How does the study of historical scientific and literary connections contribute towards
Japanese scholarly reception of anglophone literature? And how do Japanese literary andcritical texts reflect these interrelated scientific and literary influences? This one-day
conference, organized by the Commission on Science and Literature (CoSciLit) in Asia, aims
to consider these questions and to discuss the opportunities that the field of science andliterature affords literary scholarship in Japan.

Knowledge about Nature, Science, and Literature:
An Analysis of Jonathan Swift’s A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver’s Travels
Noriyuki Harada (Keio University)
Chair: Masaaki Takeda (The University of Tokyo)
One of the most remarkable aspects of Jonathan Swift’s satire is his dynamic
reference to nature and science. During the journey to Lord Munodi’s estate in
Gulliver’s Travels, for example, Gulliver observes the contrast between barren
lands where, regardless of the farmers’ diligence, “one Ear of Corn” cannot befound, and the delightful prospect of Munodi’s vineyards and Meadows at which
fellow countrymen sneer. Swift’s criticism of agricultural management affectedby the fanciful science of Laputa is clear; he effectively shows the problem withactual and visible descriptions. Plants, animals, climate, landscape, and various
natural phenomena are for his literature lanx satura—a full dish of various
kinds of fruits--and in them he successfully discovers striking similarities to body,emotion, and the society of human beings. Interestingly, Swift’s satiricaldescription is always analytical and analogical. In the first section of A Tale of aTub, for instance, he analytically shows two characteristics of the rotten wood of
the pulpit; it is full of worms and gives “light in the dark”. Then, he dexterously
draws an analogy between those two characteristics and “two principal
qualifications of the orator”. What bolsters Swift’s satire is the strong connection
between the details of the natural world and the criticism of human society; wemay call this analytical and analogical way of description a Swiftian scientificthinking. I will discuss in this presentation how Swift’s knowledge about natureand his interest in science play an important role in his writings, largely focusing
on A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver’s Travels.
Noriyuki Harada (Ph.D.) is a professor of English at Keio University, Japan, anda member of the Science Council of Japan. He was the president of the English
Literary Society of Japan, 2017-21. His subject is the literature of Jonathan Swift,
Samuel Johnson and other eighteenth-century authors and he has publishedmany articles and books in English and in Japanese. He also published Japanesetranslations of eighteenth-century English literature including Swift’s Gulliver’s
Travels and his satirical writings, George Psalmanazar’s Formosa, SamuelRichardson’s Pamela, and an abridged version of Johnson’s Lives of the EnglishPoets.

