이마무라 에이지[今村栄治]의 「동행자(同行者)」와 완바오산(萬寶山)사건

Abstract

Imamura Eiji(今村栄治) had published the short story “The Companion(同行者)” on The Manchuria Administration Review(満洲行政) in June 1938. He was a Korean, born in colonial Korea in 1911 although he had been conducting literary activity as his Japanese name Imamura Eiji. But his detailed career can not find anywhere else for that. “The Companion” which is Imamura's major work, received the attention from the Japanese literary scene in Manchukuo to such an extent as to republish on the first issue of Manshu Roman(満洲浪曼) in October 1938 and on The Manchuria Literary Yearbook(満洲文芸年鑑) in January 1938. This study analyzes the novel's narrative of the introduction for identifying the distance among the author, the narrator and the character, and for understanding aspects of conflict that been faced a main character, Shin Jungheum(申重欽). As a result, we can read the identity crisis of a protagonist, and detemaine the effect that caused the Wanpaoshan(萬寶山) incident. This novel is not a text that deals directly the Wanpaoshan incident. However, the source of the conflict that the protagonist experienced through the whole story is provided by just the Wanpaoshan incident. The author who was called Imamura Eiji, had lived among Manchurian Japanese just like the protagonist, while he abandoned the name as Korean, the mother language and the homeland community. The novel, published in 1938, this year happened a big change in Japanese literary scene in Manchuria, is “the companion”. And the way chosen by protagonist as a companion of Japanese is hard to say that such a same choice the author taken. Rather, the tragic ending of the story testified to the impossibility. The Wanpaoshan incident, it had been called by Imamura Eiji in 1938, is a crucial event that reveals the very stark contradictions between colonialism and imperialism in the contradictory place called Manchuria to crash between the Extension Assembly(內鮮一體) and the Racial Harmony(民族協和).