Multiformité des impensables et des imaginaires fictionnels: L’exemple du fantastique japonais
Multiformity of the Unthinkable, Diversity of the Fictional Imaginaries: the Example of the Japanese Fantastic

Author(s): Denis Moreau
Subject(s): Cultural Essay
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: Japanese fantastic; supernatural; J‑Horror; fictional territory; Haruki Murakami;
Summary/Abstract: The aim of this article is to study and question the specifics of the Japanese fantastic in literature and cinema; through the prism of the socio‑historical context and the literary evolution (by considering; for example; the assimilation of Western influences on modern Japanese culture and the blend of folkloric imagery and modernity). The fantastic in Japanese literature develops an atmosphere of otherness and strangeness; a representation of the empirical reality that creates a liminal world; where the supernatural becomes almost commonplace and acceptable; as can be seen in Haruki Murakami’s fiction. This brings to another aim of this study; which is to look the Japanese attitude toward the “real”; insofar as this monistic attitude is markedly different from the dualistic conception of the world in force in Western countries. Since the supernatural is omnipresent throughout Japanese culture and society; the Japanese fantastic is not based on traumatic events whose anxiogenic character creates fear. This leads us directly to the question of the particular fictional space identified in the Japanese fantastic.

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