[Special Feature: Infectious Diseases in History] Roundtable Discussion: Infectious Diseases Appearing in Literature

Today, for our roundtable discussion on "Infectious Diseases in Literature," I would like to start by sketching out a broad framework using the "Chronology of Infectious Disease Literature (PDF)" I prepared as a springboard.

Chronologically, the oldest is, of course, the Bible. In Japan, it is "The Tale of Genji." The most recent would be "The Andromeda Evolution," written by Daniel H. Wilson after Michael Crichton's death as a sequel to Crichton's famous "The Andromeda Strain."

In "The Tale of Genji," "okori" (malaria) appears frequently. It is also said that Taira no Kiyomori in "The Tale of the Heike" died of malaria.

On the other hand, in the Crichton & Wilson works, the 1969 original is a terrifying story where a pathogen from space spreads, suggesting the possibility of total nuclear war. The sequel, conversely, takes a more resilient approach where humanity utilizes the Andromeda pathogen.

Looking chronologically at English literature, we must first mention Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales." The narrative format, where 29 pilgrims speak one by one in turn, is said to follow Boccaccio's "The Decameron," but they are also linked by the fact that they both deal with the plague (Black Death).

The plague itself becomes the central theme in Daniel Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year," which depicts the Great Plague of London in the late 17th century. The Japanese title "Pesto no Kioku" (Memories of the Plague) is from Masaaki Takeda's recent new translation; the previous translation by Masaho Hirai was simply titled "The Plague," the same as Camus.

In American literature, Charles Brockden Brown's Gothic romance "Arthur Mervyn" deals with the 1793 yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia. This is likely the first instance of infectious disease literature in the form of a novel in American literary history.

In my translation for Shincho Bunko, I intentionally titled Poe's story "The Mask of the Red Death" (included in "The Black Cat and The Fall of the House of Usher"), though it is often translated elsewhere as "The Masque of the Red Death." The "Red Death" is a fictional contagious disease Poe created as a parody of the "Black Death," or the plague. To escape the spreading disease, a king named Prospero seals himself inside his castle and holds a masquerade ball, but somehow the personification of the plague manages to slip in.

There are countless works of tuberculosis literature, and as Susan Sontag emphasized in "Illness as Metaphor," Romanticism and tuberculosis were very compatible. "La Bohème" would fall into that category. Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain" is also tuberculosis literature set in a sanatorium. In Japan, "The Record of Women Workers' Tragic History" and "The Wind Has Risen" are similar examples.

Then there is Melville's "Moby-Dick." Since this novel is about whaling, you might think it has nothing to do with infectious diseases, but it actually includes an episode where a whaling ship is struck by a plague.

Jack London's work is translated into Japanese as "The Red Death," making it seem like an homage to Poe, but the original title is "The Scarlet Plague." It's interesting that both translate to the same title in Japanese. Jack London wrote other stories about the spread of disease as a biological weapon, which could be seen as a precursor to science fiction. Then, in 1947, comes Camus's "The Plague."

Another disease that literature from all times and places has depicted since the Bible is leprosy. In Japan, Matsumoto Seicho's "Inspector Imanishi Investigates" (The Castle of Sand) and Endo Shusaku's "The Girl I Left Behind" and "On the Banks of the Dead Sea" immediately come to mind.

Then, amidst the Cold War and the unsettling atmosphere of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis where the fear of nuclear war was palpable, Komatsu Sakyo wrote "Virus" (Day of Resurrection).

While the treatment of infectious diseases in literature was previously more of a supporting role, in the 20th century, literature making illness the protagonist increased. The reality of what Sontag calls "illness as metaphor" grew stronger.

In the 1980s, AIDS appeared. Hervé Guibert's "To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life" is an autobiographical story of the author who contracted AIDS, which was incurable at the time; he was also friends with Michel Foucault. Foucault died of AIDS, and Guibert died shortly after writing this. Regarding AIDS, the play "Angels in America" and the film "Bohemian Rhapsody" are also unforgettable.

In 1990, two works of science fiction appeared that could be called masterpiece short stories. One is Pat Murphy's "The Eradication of Romantic Love." This is an SF story where romantic love itself is an infectious disease that must be eradicated.

