Exploring the Idea of Self in Modern Japanese Literature

Although, the purpose of this work is to explore the idea of ‘self’ in Shiga Naoya’s writing, “Wakai” from a psychological perspective, the notion of ‘self’ has been looked into in detail. Starting from the universal concept of ‘self’, narrowing down to the ‘self’ and their perspectives in modern Japanese literature by taking account of Tayama Katai as the founder of I-novel, Shimazaki Tōson as one of the leading writers of ‘self-portrait’, and Mushanokōji Saneatsu as a staunch believer of ‘self-portrait’ through art and one of the key writers of the Shirakaba group. In a group oriented society like Japan where group consciousness is deeply rooted, talking about ‘self’ as a main theme of a literature was the motivating factor of pursuing this research. The findings reveal very interesting aspects that could be impetus to further research. It is expected that this piece of work would on one hand provide substantial guidance to the young foreign researchers of Japanese Literature, while on the other hand it would amply convince the native Japanese readers as to how their literature could be analyzed from different perspectives by a foreign researcher.