Reading Katsumi Masuda's Kazan-retto-no-shisou : An Attempt to Answer the Question "What Is the JLA?"(<Special Issue>What Is the JLA? : Literary Studies and Studies on Kokugo Teaching)

Abstract

What is the Japanese Literature Association? This question makes me think of my personal experiences in the JLA. Across my mind come and go old memories related to it: the Society of Narratives that was in a sense inevitably formed at that time, Mogi's concept of "qualia," and Katsumi Masuda's unique idea in Kazan-retto-no-shisou. By their own original methods, both Mogi and Masuda demonstrated the possibility of literary studies outside the traditional academic framework. The JLA has been working cooperatively as an organization, but it doesn't mean that it is a well-disciplined institution. Rather the association has been always a spontaneous gathering of individual scholars who want to plan and do something together.