write a 3-4 page (double-spaced) thought paper on any one of the following topics:

The girl who loved caterpillars tells her detractors: “If you looked a little more below the surface of things, you would not mind so much what other people thought about you. The world in which we live has no reality, it is a mirage, a dream.” Does this assessment of the world differ from those of Heian court writers like Murasaki Shibiku or Sei Shonagon, and if so, how?
Compare a few of the modern haiku, tanka, or other poems by Yosano Akiko or Masaoka Shiki (Columbia Anthology, pp. 150-53) to the poems by Ono no Komachi, Matsuo Basho, or other poems in Keene’s Anthology of Japanese Literature. How do the modern poems break with earlier traditions, but how might some of them (especially haiku) still echo the themes and forms of the classics?
In “The Christ of Nanking,” do you believe that Chin-hua’s mysterious foreign visitor really is Jesus Christ, or is he just an American named George Murray? Or perhaps, neither of them? Why?
Discuss Natsume Soseki’s decision “to write books to tell people that they need not imitate Westerners, that running blindly after others as they were doing would only cause the great anxiety.” (p. 163) How and why does he criticize Japan’s attempts to impose Western civilization on itself, and what if anything can be done to bring about a healthier, more balanced attitude toward the outside world?