일본 전후(戰後) 1세대 시인들과 도시

Abstract

Cities in the post-war poems of Japan can be regarded as a special rhetorical device that transforms the writer’s poetic imagination into language, transcending the subject as a simple stage setting. Poets of 『Arechi』 and 『Retto』, the key magazines for the first generation of the post-war, clearly show their consciousness and interest in post-war Japanese society from the perspective of the language city, each based on its critical attitude toward the modernism poetry and proletarian poetry of previous generation. They have a special past memory about the war in common, and as time goes by, that memory turns into an attitude of staring at everyday life. In this process, both 『Arechi』 that emphasized the criticism of civilization and 『Retto』 that valued political perceptions and satire that surrounding the realities of workers all reveal their concentration and interests in language. Cities are key spaces that aware of such features autonomously. They regard cities as conceptual symbols of the post-war Japan represented by a period of rapid economic growth and symbolic texts reminding us of the evils of inhuman civilization. Above all, in terms of pursuing the artistic value of language without extreme plays on words and rigid thoughts as well as focusing clear commanding vocabulary, it’s enough to regard cities as a key topos in modern Japanese poetry, which advocated language-centrism.