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Published: 1999

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(Uncorrected OCR) Abstract of Thesis entitled: A FLOATING WORLD: THE THEME OF FEMININITY AND THE MEDIATION OF JAPAN IN THE WORK OF KrKou YAMATA (1897-1975) SUHMITTED BY : DENIS CHARLES MEYER FOR TIlE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHIT., OSOPHY AT mE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG, JULY 1998. The work of Kikou Yamata remains to date virtually unexplored. Apart from a few biographical accounts and book reviews, no serious assessment of her writings has been undertaken so far. Born in Lyon in 1897 from a French mother and a Japanese father, she has authored a substantial number of texts in various genres, some written in Japanese, the majority in French. Thepresent study proposes to read her literary legacy from the following three standpoints: her role as a cultural mediator; her position as a woman writer and her subsequent reappraisal of the reified Oriental femininity; and, finally, her coming to terms with her dual identity as a French-Japanese. These three st8l!dpoints are, in fact, closely intertwined, and all converge towards the cornmon theme of otherness: woman as sexual other, Japan as topographical other, and hybridity as racial other. This study will therefore draw upon a number of theoretical approaches in various fields (literary criticism, cultural anthropology, sociology and history), in order to ascertain the extent to which Yamata'swritings may convey an innovative view of the long-standing East-West intercourse and its inferred motifs atwork in literary fiction and elsewhere. Following a general introduction that defines the objectives of our reading, the first part sets out the main themes governing Yamata's writings against the background of her life: an atypical birth which relates directly to the so-called "Rokumeikan spirit" in the early years of the Meiji period; her youth in Japan throughout the Taish6 interval; her reception as an ambiguous Japanese figure among Parisian literary circles in the 1920's and 1930's; her new political awareness resulting from her.