Thinking about the history of literature not only reveals the cognitive framework of the literary researcher represented by the inevitable story, but also provides an opportunity to reveal the fundamental desires of the literary researcher. Modern Japan has experienced the golden age of literary history twice. The first happened in the latter half of the Meiji era when Japanese literature (Kokubungaku) was formed, and the second took place in the postwar period with the establishment of modern Japanese literature research. In both cases, the training of professional researchers in higher education institutions was linked to the publication of teaching materials and the preparation of materials for literary education. In the postwar era, it was strongly institutionalized in criticism and research on modern literature because it was linked to the enhanced social reputation of modern literature, which overlapped with the wave of widespread literary popularization such as the boom of bunko, shinsho, and bungaku-zenshu.

In recent years while the reception of foreign cultures has been developing without historical consciousness, it is necessary to consider literary history in order to keep literature alive. Yet the existing traditional literary history was not without problems. This paper looks over the transformation of narration / predication / descriptive system in literary history from a historical perspective. There are seven stages: (1) modernism and its before-and-after, (2) modernism and modern Asia, (3) literary history of anti-modernism, (4) modern economic growth, (5) Maruyama Masao's Nihon no Shisō (Japanese Thoughts), (6) Karatani Kōjin and his thoughts, and (7) Japanese postmodernism. This paper attempts to prove that modern Japan, as a literary subject, has continually drifted between two forms of absence: “not yet” and “no longer.” The absence in modernism will continue to haunt the literary history like a “ghost”, and then, encourage other “ghosts” to return to the scene.

The character in the literary text goes through the “hole” to the other side, and by doing so becomes the protagonist. Very often, the narrative discourse spoken in the third person naturally transforms into a first-person narrative. Why is this happening? This essay will study the motif of the “holes” and the corresponding change of narrative perspectives as seen in Ukigumo, Futon, Rashomon, Yaneura no Sanposha, and Snow Country. It will analyze the historical significance and the probability of free indirect speech style. Through this essay, I would like to raise a question about the possibility of writing literary history that is not based on “author” or “canon,” that is, the history of intertextual stylistic history and expressions.

Literary history, such as Nihon bungakushi josetsu (A History of Japanese Literature), written by Shūichi Katō, has been written to criticize the previous literary histories. This essay, through a literary historical lens, attempts to verify how Japanese colonial literature and Japanese-language literature written by novelists with Japanese roots during the 1950s and 1960s had been understood. Along with the awareness that the Japanese turned into “the people who were oppressed” in the 1950s, postwar colonial literature and Zainichi Chosenjin Bungaku (literary works written by Korean residents in Japan) attracted a growing interest. This perception had evolved into a methodology in the 1960s. This essay will discuss the postwar colonial literature and the way of literary history by taking into consideration Shigeharu Nakano's “Hi-appakusha no bungaku” (“Literature of the Oppressed”) and Shunsuke Tsurumi's “Chosenjin no tōjōsuru shōsetsu” (“Novels with Korean Characters”).

Japanese language and literature textbooks published in 1950s included many literary history materials in reaction to the new educational system led by GHQ immediately after the defeat. The goal of those textbooks was to culturally reconstruct Japan from the perspectives of “tradition” and “people,” which were stricken by the crisis of discontinuity. However, most of them expressed a sense of underdevelopment and uniqueness found in the Japanese modern literature and its feelings of inadequacy in regard to western European literature. In other words, they were just products of educators of Japanese language and literature, which demonstrated a kind of deceitful self-criticism in order to avoid direct questioning of responsibility for World War II. In this sense, the teaching materials of literary history can be said to be the product of “an escape from history.” Such an irresponsible attitude of the educators had drawn on literary materials in which personages were asked to make amends for their sins, whereas they brought on an ironic consequence that great novelists became popular due to the success of such content.

This essay examines various discourses about the “evaluation” of literature through a close study of Honda Shūgo's “Bungeishi-kenkyu no hōhō ni tsuite” (“On the Method of Literary History Studies”). The question about what “evaluation” of literature is has not been answered. It is therefore meaningful to rethink Honda's arguments about literary history studies when coming to the intellectual discipline of Humanities and Social Sciences. Honda urged that “evaluation” of literature is necessary, but this also implies seeking “possibilities” in “history.” He had been thinking about the way of literary history studies while capturing “evaluation” as a “practical” issue in the Proletarian Cultural Movement.