The other is J.G. Ballard's "War Fever." It tells the story of a plot suggesting that the urge to go to war is not a political issue but actually an infectious disease, and explores how to prevent it. This was likely the inspiration for Itoh Keikaku's novel "Genocidal Organ." It is very symbolic that these two novels were written as the Cold War was coming to an end.

In Latin America, Gabriel García Márquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera" (1985), set at the turn of the century, is also not to be missed.

That's all from me for now, so let's pass the baton to Mr. Ogura.

Regarding French literature, I believe that illness as a privileged subject in literature really began in the 19th century and beyond.

Looking at the history of disease, the plague largely ended in Europe in the 18th century. Therefore, Camus's "The Plague," which has been widely read in Japan since the COVID outbreak, is set in Oran, Algeria, in the mid-20th century, so it actually has little reality in terms of the fear of the actual disease of the plague.

In Camus's intention, that "plague" was literally a metaphor and an allegory—specifically, it was about Nazism. He stated this clearly in a letter. Since the work was published immediately after the war, French readers of the time would have read it not as a story about the plague, but as an allegory of Nazism as a concentrated form of evil symbolized by the plague.

However, modern Japanese readers likely read it literally as a work of infectious disease literature, and that is a valid way to read it. Regardless of how epidemiologically accurate Camus's description is, it is a story about an infectious disease that cannot be immediately eradicated spreading through a city like the current coronavirus. The town of Oran is literally locked down, completely cut off from outside contact. To create such an extreme situation within a narrative, the plague functions very effectively.

Mysterious diseases that humans cannot cope with—just like the medieval plague or the current coronavirus—are causes that greatly fuel anxiety and fear. I can well understand why Camus's "The Plague" is being widely read now, as it overlaps with such situations.

Now, speaking of privileged infectious diseases in French literature starting from the oldest, first is cholera. Cholera broke out several times in 19th-century France, particularly centered around Paris. The largest was the 1832 epidemic. At that time, it is said that nearly 20,000 people died in Paris alone. Given that the population of Paris was 600,000 to 700,000 at the time, that is a staggering proportion.

There are two types of literature written against the backdrop of such cholera outbreaks. One is memoirs by writers who were actually in Paris at the time. One is Chateaubriand ("Memoirs from Beyond the Grave"), and the other is the female writer George Sand. George Sand has a very long autobiography called "Story of My Life." Both were in Paris in 1832.

So, what happened when that cholera outbreak occurred? Since the cholera bacterium was not discovered until the end of the 19th century, cholera at the time was a mysterious disease for which there was no way to cope. Faced with such a mystery, residents died one after another, helpless. Furthermore, they were not even properly buried after death. Just like the medieval plague, almost no one accompanied the funerals of the deceased, whether they were family or friends.

This is very similar to the current COVID situation; cholera cuts off human contact. People are no longer allowed to meet or even touch. Thus, the entire city enters a state of isolation, contact is severed, and people become extremely lonely. Both Chateaubriand and George Sand wrote, "A person who dies of cholera is lonely. There is not even anyone to accompany them to the grave."

And another writer, Eugène Sue, a representative of popular literature, wrote a novel called "The Wandering Jew." This is a dramatic story about the Jesuits persecuting a Jewish family, and the Jesuits intentionally use the 1832 cholera when persecuting them. It's like a biological weapon in modern terms.

In this novel, the Jesuits are depicted as a group of very devious people. During this era, prejudice against the Jesuits was quite strong in France, and this work utilizes cholera, a mysterious disease, as a narrative device for the story of the Jesuits secretly persecuting Jews.

Next is tuberculosis. As Mr. Tatsumi mentioned, tuberculosis was undoubtedly the disease that claimed the most victims in the world from the late 19th to the early 20th century. Until the discovery of antibiotics in the mid-20th century, it was effectively incurable, so one had no choice but to go to a sanatorium or the seaside and wait to recover. If lucky, one recovered; if not, it eventually led to death.

However, unlike cholera, a characteristic of tuberculosis is that "one does not die immediately." Also, while cholera and the plague cause the body to turn black or become hideously deformed, tuberculosis does not. Because of these characteristics, Sontag cited tuberculosis as a typical example of "illness as metaphor," as it easily triggers various myths and legends, and tuberculosis is prominently featured in literary works.

