Seminars focusing on writing and publishing: Developing wordsmiths from journalists to novelists.
The department of literary arts is different from other literature departments: we not only study literature, we develop our students' literary creativity and expressive power. The department is not only a place of literary research, it also produces a wide range of work including poems, novels, plays, criticism and journalism. In our department, students independently develop their literary sensibilities through actively engaging in the production of expressive work. Students participate in creative writing seminars from their first year. For example, students work to produce "zemi-zashi," the seminar's in-house magazine, a process which mirrors real publishing practice. In addition, there are many other opportunities for students to publish their work, for example, in the Newspaper and Magazine Study class and the Theory of Journalism class. Because the department believes that to write is to publish, we focus on small seminars and classes which educate students to develop their expressive powers, whether as writers of fiction or non-fiction.