Hideo Kobayashi was aware of “History” as a subject during World War II. During this period, he wrote his most important works such as “Rekishi ni Tsuite” (“On History,” 1939), “Mujo to I'u Koto” (“The Notion of Impermanence,” 1942), and “Sanetomo” (1943), which have been read by generation after generation. Meanwhile, these works have been appreciated along with the decline of criticism, which was moving toward “silence” with the progress of the war because they were read in a way based on a statement of Kobayashi: “I dealt with it without any word.”

This essay reads them under another subject of “mourning” developed in the meetings of “the dead,” which was stimulated by his two visits to China in 1938. This paper aims to prove the transformational process from “chinmoku” (“silence”) as absence of words into “Chinmoku” (“Silence”) as a different speech act, considering the mythical structure of Orphean as a point where mourning and literature unite.

Uchida Hyakken wrote “Shinpi-teki na kyouhu” (‘mysterious fear’) in his diary. This essay examines how the term was represented in his novel Mijika-yo by making a comparison with its original story, “Kamisori-gitsune”. “Shinpi-teki na kyouhu” is an idea that expresses a kind of ‘fearful fantasy’, yet reflecting a sense of realism, which was often avoided in contemporary discourse about ‘children’. The term “Shinpi-teki na kyouhu” matured over the course of years and came to fruition in Mijika-yo. With the use of first-person narrative in the present tense, sensual descriptions, and emphasis of the feeling of guilt, this novel characterizes the narrator ‘I’ as the projection of fear. Toward the end of the story, ‘Shinpi-teki na kyouhu’ filled with a fox's vague image was described vividly as the experience of ‘I’.

This essay examines Shōhei Ōoka's Mindoro Island Once Again (1969) and explores the process of including “the Philippines” as an Other while the narrator “I” mourns the loss of his fellow soldiers. Although the first-person narrator is obsessed with revisiting the “Rutay Hills” in Mindoro Island, according to Ōoka's manuscript, “Rutay Hills” is a self-contrived name that does not exist on any maps. The narrative of “I” constructs the perception of space as if drawing a map that overlooks the Philippines, but chance encounters with Filipinos make him realize the difference between their perception of “the Philippines” and his own. The plan for the mourning at the “Rutay Hills” also ends unsuccessfully. “I” stands “here”, which refuses to be defined, resulting in a “mourning” that inevitably recalls the death of Japanese comrades and “the Philippines.”

Kyu Ei Kan is known as a Japanese-language novelist who is originally from Taiwan. He hoped to study in the United States after fleeing from Hong Kong to Japan. It means he sought options not only to express himself in Japanese but also in English. He appealed to the world by writing about Taiwan issues in English even after he won the Naoki Prize. His essays in English urge the importance of Taiwan's independence more eagerly than his essays written for his Japanese readers. In Japan, he limited his topics to the economics of Taiwan because Taiwan issues were not well-received in Japan. Nevertheless, his works continue to be read in Japanese, and he expanded his writing activity to Asia in his later years. Thanks to his works, we learn a lot about culture and literature written in Japanese.

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.”

This essay is an introduction to the new materials—letter and essay—of Ineko Sata during the postwar period. One is a letter to her friend Nami Aganegakubo who lived in Maebashi city (Gunma prefecture), dated August 13, 1945. In this letter, Sata expressed her concern about the safety of Akanegakubo and her family after the Maebashi air raid on August 5. The another new material is an essay written by Sata. This essay, “A Letter for My Friend” was published in the first issue (July 1947) of a local literary magazine named “Azuma”, which was co-edited by Akanegakubo. It mentioned the significance of women's active commitment in activities that involve expression. This magazine was not owned by the Gordon W. Prange Collection, a vast and comprehensive archive of Japanese print publications during the Occupation of Japan, with many of them subjected to censorship. Despite the apparent insignificance of the content, research on this kind of magazine would bring about awareness of connection which supported the movement of local culture. These magazines were made of very poor quality paper due to the lack of resources after the war. Seen in this light, there is an urgent need to conduct research on these local magazines.