ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book shows the value and efficacy of analyzing and interpreting major Japanese works of literature and cinema in terms of trauma/PTSD studies. The demonstration of the psychoanalytic approach effectively opens up new and important perspectives, insights, and lines of inquiry into seemingly familiar, well-mastered novels and films. Such psychoanalytic criticism enables fresh awareness and appreciation of critical, yet largely overlooked dimensions of serious Japanese works of literary and filmic art. The book facilitates recognition and articulation of integral aspects of Murasaki Shikibu's, Kawabata Yasunari's, Enchi Fumiko's, and Imamura Shohei's work that might otherwise have gone unnoticed and unappreciated both individually and intertextually. The examined artists whose works enable the readers to see that inadequately attended to social traumas and their enduring afterlives can not only eventuate in the transformation of victim into victimizer, but also ongoing vicious cycles of traumatization and victimization.