In France, for example, there is "The Lady of the Camellias." In 19th-century French literature, young women often die at the end. The cause of death is frequently tuberculosis. Men never die. Marguerite in "The Lady of the Camellias" (Violetta in Verdi's opera) is one such case, as is the woman named Mimì in Murger's "La Bohème." These are also familiar from opera. Such women die harboring unfulfilled romantic passions.

Or, in Japan, like Ishikawa Takuboku, talented artists die young from tuberculosis as if it were the price for their talent. In that sense, tuberculosis is a disease that dramatically literalizes the sublimity of dying young and beautiful in literature.

And in the late 20th century, it would be AIDS. In France, Hervé Guibert is famous, but before Guibert, there was a work called "The Glory of the Outcast" by Dominique Fernandez, which is said to be the first work of AIDS literature.

AIDS is a disease discovered in the 1980s, and I was studying in Paris at that time. Therefore, I experienced in real-time the impact that the onset and spread of AIDS had on the world of French artists and intellectuals in particular. In this work by Dominique Fernandez, the two protagonists are male homosexuals.

At the time, there was a rumor—prejudiced as it was—that AIDS was rampant in the gay community. One of the protagonists eventually dies of AIDS, and within the story, AIDS is given various meanings in relation to society and family, ultimately being perceived as a kind of punishment from God. The protagonist accepts this, so to speak, and in the end, the isolated protagonist bravely accepts his loneliness and exclusion as a kind of metaphor and dies. It is depicted in the form of his same-sex partner recording the process.

On the other hand, Guibert himself suffered from AIDS and wrote the record himself. He recorded the way his body gradually weakened almost in real-time.

Actually, here we see a similarity between AIDS and tuberculosis. That is, they are not diseases that kill immediately. Therefore, both tuberculosis and AIDS give the patient time to live, or time to think about the meaning of their life up to that point. That is very characteristic. It is completely different from the plague or cholera.

Guibert himself eventually died of AIDS, but he accepted this disease as his own stigma and read various meanings into it. Then, he wrote down that process step by step to turn it into a story.

I have given examples of cholera, tuberculosis, and AIDS, and in all of them, the artistic endeavor of literature functions very well to create a situation of falling into an extreme state when representing a lethal infectious disease. Moreover, it is an extreme state isolated from the surroundings.

In their respective eras, there were no effective treatments for cholera or AIDS, just as there are none for the modern coronavirus. In such anxiety-inducing situations, I feel that literature has always told the story of how humans, communities, and societies react and how they live.

Of course, cholera is no longer such a terrifying disease, and AIDS is no longer the death sentence it once was, but setting aside such epidemiological evolution, every time such an infectious disease occurs, humans and society repeat similar reactions. I feel that infectious disease literature teaches us this well.

Thinking that way, it is very interesting to consider what kind of literature will be created in the future, triggered by the current coronavirus.

Thank you very much. Now, moving on, Ms. Ogawa, how about from the perspective of English literature?

I would like to talk about infectious disease literature while giving some specific examples. The first is Mary Shelley's "The Last Man" (1826). Re-reading it now, I was surprised by the many similarities with Camus's "The Plague."

Mr. Ogura mentioned that in Dominique Fernandez's work, the disease of AIDS is accepted as a punishment from God. Reading Camus's "The Plague" from that perspective, I feel he consciously denies the idea of divine punishment. And the common point with Mary Shelley is precisely this attempt to deny "illness as divine punishment."

"The Last Man" is set in the future year 2073. Considering why Mary Shelley's interest shifted to infectious diseases after "Frankenstein" was published in 1818, there are first biographical reasons. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died of puerperal fever ten days after giving birth to her. She also lost two of her own children, one of whom, Clara, died of dysentery. I think her own experiences and sense of guilt are strongly reflected in "The Last Man."

"The Last Man" is an apocalyptic story where the narrator, Lionel Verney, becomes the last person on Earth. A child named Clara, the same name as her daughter, appears at the end. Another biographical part is that her husband, the poet Percy Shelley, appears in the story as a highly idealized figure. That is the protagonist's friend, Adrian.

