부산대학교 도서관

From rapid economic growth to low and minus growth, post-war Japan who pursued phantasm of “growth” came to an end. Modern Japan is quaking due to economic polarization problems, endless disasters, and continuous conservative shift. During this period, what role did literature play? This article examines sensational literary works and followed phenomena at the time of economic depression and reconsiders the actual meaning of literature in modern Japan. Two outstanding keywords of modern Japanese literature are healing and humor. A series of novels about gourmet have prevailed recently, because they provide consolation in anxiety of modern society. However, they need close watch on their patterns of consumption as simple fantasies without revealing the fundamental structure of pain. The novel Flame by Matayoshi Naoki created a noticeable sensation in the literary world in 2015, illustrating humor with materials from comedy entertainment. The success of this novel shows one characteristic of modern literature, which is an act of literary consumption as an industrial content. In addition, novels describing the agony of people that comes from economic depression and criticizing closed society have also succeeded. Especially, since 2010 “literary award on the street” has introduced novels that depicted the experience of homeless people, and such movement is expected to evoke the proper meaning of literature by relativizing the standardized mainstream literature and to propose the possibility of literature as a place for horizontal communication among common readers. Since the collapse of economic bubble, modern Japanese literature is struggling to describe the problems that cannot stay in the individual area. Miyabe Miyuki’s detective novels are noticeable examples. If a certain literature is requested in spite of economic depression, such literature can be considered as in the form nearest to the proper meaning of literature.