Wang He EALAC, Columbia University

As I bring my time as a student in the Waseda–Columbia Double Degree Program (DDP) to a close, I find myself reflecting on my year at Waseda University, where I was affiliated with the Literature Department of the Graduate School of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the Toyama Campus, under the supervision of Professor Kōno Kimiko.

When I applied to the Double Degree Program at Waseda, I saw the master’s degree as an invaluable chance to venture beyond the body of texts I was already familiar with. I wanted to spend solid time with Nara and Heian materials I had not yet had the opportunity to read and, in doing so, develop a deeper understanding of the social and literary societies from which they emerged. I hoped this exploration would give me a broader textual repertoire and a firmer historical context before I began framing my PhD dissertation. My project examines play and humor in Nara- and Heian-period court society, with particular attention to the emotions and power dynamics surrounding the use of Literary Sinitic in literary composition and social exchange. I am particularly interested in how playing with such knowledge became an important technique for producing new literary forms, expressions, and modes of interaction within courtly salons. Central to this inquiry is the momentum behind practices of multilingual wordplay —what prompted them, how they gathered force within particular social settings, and what kinds of affective and interpersonal effects they produced. I am also interested in why these salons, celebrated for their literary competence, wit, and creativity, were received less favorably in later literary historiography. However, despite rigorous conceptual and theoretical training I received in the U.S., I found topics like knowledge dissemination and textual reception difficult without reading and discussing the actual materials. Prof. Konō’s extensive knowledge of Nara- and Heian-period literature gave me access to a much broader range of texts and materials, and her background in wakan comparative literature provided an especially valuable methodological framework that I was not trained in before. Under her guidance, I learned how to identify, trace, and analyze the intertextual and paratextual bodies of knowledge on which literary texts draw, as well as where to search for such references and how to pursue them effectively. My resulting M.A. thesis in Japanese thus analyzes the different stages of playfulness Sugawara no Michizane put into the compilation of Kanke bunsō, showcasing a less familiar side of the deity of scholarship — one that has received relatively little attention — through a focus on his experimental poetic rhythm and form, wordplay, use of allusion and metaphor, and the ways in which his poems bring together different worldviews.

Each week, I met with Prof. Kōno for graduate seminars and my directed reading course, where I exchanged research ideas with students from a range of academic backgrounds and engaged in careful readings of primary texts together. I also took courses in classical Japanese literature and Japanese book history, which would be very difficult for me to access outside Japan. I participated in reading groups, research groups, and conferences that Prof. Kōno kindly organized, giving me the opportunity to meet and learn from a network of amazing scholars. Prof. Kōno offered exceptionally thoughtful and constructive feedback on both my writing and

the broader direction of my research, helping me refine my arguments and develop my project with greater clarity. The year has passed remarkably quickly, but I feel fortunate that my time at Waseda will continue for a second year as a visiting research fellow. The research and training I undertook during my first year at Waseda will continue to inform my doctoral dissertation, and parts of this work will also be developed into separate publications. I look forward to carrying these projects forward and to continuing the conversations, collaborations, and friendships that have made my time at Waseda so valuable.