Looking at the relationship between Lionel and Adrian, it is very similar to the scene in Camus's "The Plague" where the protagonist, Dr. Rieux, dialogues with the journalist Rambert. Rambert tries to escape from the quarantined town of Oran because "his lover is waiting." But ultimately, through repeated dialogue with Rieux, he abandons the idea of only caring for himself, stays in the town, and stands in solidarity with Rieux and the others.

In Mary Shelley's "The Last Man" as well, Adrian, a man of action who helps those in need, teaches the importance of love and solidarity, which allows Lionel to survive until the end.

In Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year," there is also a heroic character named John Hayward who showed reckless courage by transporting infected people to infirmaries and the dead to the graveyard. Shelley, who read "A Journal of the Plague Year" in 1817, may have been inspired by this work. So, if the theme of "solidarity" exists in Camus's "The Plague," it is also present in "The Last Man" and "A Journal of the Plague Year." I think that is what they have in common.

Even in the current COVID crisis, the issue of division versus solidarity is being raised. Camus was a writer who hesitated greatly about war and letting people die. For example, the character Tarrou calls the fact that his father, a prosecutor, let people die without hesitation a "plague" as a metaphor. This overlaps with what Mr. Ogura said earlier; the plague is a metaphor for evil—that is, actions or words that lead people to death.

At the end of "The Plague," there is a dialogue between Rieux and Tarrou about God and faith. When Tarrou asks Rieux if he has any thoughts on the path to take to reach peace, Rieux answers, "Yes. It's empathy."

Camus expresses a solution that is not salvation through God or religion using the word "sympathie" (empathy). In English, it is sympathy or compassion.

As you mentioned, Camus wrote against the backdrop of war and Nazism, but at that time, he was posing a very modern question: rather than ruling over people from a superior position, let's build relationships where people help each other.

In the current COVID crisis, there are problems like increased racism or the government not responding to the needs of the poor, and I think Camus and Mary Shelley had the same message.

The issue of "sympathy" probably also connects to Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway." Until now, the context of the Spanish Flu raging during the Modernist period (early 20th century) hasn't been discussed much, but according to researcher Elizabeth Outka, Virginia Woolf's own experience of contracting the Spanish Flu in 1919 is reflected in this novel.

The theme Woolf scholars often take up is, of course, the war (WWI). In "Mrs. Dalloway," there is a story about a man named Septimus who experienced the war and eventually commits suicide due to shell shock, but the situation where the Spanish Flu was claiming a massive number of victims is not written about directly. Woolf depicted infectious disease only in a faint, background-like way.

It has recently been said that COVID infections can leave aftereffects, and apparently, the Spanish Flu could also cause cognitive decline or other negative impacts even after the body recovered. Woolf already suffered from mental illness, and in addition to that, she contracted the Spanish Flu; visions close to hallucinations are projected into her novels.

There are scenes in "Mrs. Dalloway" where readers sometimes can't tell if it's a hallucination or reality—that "in-between" part is depicted. That is the part of the hallucination created by the brain, a vision that captures reality through the physical organ of the brain, which also connects to the characteristics of Modernist literature. Therefore, I think it can be said that the Spanish Flu and Modernism are inextricably linked.

Woolf also uses the word "sympathy" many times. In Japanese, it has two meanings: "pity" (doujou) and "empathy" (kyoukan). What Woolf thoroughly criticized was the top-down "pity."

On the other hand, she encourages spontaneous empathy for others. She continued to emphasize the distinction between these two types of sympathy. she also wrote an essay called "On Being Ill," and I think Woolf's literature is very interesting to read while being conscious of how to interact with sick people during the current COVID crisis.

In Mr. Tatsumi's "New Americanism: Narratology of the History of American Literary Thought," there is a story about infectious disease and Cotton Mather (a New England Puritan minister and author).

In this, there is a story about smallpox brought from Barbados. I feel that the story of a different ethnic group bringing a plague from another land, which has been mythologized in a way, has been inherited by all kinds of literature.

