In the "Fukiage" part of Utsuho-monogatari, Nakatada and Ryo first appear as rivals. But as the story progresses, their characterizations gradually change. The important device of this development is a koto harp. For the rivals cease to be antagonistic to each other when Nakatada starts to play the harp, which he long refused to do. Ryo becomes so fascinated with Nakatada's harp-playing that he finally follows his former enemy. In this sense, Utsuho-monogatari can be called the tale of a harp.
In this essay, I will read the two parts of Makura-no-soshi-"Dainagon-mairitamaite" (297) and "Ichijo-no-oba" (230)-and point out both the public and private aspects of Emperor Ichijo depicted there. As is seen in his private side, the text represents the emperor in the image of Father who treated his subjects as if they had been the members of his family. To focus on this image of the emperor will lead to the question of a narrating subject and its narrative function in Makura-no-soshi.
During the third decade of the Meiji Period, Mitsukoshi and Shirakiya, the two largest department stores in Japan, started to publish their own magazines as one of advertising media. Both of the magazines included some short stories in which women characters were usually represented as consumers avidly following the fashion. Most of those literary discourses had the function to teach readers how to do shopping and offered the model of an ideal consumer after which readers would literally "fashion" themselves. But in the commercial magazines there sometimes appeared a different kind of fiction; the stories written by the members of the feminist group called "Seito". Although they also suggested women play the role of an active consumer, the real aim of the feminist discourses was not to manipulate women to buy goods but to awaken them into a new being who could express themselves through shopping.
As Japan just indirectly experienced World War I, it has been often regarded as something that had happened far beyond the seas. But undoubtedly the war had a serious economical damage on the country. One example was the riots raised nationwide in an extreme shortage of rice and other foods. This essay will treat satirical poems in the age of the Rice Riots, especially Jiro Yasunari's ones which were serialized in the Tokyo Nichinichi. In so doing, the relation between economics and literature will be examined.