文学 Bungaku /Literature
摘要
文学 Bungaku/Literature Dennis Washburn (bio) Since the late nineteenth century bungaku has come to refer primarily to “literature” in the sense roughly equivalent to contemporary English usage—that is (to paraphrase the definition in Webster’s New World Dictionary), to writing of a creative or imaginative character that is distinct from historical narratives, scientific writings, and news reporting, that implies a notion of cultural value, or that suggests writing defined by period or national origin.1 This particular definition of bungaku, which was fixed more than a century ago and has changed little over that span of time, is readily apparent in a large number of common phrases that, taken together, provide an outline history of modern Japanese literature: kokubungaku (national literature); Nihon bungaku (Japanese literature); kindai bungaku (modern literature); gendai bungaku (contemporary literature); taishū bungaku (popular literature); junbungaku (pure literature); puroretaria bungaku (proletarian literature); seisan bungaku (productivity literature); nōmin bungaku (rural or peasant literature); dōwa bungaku (children’s literature); joryū bungaku (women’s literature); posutomodan bungaku (postmodern literature). A more recent usage has arisen in the phrase conpyūtā bungaku (computer-generated literature), which in turn has given rise to an intriguing complementary phrase, ningen bungaku (human literature). In all of these examples the meaning of bungaku is so fundamental, so obvious and given, that the word seems to bear relatively little of the semantic load compared with the terms that modify it. As a result, it may be easy to overlook the work performed by the word, which is to convey a conception of knowledge crucial to the notions of national identity and modern culture. Just how fundamental and firmly established this definition of bungaku has become is apparent in the following passage from the preface to Kobayashi Hideo’s Letters of van Gogh (published