How to Restart Modern Literature(<Special Issue>The 64th JLA Conference (2nd Day): How to Meet Literature)

Abstract

Makoto Shinkai creates his animations by first making quasi-literary phrases and then reciting them into visual images. In a clinical workshop, young participants try to complete an unfinished picture book given by the therapist; they fill its blank space with self-narratives in an old and familiar style precisely to find who they are and keep their mental balance. Thus as it can play an important role in such non-literary fields, literature need not be always associated with the old academic institution where scholars and critics analyze texts in esoteric ways. The point is not what literature is but how it works. It matters little whether it is called "literature" or not.