I have read a novel by a Japanese poet Fumiya Iwakura（岩倉文也）, “For Our Never-End Ending（終わりつづけるぼくらのための）”. It is a series of 80 short novels with certain opening and ending of the stories. It is for people who would like to get in touch with emotions confronting certain endings of stories, especially for the endings of particular worlds. An ending is obviously a part of any story. Therefore, it is a timeless theme to address forms of ending. Sometimes it is a closed ending and sometimes it is an open ending, and varieties of endings sublimate certain nihilism. Socio-politically it is based on an aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Literary-historically it is originated in a new generation, because Mr. Iwakura was born in 1998. In the stories, despite the escape of a girl to a new world, a boy who died in seeking something has an important meaning that both of the characters’ feelings internalized to myself. The nihilism represents stagnation of human values. The repeating of ending is observed in “STEINS;GATE” as for escaping from a mal ending of the stories, expressing the main character’s struggles. However, in “For Our Never-End Ending”, the endings are not avoidable and rhythmic Japanese that is impossible for translation into English installs bunch of endings to our mind softly and obligatorily. The narrator is obviously sincere to actual feelings embraced in the stories and they silently exhibit nihilism. What is not shown is a matter the boy sought and it is the most important key of the stories.
From the viewpoint of structuralism the stories are in parallel (parataxis) but echoes each other, with repeating endings and symmetrical rhythms. From post-structuralism they are escapes from philosophy and thus deconstruct it.
Overall, it represents a new flow of Japanese literature with a sum of extremely short novels.
