Akutagawa Ryunosuke's “Sosaku” [“The Creation”] was published in the fourth series of Shinshicho [New Tides of Thought], yet it had never been included in any paperback editions during his lifetime. For this reason, this piece of literary sketch had hardly ever been examined as a main text in the previous study. Compared to “Sosaku,” academics and literary critics placed a higher premium on Akutagawa's same-year debut story “Imogayu” [“Yam Gruel”], which were collected in Shinshōsetsu [The New Novel]. Both works divulges Akutagawa's aptitude to keep abreast of trends in the literary world as well as artistry to develop his own creative approach, albeit in different levels of admiration and acknowledgement.

In other words, the distinctive attitude of “Sosaku” that the narrator “I” shows by putting forward the term “model issue” and ridiculing naturalism along with humanitarians such as Tolstoians is strongly based on the originality of the “way of seeing things” as demonstrated in a quotation from Jean-Christophe in the end of “Sosaku”.

With reference to Akutagawa's early works and his writings recalling the same period after he had established himself as a writer, I would like to evaluate the significance of “Sosaku” and its central theme.

The paper examines Kenzaburo Oe's The Flood Invades My Soul (1973) in relation to the Asama-Sanso Incident that occurred in February 1972, and to analyze the role played by Jin of “the idiot” in the context of that era that one might be able to re-evaluate his work and thus his reputation, as well as to shed light on his creative consciousness as a writer. The purpose of this essay is to trace and uncover Oe's creative consciousness.

This essay attempts to draw an analogy between The Flood Invades My Spirit and the Asama-Sanso Incident. In the Asama-Sanso Incident, the way in which the voices of the public, the press, and the police meld into one voice, whereas the “flood” of multiple voices resonating and surging into in The Flood Invades My Soul. In this connection, Jin is depicted as a figure who relativizes the violence of such unifying language. On this ground, the portrayal of Jin as a listener who can distinguishes between multiple voices and sounds is closely connected to Oe's creative consciousness.

In Shibusawa Tatsuhiko's “Gabijin” a multitude of sources are combined in an excessive collage that nullifies the semiotic consideration of quotations, repetitions, and differences. The work ventures into the realm of textual field in the same way as trompe l'oeil does, which implies illusion and the defects in the cognitive mechanism that cause them. Suisui, the heroine of “Gabijin” is the nexus of men's various delusional desires, but at the same time, the fact that they are illusions is suggested by the contradiction of a storyline, which could be analogous to Escher's plastic art. Shibusawa, who had distanced himself from modern thought, took an ambivalent stance toward the modern view of womanhood. In “Gabijin” his critique of the attitude of regarding women as an object solely from one-sided perspective is actualized in the writer's mock at the protagonist.

The portrayal of disabled people in literature has depicted the limitations of the concept of the individual under liberalism posed in modern thoughts. In this paper, I will argue through an analysis of Teiko Yamasato's “Soul Trip” (1989) that deception and violence based on the neoliberalism wielded by the state and society are latent in the “self-determination” of the physically disabled. When neoliberalism was still at an embryonic stage, the protagonist's “self-determination” of “anorexia,” is a form of resistance that happened in an “island” reminiscent of Okinawa. In the course of time, this “self-determination” is then replaced by a “flexible” response of a “flexible body”. However, the exercising of “self-determination” without closing the “autonomous/independent” body shows the possibility of a life that escapes from the limits of liberalism and the attempts of neoliberalism, and, as such, are not confined to individuals.

This paper attempts to reconsider the norm of heteronormativity seen in creative writing through an analysis of Tawada Yoko's “Museiran” [“Unfertilized Eggs”]. As the title suggests, “Museiran” is a text which problematizes the oppressiveness and exclusiveness of layering the metaphor of reproduction on the creative activity of writing—the act of giving birth to words. In the figures of the “woman” who does not aspire to be the origin of creation, and the “girl” who copies the “woman's” writing, I recognize the embodiment of the act of writing as monogenesis, and at the same time, I pointed out that their actions disturb the cognitive frameworks surrounding two “births”—physical reproduction and artistic creation. In addition, this paper reveals how queerness, non-heterosexual escapade in this story, are critical of the absurd violence such as heteronomativity and wars which surround the narrative world.