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I would be an ungrateful wretch if I did not acknowledge the considerable support I have received from the Center for East Asian Studies and the East Asian languages and Civilizations department. To Peggy, Linda, and Diane, thank you for your biting humor and your ongoing departmental commentary. Paula Roberts, Assistant Director of CEAS, Frank Chance, Associate Director, and of course G. Cameron Hurst III, director and advisor, have all had unswerving faith in me, and for that I am extremely grateful. Through their generous support and continued friendship, I have been able to pursue my research and writing relatively unencumbered.
I was a visiting researcher at the Center for Non Western Studies at Leiden University, where I was able to work for one year both in Dutch and Japanese sources. Special thanks go to Ilona Beumer-Grill for arranging an office and other amenities that made my experience so wonderful. Thank you also to Professor Willem Boot, a monument of scholarship and the head of the Japanology Department at Leiden, who served as advisor and mentor
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my mentors, G. Cameron Hurst III, Linda Chance, and Frederick Dickinson. Cappy has been an unending source of inspiration to me through his first-rate scholarship and easy familiarity with those around him. Cappy Hurst combines the best traditions of academia with an eminently personable nature, and as an advisor he has been nothing but supportive of me in my efforts, and for this as well as for his friendship I shall be forever in his debt.
Professor Chance has been a model of what it means to be an academic in her remarkable command of Japanese language, literature, and commitment to scholarship in general. Despite my obvious flaws as a linguist, she has been patient and kind in her efforts to impart her vast knowledge to me.