芥川龍之介におけるヒューマニズム-「杜子春」をめぐって-

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to contemplate true meaning of an author’s humanism through the view toward humans in Tu Tze-Chun, a fairy tale written by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Although the original work of Tu Tze-Chun is from China, especially there are two significant differences in the bottom half of the book with the original one: the reason Tu Tze-Chun, the main character, wanted to be a hermit, and the ending part. This study considers such differences. Tu Tze-Chun tries to become a hermit because he felt despair about humans’ heartlessness, although he does not repent for his life of debauchery. Eventually he overcomes many difficulties to become a hermit. However, after he sees his parents’ suffering in the hell, when his mother whispers him that, among such pain, she only hopes for a happiness of her son, Tu Tze-Chun, he shouts out loud, “mother”. This violates the warning that one should not speak at all in order to become a hermit. Even though he cannot be a hermit eventually, he now decides that “[w]hatever [he] become[s], all [he] want is to live a decent and honest life”. Hence, an old man who is actually a hermit says he would give a house in the holy place owned by himself to Tu Tze-Chun as a prize. As we see Tu Tze-Chun’s life like above, the author’s view toward humanism is described in the part that although Tu Tze-Chun is disappointed with humans’ egoism, he restores his own humanity due to his mother. However, Akutagawa could not convice himself whether Tu Tze-Chun can live the world as he decided, because Akutagawa regards the human life as a hell. This is proven in the part that there is no description of Tu Tze-Chun’s reaction about the house hermit gave to him. After all, it is shown that although Akutagawa was hoping for a humanistic human, he knew real humanism in humans’ life is impossible, and had a skeptical view toward its actual realization.