This is true for both "A Journal of the Plague Year" and "The Last Man." In the latter, news comes in that a plague has begun to rage in the East, specifically Greece, but at first, none of the characters care. However, as soon as it begins to affect them personally, they fall into a great panic.

This was exactly the case in Europe in March of this year. My friends in the UK initially watched the news from Wuhan from a distance, as something that couldn't happen in the UK. However, as soon as it hit them about a month later, they were in a great panic.

In British literature, because they think they are safe as an island nation, there is a theme where a plague becomes a threat when it arrives. Speaking of literature depicting the fear of a plague that even crosses the sea, Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (1897) is exactly that.

In Ai Tanji's "Dracula's Fin de Siècle: Cultural Studies of Victorian Xenophobia," she says that "Dracula" is an allegory for cholera and xenophobia. Stoker's mother was from Sligo, Ireland, and cholera actually approached from the East, finally reaching Sligo in 1832 and claiming many victims. The metaphor of a plague coming from the East has been inherited as a standard trope.

However, whether that supported a kind of imperialist ideology or sought to criticize it is ambiguous; the scene where Lionel becomes infected in "The Last Man" is written in a post-colonial way.

There is a scene where a Black man infected with the plague suddenly embraces Lionel. This interpretation is currently causing much debate. Shelley scholars are divided on whether this "embrace" is "compassion" or whether it is "rejection" because Lionel pushes the man away afterward.

My reading is "compassion." This is because a miracle is born from this "embrace." The next day, Lionel develops a very high fever and contracts the plague, yet he is the only one to survive. I think an interpretation is possible that the reason Lionel survived is that he has the power of empathy and is depicted as the model of a human who should carry the future of the next generation.

As you delve into "The Last Man," I feel that the fascination of infectious disease literature, which also connects to Camus and "Mrs. Dalloway," comes to light.

Next, Mr. Barnard, could you speak from the context of Japanese literature?

First, considering the problem set of infectious diseases depicted in modern Japanese literature—and I think this is not limited to Japanese literature—I believe they can be divided into two types.

Those are epidemic or pandemic literature—that is, literature that directly depicts the state and impact of an infectious disease outbreak—and infectious disease literature in a broader sense. They are similar, but I think they are actually different genres, each with its own rhetoric and structure.

In the case of modern Japanese literature, there are works that directly depict epidemics or pandemics, but they are surprisingly few. In contrast, infectious disease literature in the broader sense has so many works that one might say it is one of the central themes of modern Japanese literature.

Furthermore, within pandemic or epidemic literature, there are works that take a bird's-eye view of the impact of infectious diseases on humans at the level of society or community, and works that depict human relationships at the individual level, such as "a certain character caught the Spanish Flu and died."

Most works depicting epidemics in modern Japanese literature are about the Spanish Flu. First is Miyamoto Yuriko's novel "Nobuko." This is an autobiographical work based on Miyamoto's own experience, and there is a scene where the protagonist, Nobuko, goes to study in New York and catches the Spanish Flu.

And, as I think is being noticed during the current COVID crisis, there are two critical essays, or rather commentaries, by the poet Yosano Akiko: "From the Bed of Influenza" and "Fear of Death." They contain sharp perspectives that resonate today, such as the government's measures being insufficient during the Spanish Flu.

Then there is Shiga Naoya's "The Epidemic" (Ryuko Kanbo), a short story dealing with the Spanish Flu that is very characteristic of Shiga Naoya. It can be said to be a novel that carefully considers what death is, what life is, and what kind of emotional stance one should take toward death and life.

I actually read this work for the first time after the coronavirus started spreading, and I found it very interesting. As someone who likes fantasy literature and Gothic novels, since it is written as an invisible fear of when the epidemic will arrive, it's not supernatural at all, but it might not be an exaggeration to say it was interesting as a kind of horror story. If one were to connect Shiga Naoya's I-novels with weird and fantasy literature, one of the bridges might be infectious disease.

There is also Mushanokoji Saneatsu's famous work "Love and Death." A woman named Natsuko, who is in a romantic relationship with the protagonist, dies of the Spanish Flu toward the end of the novel. News reaches the protagonist in Paris that Natsuko has died, leading to a melodramatic scene of grief.

