ending with the onset of Japan's medieval age in the fourteenth century. The tutelary deities of the Munakata Shrine are held to be the progeny of the Sun Goddess, the most powerful deity in the Shinto pantheon; this fact speaks to the long-standing historical relationship the Munakata enjoyed with Japan's ruling elites. Traditional tropes of Japanese history have generally cast Kyushu as the periphery of Japanese civilization, but in light of recent scholarship, this view has become untenable. Drawing upon extensive primary source material, this thesis will provide a detailed narrative of Munakata family history while also building upon current trends in Japanese historiography that locate Kyushu within a broader East Asian cultural matrix and reveal it to be a central locus of cultural production on the Japanese archipelago.
Open Access
Japan' s Jewish 'Other': Antisemitism in Prewar and Wartime Japan
(University of Oregon, 2008-06) Pallister, Casey J., 1981-
Although the Japanese government did not persecute European Jewish refugees who came to reside within the borders of its growing empire in the 1930s and early 1940s, Japanese antisemitism increased in fervency during the war years. With government officials, intellectuals, and the media serving as conduits to the Japanese public, the "Jewish enemy" was blamed for a wide range of domestic and international problems. The negative characteristics attributed to Jews served to highlight, by contrast, the positive characteristics with which Japanese identified their own nationality, morality, and humanity. "The Jews" thus assumed the role of the antithetical Western "Other," providing Japanese with a tangible focus for their wrath against the wartime Western enemy. Japanese antisemitism, in short, was not a pale reflection of Nazism, as some have argued, but rather was part and parcel of the long-standing Japanese essentialization of the Western "Other."
Open Access
Migrants in Shanghai: An Analysis of Verbal Pejoration in Weibo
(University of Oregon, 2018-09-06) Song, Depei; Jing-Schmidt, Zhuo
This thesis examines 硬盘Yingpan ‘hard drive,’ a newly created online derogatory code word referring to the migrants in Shanghai against the historical background of discrimination of migrants in Shanghai. Based on corpus data from Chinese social media, I examine the usage patterns of this derogatory word. The results show four salient speech acts in which this word is used. These are 1) complaints about migrants, 2) abusive commands, 3) self-victimization of the locals, and 4) lamentation over the loss of Shanghai identity. These usage patterns reflect the impacts of societal changes as a result of mass migration in contemporary China. This study has implications for research of migration and the consequential societal tensions in societies across the globe.
Open Access
Mizuko Kuyo Online: Religious Ritual and Internet Space in Contemporary Japan
(University of Oregon, 2013-10-03) DePaulo, Julie; Freedman, Alisa
This thesis looks at three different Japanese websites to examine how each spreads information about mizuko kuyō and how each provides online spaces for users in which they can share their own experiences with the ceremony. The goal is to show how perceptions of mizuko kuyō have changed with the advent of the Internet and the rise of Japanese Internet culture. Additionally this study shows how individuals now actively participate in dialogues about mizuko kuyō online and how this affects mizuko kuyō as a cultural practice. Emphasis is placed on the shift from mizuko kuyō being a temple dominated religious practice to a more secular and practitioner-focused ritual.