●The theme of International PEN Congress Tokyo 2010 - "Environment and Literature"
The theme for "International PEN Congress Tokyo 2010" is "Environment and Literature".
The topic of "the environment" is a wide one, however, and what we are envisioning is not limited to the global warming and environmental destruction problems that are currently the subject of worldwide debate. It goes without saying that many aspects of human birth, aging, sickness and death are intimately connected to the natural world. The actions of nature, from the miniscule elementary particle and gene level to the huge scale of the solar system and universe, exert tangible and intangible forces on the era and society as well as influencing the way people live and their ideas and literature. From a broad perspective, it could be said that the theme of "Environment and Literature" encompasses everything involving human beings.
At the root of the International PEN Congress Tokyo 2010 theme of "Environment and Literature" is a question: In what ways can literature express and portray the environment as something which exerts such a controlling influence on human life and circumstance?