However, these works leave the impression that they don't directly consider the impact the Spanish Flu had on the community or the issues of division and solidarity that Ms. Ogawa mentioned. Conversely, I think they function as something that, in a sense, lets the woman die in order to create the melodrama Mr. Ogura spoke of.

Next, looking at infectious disease literature in a broader sense, various works come into view. I think they are influenced by Western literature in this regard, but the representative ones are tuberculosis and leprosy. There are so many works for both that research books like Mahito Fukuda's "Cultural History of Tuberculosis: Images of Illness in Modern Japan" and the "Complete Collection of Leprosy Literature" exist.

The depiction of tuberculosis is similar to the case of French literature, used like a signifier of a beautiful illness. The representative work would be Tokutomi Roka's "The Cuckoo" (Hototogisu).

Incidentally, about five years before "The Cuckoo" was published, a Japanese translation of a letter from the British poet John Keats to his lover Fanny Brawne was published in "Bungakukai." Through this, the image of Keats as a young poet who died of tuberculosis had a major influence on Meiji-era Romanticism. I think that was one starting point for tuberculosis literature as a "beautiful illness." There are various other melodramas like "The Cuckoo," and Hori Tatsuo's "The Wind Has Risen" is another representative work.

In contrast are the novels about leprosy. At the time, the term "rai-byo" was used, but there were so many works in the Meiji era that it could be called a genre. Contrary to tuberculosis, it was used as a signifier for a disease that was grotesque both externally and internally.

From today's perspective, these are very discriminatory depictions, but I think one reason is that although it is an infectious disease, it was misunderstood as a hereditary disease in the Meiji era. Because it was captured in a very Gothic way, involving issues of bloodline, the depictions often lean toward the Gothic.

Mentioning works I personally consider important, first is Koda Rohan's "Encounter with a Skull" (Tai Dokuro). Higashi Masao evaluates this as a "masterpiece worthy of being called the first full-fledged work of fantasy literature in modern times." It is a story similar to Izumi Kyoka's "The Holy Man of Mount Koya," where a beautiful woman met in the mountains turns out to be the spirit of someone who died insane from leprosy.

In the same year, Ozaki Koyo also wrote "Uzumagawa," a work featuring a woman with leprosy. Someone I personally think should be re-evaluated is Ikuta Kizan, a writer of the Ken'yusha group.

Ikuta Kizan has a work called "Uchiwa Daiko" (The Fan Drum), which is a very Gothic novel where the protagonist believes his family line has leprosy and fears when it will appear in his own body. As Mr. Ogura mentioned, as a disease that doesn't kill immediately, there is still time to live, but it skillfully depicts the anxiety and fear of not knowing when one's life will end.

In that way, I think there are contrasting depictions of tuberculosis and leprosy in the Meiji era. There are other works like Ozaki Koyo's "Green Grapes" (Ao Budo) dealing with cholera, and depictions of smallpox in Hirotsu Ryuro's novels, but leprosy and tuberculosis are overwhelmingly frequent.

Touching on Izumi Kyoka, who was also from the Ken'yusha, depictions of infectious diseases often appear in Kyoka's ghost stories as well. In his representative work "The Holy Man of Mount Koya," Kyoka uses the expression "hayari-yamai" (epidemic), and as a background to the setting, a traveling monk ventures deep into the mountains of Gifu during a time when cholera was likely prevalent. In Kyoka's case, ghosts and bacteria are often treated identically as things that cause invisible fear. In other works, he also frequently depicts bodies becoming grotesque from disease.

It's a famous story, but Kyoka was a germaphobe. It is said that he may have gradually become an extreme germaphobe because he actually contracted dysentery, and he reportedly carried a portable disinfectant container. At the time, he was treated as superstitious, but from the perspective of the current COVID crisis, his actions were actually quite realistic.

Kyoka's way of perceiving pathogens is unexpectedly modern, so it's interesting how the modern and pre-modern are mixed in a unique way.

Also, there is a famous pre-war writer of romance and legend novels named Kunieda Shiro. There is a work called "The Castle of Shinshu Koketsu," which is considered Kunieda's masterpiece. It's a work with a Japanese-style fantasy feel, but there is a macabre scene where a king suffering severely from leprosy wanders about. Perhaps it can be read as a work that turned Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" into a Japanese-style element.

