Gothic elements in Keikichi Ōsaka's stories

This thesis examines how the Gothic elements in Keikichi Ōsaka's stories contribute to the thematic and structural organization of the narrative. The thesis is organised into three sequential phases. In the first phase, each story is segmented into narrative sequences according to the principles of literary semiology, and an "actants" chart is compiled to map the roles of characters within the text. In the second phase, Gothic elements identified in the selected stories are classified under four categories—person, space, time, and object—and their semiotic functions and descriptive features are analysed. In the third and final phase, a corpus-based text analysis is performed using KH Coder software to determine which sections of the narratives concentrate Gothic motifs most densely and under which thematic headings they cluster. Finally, the thesis evaluates how characters' structural roles evolve and interact with Gothic elements, and offers interpretive assessments based on the findings.