A Sense of Tragedy: Attitudes in Europe and Japan

The view of tragedy presented here under the theme ‘Rethinking Japan’ seems only too obvious. Yet the possibility of tragedy as an essential element in Japanese literature seems largely to have been ignored as an aspect of critical study. To suggest that tragedy is pervasive in Japanese literature and furthermore that a corresponding term for it, at least at some points in its history, may be found in the Japanese aware or mono no aware does therefore involve a rethinking of our attitudes.