I think reading literature depicting infectious diseases can be an opportunity to visualize the hidden "cracks" in society, various differences, and discrimination. In fact, looking at the current situation in America where COVID is rampant, while one cannot generalize, it seems that areas with many minorities or impoverished areas have the most infections. One could say that infectious diseases visualize those differences that are usually invisible.

I think there are two aspects: the anxiety and fear toward invisible things like illness, and conversely, the fear toward things that had been hidden until now suddenly appearing due to the infectious disease. For example, "Arthur Mervyn" also has social and, in a sense, political elements, where the differences and inequalities of Philadelphia society in the 1790s are visualized by yellow fever.

After hearing everyone's very enlightening insights, let me add a little from the perspective of American literature. First, and this may be surprisingly unexplored, Camus's "The Plague" clearly acknowledges the influence of Melville's "Moby-Dick."

Captain Ahab's need to pursue Moby-Dick for revenge is like being possessed by a plague; in fact, the English word "pestilence" carries the nuance of a metaphorical "pest" or "scourge" alongside the literal plague. In the "Jeroboam's Story" chapter of "Moby-Dick," a whaleship with crew members suffering from yellow fever is depicted.

So, Camus may have been conscious of Melville's specific descriptions of plague. However, what I found interesting upon re-reading is that while Father Mapple tells the biblical story of Jonah in "Moby-Dick," a character named Father Paneloux appears in "The Plague," and he meets a very absurd death. While Melville premised his work on biblical typology, Camus's depiction of a godless world in the midst of a plague is likely a symbol of this shift.

Furthermore, in terms of literary history, Sakyo Komatsu's "Virus" (Day of Resurrection)—a representative of the first generation of Japanese SF that our country is proud of—was influenced by both Camus (who was influenced by Melville) and Dostoevsky (who was influenced by Poe).

This is a story where a country obtains a pathogen from space called MM88 and processes it into a biological weapon, which then leaks during a struggle in the US-Soviet Cold War and spreads throughout the world. Everyone initially thinks, "Is it just a cold?" but as it spreads globally, one cannot help but be reminded of today's COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr. Komatsu may have been conscious of the Spanish Flu pandemic, of course, but at the same time, since this novel was written in 1964, it vividly depicts the panic where the spread of a biological weapon virus leads to total nuclear war, with memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis from two years prior still fresh.

In the work, an "Automatic Revenge System" called ARS appears, which is a variation of the MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) system that was said to trigger total nuclear war during the Cuban Crisis. Moreover, in this story, a massive earthquake occurs in North America, which the computer misidentifies as an attack from the enemy, causing the ARS to activate and nuclear warheads to be launched, leading to the terrifying situation where total nuclear war actually occurs.

However, the true essence of "Virus" is that the president who developed that automatic revenge system is named Silverland. This name, no matter how you look at it, comes from Barry Goldwater, a real-life ultra-conservative Republican senator and presidential candidate of the same era. His radical character has aspects reminiscent of Trump. Therefore, I believe Sakyo Komatsu incorporated the suggestion into the work that if Goldwater had become president, a total nuclear war might have really occurred and the Earth might have been destroyed.

Looking at what is actually happening today, racial discrimination occurs when the COVID-19 pandemic hits, and the divisions Mr. Ogawa mentioned are actually escalating. Beyond the racial conflicts after Black Lives Matter, today is said to be an era of a US-China Cold War rather than a US-Soviet one. Considering that, "Virus" does not feel like a novel from over half a century ago at all.

There is a famous essay by New Historicist critic Stephen Greenblatt titled "Invisible Bullets."

During the American colonial period, entire Indian tribes were wiped out by smallpox. Thomas Harriot, an Elizabethan scientist, astrologer, and sometimes even called a fraud or atheist, wrote the first report on the American colonies. According to his account, the fact that Indian tribes perished in such a way was due to divine providence. In other words, he uses typical Christian rhetoric, claiming that the white colonists were the chosen people, and therefore God had dealt with the Indians for them. At that time, weapons were used against the Indians.