Attention and Perception in Gulliver's Travels
Masahiko Abe (The University of Tokyo)
Chair: Laurence Williams (Sofia University)
The insatiable human drive for improved vision has propelled the evolution ofvisual methods over time, fueled by curiosity, survival instincts, and a quest forknowledge. This desire reached a transformative peak during the 17th and 18th
centuries, marked by advancements in devices and knowledge that expanded thehuman eye's potential beyond its original function. This paper investigates
Jonathan Swift's Gulliver’s Travels, where the changing roles of the eye are
intricately woven into the protagonist's encounters with unfamiliar worlds. Thenarrative highlights how the transformation of the eye parallels shifts in thenorms of attention, perception, and understanding. However, Swift's taleprovocatively suggests that the pursuit of better vision does not always result ina clearer understanding of the world. Even Gulliver, a 'man of the eye' obsessedwith seeing, does not necessarily make the world more visible. Examining thefantastic setting of Gulliver's Travels from this perspective reveals an intriguing
distortion of the gaze, challenging conventional notions of scientific inquiry andthe quest for clarity. This paper aims to unravel the complexities of Swift's
narrative, shedding light on the paradox that, in the pursuit of improved vision,
one may not always see better.
Masahiko Abe (1966-) is a professor in English at the University of Tokyo. He
obtained his BA and MA at the University of Tokyo and PhD at Cambridge
University. His publications include On Slow Motion (2009), Staring andLiterature (2012), Discovering Poetry (2014), Politeness and English Literature:
Examining the Kindness of the Narrator (2015), Talking Like Children Helps:
Strategy of Infantilism in Japanese Literature (2015), and People Dancing to theMusic of Paperwork (2023). He won the Waseda Literary Award for “Going to theWilderness” in 1998 and the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities
for Staring and Literature in 2013.
The Official Website: http://abemasahiko.my.coocan.jp/
Email: mabe@L.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Permeable Boundaries Between Popular and Professional
Scientific Knowledge in George Eliot’s Works
Yohko Nagai (Keio University)
Chair: Andrew Houwen(Tokyo Woman’s Christian University)
Through her thorough reading and collaboration with her partner, George HenryLewes, as well as with her circle of friends and acquaintances, including CharlesDarwin, Richard Owen, T. H. Huxley, John Tyndall, and Herbert Spencer, it is nosurprise that George Eliot (1819-80) was well versed in the intellectual andscientific culture of her time. Science is an overt issue in many of her novels, andit serves as a suitable schema with which her social and moral vision can bedelineated. However, to contemporary and modern readers alike, the novella"The Lifted Veil" (1859), with its supernatural elements drawing on popularscience like mesmerism and phrenology, comes as a surprise. There is even ageneral tendency to dismiss the novella as an aberration or failure. It is worth
noting, however, that in the 1830s and 1840s, there was far less distinction
between what we would now call “science” and “pseudo-science.” This paper firstexamines the social and intellectual significance of popular science during theVictorian period and how it influenced Eliot's works. It then explores how Eliot’s
assimilation of popular science forms the basis of her moral vision, extending
into a more professional knowledge of physiology and psychology. It is mycontention to prove that in Eliot's novels, the boundaries between popular andprofessional scientific knowledge are less distinct than we assume, thus enabling
Eliot to explore the unknown faculty of our minds.
Yohko Nagai is a professor of English in the Faculty of Economics at Keio
University and the vice-chairman of The George Eliot Fellowship of Japan. She
studied English at International Christian University, Keio University, andKing's College London. In 2001-2002, she spent time at University CollegeLondon as a visiting researcher. The author of numerous papers on George Eliot,George Henry Lewes, and Charlotte Brontë, she is currently completing a project
on “Anonymity and Self-Revelation Among Women Writers in the 19th Century.”
Her paper, “Revelation Through Dissimulation: The Relevance of Pseudonymity
in George Eliot’s Writing,” was recently published in The George Eliot Review(2023).

"Am I a Human, am I not?":
Frankenstein and its Hideous Progeny in Japan
Nahoko Miyamoto Alvey (The University of Tokyo)
Chair: Rieko Suzuki (Waseda University)
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the theme of creating an artificial being is
explored in literature, medicine, science, and law through the confessions of two
main characters: Victor Frankenstein, who is haunted by the idea of creating anew species, and his scientific creation, “the accomplishment of my toils,” into
which he infuses “a spark of being” and which he immediately abandons once it
is alive (Frankenstein 1818 Text, 36). As Shelley bids her “hideous progeny goforth and prosper” (“Author’s Introduction to the Standard Novels Edition”[1831], Frankenstein 1818 Text, 176), the novel (and its main characters) has
multiplied, its offspring going across different media and disciplines, and into
different countries and languages. This lecture considers Mary Shelley’sFrankenstein and its literary, scientific, and cultural influence on Japanese texts.
It focuses on one important question raised by the novel: what it is to behuman(e). The nameless creature Frankenstein scientifically created recounts
his “human” sufferings to his creator. Shelley’s attempt in Frankenstein to seek
what humanizes a being, whether human, non-human, or artificial, has attracted
and influenced many Japanese artists and writers. From this perspective, thelecture examines some of the Japanese hideous progenies in translation, comics,and fiction, starting with Osamu Tezuka’s The Mysterious Underground Men
and the first modern translation of Frankenstein by Masaki Yamamoto
published in 1948, only three years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima andNagasaki.
Nahoko Alvey is a professor in the British Studies Section, Area Studies at theUniversity of Tokyo, Komaba. She specializes in British Romanticism. Her
publications include Strange Truths in Undiscovered Lands: Shelley’s PoeticDevelopment and Romantic Geography (University of Toronto Press, 2009; pbk.
2020), “Frankenstein and Intersectionality” (in Japanese) in Intersectionality (ed.
Kazuyo Tsuchiya and Riho Isaka, University of Tokyo Press, forthcoming 2024),
and “Empire” in Shelley in Context (ed. Ross Wilson, Cambridge University
Press, forthcoming 2024).

