Usenko O. The Japanese Component of Imagological Problematics in Kazuo Ishiguro's Writings.

The object of the research are the novels and short stories by K. Ishiguro. The aim is to investigate the Japanese component of imagological problematics of bicultural writings of K. Ishiguro. The methods are: comparative historical, literary imagological; intertextual, intermedial and hermeneutic analysis. The research is the first attempt in the Ukrainian comparative literature to provide the imagological analysis of Kazuo Ishiguro's works. The "Japanese" novels and short stories of the writer are studied in the context of the Western, mostly Orientalist, discourse about Japan as well as from the "inside" of his native Japanese culture. The thesis explores the peculiarities of the representation of Japan as both auto- and hetero-image, analyses the intertextual connections with the works of Western and Eastern literatures and with the intermedial influences of the Japanese cultural phenomena on the English novels about Japan. The sphere is academic educational activity.