Those weapons were smallpox, and the logic was that by being shot into the Indians as invisible bullets, white people were able to dominate North America with impunity. This is an early example of "illness as metaphor." Illness is conveniently incorporated into the logic of colonialism.

Cotton Mather, to whom Mr. Ogawa referred earlier and to whom I devote a chapter in my book, was the greatest Puritan theologian of the Massachusetts colony, active from the 17th to the early 18th century, and he thought along similar lines. However, in his case, he practiced smallpox inoculation. This was long before Jenner's smallpox vaccine was developed at the end of the 18th century.

However, the technique of inoculation was actually taught to him by a Black slave in Mather's household. Yet, Cotton Mather never breathed a word about it being an African folk remedy learned from a slave, acting as if he had invented it himself.

On one hand, when different races or tribes perish from smallpox, it is seen as God's will; on the other hand, when the technique of inoculation to eradicate that smallpox is learned from a different race, that race is treated as if they never existed. In this way, no matter which way it goes, illness is not unrelated to various forms of discriminatory consciousness, including racism.

It is true that the literature of illness highlights social divisions, the despicable aspects of human nature, and negative sides in various senses. However, as both Mr. Ogawa and Mr. Barnard said, on the other hand, the theme of solidarity to resist those things is also very much highlighted.

A typical example is Camus's "The Plague." In that work, existing institutions—the church, hospitals, the administration—cannot respond effectively. It is just like the current COVID situation. But in the midst of that, solidarity between individuals, centered around Rieux, is loudly proclaimed. I believe that is the main thrust of Camus's "The Plague."

The final scene of Camus's "The Plague" is, in a sense, very symbolic; the plague epidemic suddenly stops. However, Rieux ends by saying, "This does not mean the plague has disappeared from the world. The plague never dies. It lurks somewhere and will come again."

Therefore, it is not just about a specific infectious disease like the plague; perhaps like this COVID-19, catastrophes in a broad sense that threaten social order and stability—such as war, terrorism, or in Japan's case, a great earthquake—can happen at any time. I feel that infectious disease has functioned very well in literature as an allegory or metaphor for such things, and unfortunately, it will continue to do so.

What Mr. Ogura just said is very important. I think what humans can do in an infectious disease pandemic—for example, the specific drama of standing up against evil—is a part that literature can depict meticulously. John Keats himself, whom Mr. Barnard mentioned earlier, is certainly a poet who is semioticized and tends to be spoken of as something beautiful, but his own strength probably overlaps greatly with Rieux's struggle.

I think Keats's letters, which have also been translated in Japan, are a symbol of his strength. When you actually read them, he shows no weakness to Fanny Brawne at all. He is considerate of Fanny, writing things like, "The last book I wrote will probably reach you," or "It is my joy that you are well."

I am concerned that the term "negative capability," which Keats defined as the ability to accept uncertainties and unresolved things, has taken on a life of its own and become shallow. I think true negative capability can only be understood by those who have practiced it. In other words, because he himself suffered from illness and was someone who practiced the ultimate self-isolation, such words came out of him.

Camus also suffered from tuberculosis throughout his life. "Toujisha-kenkyu" (Self-directed research/User-led research) is popular now, but lately I've been thinking that literature itself is the ultimate form of such research.

When reading the literature of infectious diseases, one realizes that not only illness but also ideology is contagious. And I think these are actually inseparable issues. For example, with leprosy, misunderstandings and discrimination surrounding the disease are clearly visible through texts, and these misunderstandings and discrimination spread just like the disease itself.

The reciprocity of these two types of "infection" can be seen, for example, in zombie novels. There were many works where zombies were originally used as metaphors for slaves in places like Haiti, but they gradually changed into metaphors for infectious diseases. This process is very interesting. I consider the image of the zombie, which implies resistance to the slavery of the colonial era—that is, the zombie as both a symbol of illness and a symbol of ideology—to be one of the themes that should be pursued further in the future.

Today we were able to hear about various works of infectious disease literature. As Mr. Ogura said earlier, literary works of the COVID era are beginning to appear, and certainly, after some time has passed, a new era of literature appropriate for this new plague will likely open up.

I also believe that illness has been, and will continue to be, an element that develops literary works in some form. Thank you very much for today.