오가와 미메이(小川未明)의 ‘어린이관’ 고찰

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to focus on the role of Mimei who emerged as the founder of modern children's literature, having published Japan's first creative collection of fairy tales entitled Red Ship. The study will also focus on the dissertation of his view of children through the lives of children expressed through his earlier works. He suffered from the experience of being a foster child during his early childhood and subsequent maladaptation to school during his adolescence. Later in life, he also suffered greatly during his married life due to the tragic loss of his two children due to poverty. Such a sense of self denial and overwhelming guilt resulting from his children's respective deaths as head of household led him to concentrate on the weak and powerless members of society. Therefore, he truggled for change in society, appointing himself as an advocate for the weak through his fairy tales. As he lived through turbulent times, he suffered from substantial ideological changes in Socialism internally and in Democracy after the war. In spite of the blot in terms of war cooperation which is unable to be rationalized, we can not ultimately deny that there is hum being in the center of his literature.