Three Types of Literary Walks: From Noda Utarō to Wikipediatown

Abstract

Bungaku-sampo, literary walks, was originated with Noda Utarō in the late 1950s. Starting from Tokyo, he went around Japan and searched for courses related to modern Japanese literature and recorded them for private use. These notes were then published continually as the first step of Bungaku-sampo. Thereafter guidebooks that seemed to imitate Noda's Bungaku-sampo were published one after another, which accounted for the second step of Bungaku-sampo. The idea of Bungaku-sampo is then linked with Wikipediatown, a project event that bridges literary works with a town. This is the third step of Bungaku-sampo. Now Bungaku-sampo is looking hard at “telling” literature beyond the practice of “walking” and “writing.” It is in a stage of becoming “our” activity, which constructs “a community of memory.”