While Kazuo Ishiguro highly praises Haruki Murakami for his outstanding absurdism, Kenzaburō Ōe underestimates him for his lack of realism. Their contrasting views concerning the same writer come from their contrasting worldviews. According to Shōzō Ōmori, Ōe sees things in terms of “down-to-earth classification” while Ishiguro does so in terms of “true-or-false classification.” The two kinds of classification, however, seem to be necessary to understand the essence of modern fiction. Nothing is real or rational because the inarticulate field of the “third term” spreads beyond the subject's cognition of objects. If the subject has direct contact with the field, he or she will be epistemologically dismembered. In Murakami's novels there often appears a parallel universe called the “second basement floor” which represents something unconscious and irrational beneath our daily life. Such absurdity is inherent in modern fiction, and it can be traced back to Ōgai Mori's early trilogy.

The aim of this article is first to point out the diverse and comprehensive nature of the “third term” theory which, more than a method of text-reading, covers literature, education, philosophy, and several other fields; then to suggest how to philosophically and methodologically apply Markus Gabriel's new realism to the theory; finally to describe its potentiality to become a globally influential philosophy of post-postmodernity.

Haruki Murakami once said, “The only way to resist the system is “putting our precious warm souls together.” But how is it possible? The answer seems to lie in his short novel Iron-no-aru-fūkei. This article will analyze his philosophy of life with such a positive outlook and in so doing argue for the necessity of interpreting modern fiction in terms of meta-plotting.

“Hazakura-to-mateki” (1939) is Osamu Dazai's short story written in the form of an old lady's confession of her past. According to her recollection, thirty-five years ago she and her sister were indulged in creating imaginary love affairs after the discovery of the sister's secret habit of writing love letters to herself. Her narration is charged with affection for her sister and her strict father which implies that they were bound with strong ties. But there is an anonymous person in this story who plays the role of listening to the narrator and re-telling what she told him or her. The presence of this listener-narrator will provide a key to understanding why Dazai wrote it in wartime. This article will reveal a force of modern fiction latent in “Hazakura-to-mateki” which can be also found in “Fugaku-hyakkei,” another short story written by the author in the same year.

Minoru Tanaka has been developing his theoretical model which contributes much to facilitating an organic interaction between literature and education. Especially his concept of the “competence of self-education” can be effectively applied to the teaching of kokugo. A close and careful reading of “Natsu-to-fuyu,” one of the “Tanagokoro-no-shōsetsu” short stories by Yasunari Kawabata, for example, may enable one to notice death and other serious themes beneath the surface of narration. Such reading practice improves one's “competence of self-education.”

The aim of this article is to explore a gap between text critique and the “third term” theory by reviewing “The Teaching of Kokugo and Text Criticism,” the forum held about ten years ago. Text critique is not subversive enough to challenge the concept of substance because it is based on Roland Barthes' early model of semiotics. The “third term” theory has much in common with Barthes' theory of textuality and even to Jacques Derrida's postmodern philosophy in that they can be regarded as a venture to reach to something extra-linguistic under the surface of texts.