How to Dismember the Subject of Kokugo: Kokugo, Textbooks, and Literary Works

Abstract

1. This paper is about the project Minoru Tanaka and I have worked on for more than twentyfive years in order to facilitate interactions between literary studies and literary education.

2. The aim of this paper is to critically review the subject of kokugo under the theme of“ kokugo, textbooks, and literary works.” As Shōzō Ōmori once advocated a radical change of the worldview, we need to make a drastic change in our general idea about the subject because the current state of kokugo is more seriously problematic than that of history.

3. In other words, this paper will suggest how to dismember kokugo. Now there is almost no room for literature in the curriculum guidelines for the subject. By paradoxically taking advantage of such marginalization of literature in kokugo, however, we may open up new possibilities of literary studies and education. To achieve this goal, we have to start with the reconstruction of the raison d'être of reading that has been radically undermined by postmodernism. Then we try to rediscover a way of constructing a subject through the act of reading “modern fiction” which is different from modern stories. With such a drastic redefinition of literature we can create something new out of the outmoded institution called kokugo.