This month, The Japan P.E.N. Club hosts the annual International PEN Congress, whose wide variety of lectures, readings and symposia will feature guests from Japan and overseas.
The theme of this year's congress of the worldwide association of writers is "Environment and Literature" — specifically, the ways that "literature can express and portray the environment as something which exerts such a controlling influence on human life."
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of The Japan P.E.N. Club, whose first chairman was the father of Japanese naturalism, the novelist Toson Shimazaki (1872-1943).