From a Single Encounter

December 21, 2020

At the Major in English and American Literature in the Faculty of Letters at Keio University, students can study linguistics, British literature, and American literature. By taking courses in each field, you can learn about various research topics and methods related to the English language and works written in English.

I myself studied in this Major in English and American Literature. In my first year, I took a course called Special Lecture on English and American Literature. This course, which is still offered today, gave me a glimpse into the world I would study in the major from my second year. The various lectures, covering everything from the Arthurian legends, the history of the English language, British Romantic poetry, and modernist art to contemporary American novels, were so fresh and enjoyable that I decided to continue on to the Major in English and American Literature.

And now, I am researching American and Canadian literature. Within that, I am particularly interested in works by contemporary Japanese-descendant writers and Indigenous writers. Although these fields don't have much in common, my interest was sparked by an encounter with the work Obasan (1981) by Joy Kogawa, a second-generation Japanese Canadian poet and writer. During the Pacific War, the United States and Canada implemented policies of removal and internment targeting people of Japanese descent living in the Pacific coastal regions. Kogawa experienced this removal and internment as a young child. She later published the novel Obasan , based on her own and her family's experiences. It subsequently became a topic of discussion in Canada and the United States from the 1980s to the 1990s and was widely discussed from perspectives such as the memory of violence and family. Both the novel itself and the discussions surrounding it felt heavy to me, as I had been living a carefree life. At the same time, there was a passage in the novel where Japanese people were compared to Indigenous people, and that really caught my attention. When I looked into it, I found other examples of analogies between Japanese people and Indigenous people, and I learned that there is a tradition outside of Japanese-descendant literature of non-Indigenous people imitating them. This led me to wonder whether such analogies appear in Indigenous literature, and I became interested in the works of Indigenous writers.

Encountering individual works, and from there, encountering other works. My research is just a series of these encounters, and I have not yet been able to systematize it. I have no idea where this will lead me, but by considering the works I encounter and the contexts in which they are written and read, I hope to understand the meaning of the existence of stories themselves.

The Major in English and American Literature is, of course, a place to hone your English skills, but it is also a place where students can freely explore deeper questions: What is the English language? What kind of act is it to speak in English? What can you do, and what do you want to do, with English? As you encounter various forms of English and different values, and as you pursue your own interests, I believe you will cultivate the ability to think from multiple perspectives. This ability will surely be a powerful ally for you even after you graduate from university.