Within the field of Japanese linguistics, few areas have generated as much controversy as the morpheme <i>wa</i>; traditionally described as a marker of old or contrasted information, its function as a discourse marker has also been studied. This work aims to deepen the understanding of <i>wa</i> through careful examination of the particle at both sentence and discourse levels in old Japanese as well as present-day Japanese. Previous studies have concentrated on syntactic analyses of <i>wa</i>. The contributors to this volume challenge the old approach and uncover new properties of <i>wa</i>. The four topics discussed are: <i>'WA'</i> in Narrative and Expository Discourse; <i>'WA'</i> and other Syntactic Phenomena; Historical Perspectives on <i>'WA'</i> and Pragmatic Perspectives on <i>'WA'</i>.<br />