Online Keynote Address:
What Can Literature and Science Studies Achieve?
John Holmes (University of Birmingham)
Chair: Neil Addison (Japan Women’s University)
Researchers in literature and science studies work across an entrenched cultural andeducational divide. For some, this is simply a matter of personal interest. Many literary texts
engage with theories, findings or inventions from one or more sciences, so literature andscience as a field offers a diverse subject matter for the researcher. It promises a particularly
bracing intellectual challenge too, given the disciplinary distances to be crossed. A literaryscholar has to become well-versed in the science that their texts and authors engage with, from
whatever historical period; a scientist needs to develop the skills of critical close-reading andhistorical research. But literature and science studies can aspire to do more than just open
new lines of enquiry and pose fresh challenges. On the one hand, literary scholarship andtheory can keep the hubris of the enlightenment in check, reminding us of the false anddangerous knowledge that has often passed as science in the past and the ways in whichscience has been used as an instrument of oppression. On the other hand, showing how
literature has engaged with science can help to form a common culture, restoring theconnection between people at large and a science that is often increasingly specialist orrarefied. Literature offers readers, including scientists, the means to reflect on theimplications of science for the individual through poetry, for society through drama and thenovel, for the future through science fiction, for the natural world through fantasy and myth.
In exploring this vast body of work alongside one another, scientists and literary scholars canreaffirm both the value of science and the values that we share regardless of science. In asociety addicted to consumption, fixated on technology and imperilled by environmental crisesof its own making, the need for science and literature to learn from one another and to speak
together has never been more urgent.
John Holmes is Professor of Victorian Literature and Culture at the University of Birmingham.
He is the current President of the Commission on Science and Literature, a former Chair of theBritish Society for Literature and Science and one of the series editors for
Bloomsbury’s Explorations in Science and Literature. His own books include Darwin’s Bards:British and American Poetry in the Age of Evolution (Edinburgh UP, 2009); The
Pre-Raphaelites and Science (Yale UP, 2018), which won the BSLS Book Prize; Temple ofScience: The Pre-Raphaelites and Oxford University Museum of Natural History (BodleianLibrary, 2020); and the edited collections Science in Modern Poetry (Liverpool UP, 2012)
and The Routledge Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century British Literature andScience (Routledge, 2017), co-edited with Sharon Ruston. His collaborations with scientists
have included co-founding the Symbiosis network to research and develop the role of the arts
in natural history museums and working with the Birmingham Institute of Forest
Research developing humanities research projects on forests. He will be hosting
the International Conference of Three Societies on Literature and Science for CoSciLit, BSLS
and SLSAeu in Birmingham and online from 10-12 April this year.

Access [交通アクセス]

Japan Women’s University, Shin Senzankan[日本女子大学 新泉山館] Tokyo,
From JR Yamanote Line "Mejiro" Station
Approximately 15 minutes walk
Bus: Approximately 5 minutes (see map image for bus stop location)[Toei Bus (Gaku05)]
Japan Women's University (direct)
Boarding “Mejiro Ekimae” bus stop (2)Get off at “Nihon Joshi University” bus stop (4)[Toei Bus (White 61)]
To Shinjuku Station West Exit or Hotel Chinzanso Tokyo
Boarding “Mejiro Ekimae” bus stop (1) (3)Get off at “Nihon Joshi University” bus stop (5)From Tokyo Metro Fukutoshin Line "Zoshigaya" Station (Exit 3)
Approximately 8 minutes walk
From Tokyo Metro Yurakucho Line "Gokokuji" Station (Exit 4)
Approximately 10 minutes walk