간토대지진을 제재로 한 한일 문인의 시가 비교연구 -‘죽음’과 ‘삶’을 키워드로-

Abstract

This study compares the poetry of Korean and Japanese authors on the theme of the Great Kanto Earthquake in terms of the keywords “death” and “life.” The Great Kanto Earthquake on September 1 of 1923 left more than one hundred thousand casualties and led to the genocide of estimated thousands of Koreans. The experience of witnessing such enormity led Korean and Japanese writers to focus on the human nature of “life” and “death.” Then, how did Korean and Japanese poets look at and address the subject? First, Tanka of Chimata Ishikure, Furumi Fujisawa, and Kenkichi Nakamura wrote about the terrible scene at the capital Tokyo, where everything was reduced to rubble due to the earthquake and fire. Yaso Saizyo depicts the futility felt by the death of Tokyo-a personification of modern civilization that developed rapidly in his poem Nihil. Uzaku Akita condemns Tokyo to death in The Captial of Death, where the capital city of Imperial Japan is engulfed in desire for domination and urges people to part with it. At the same time, he gazes Imperial Japan with a self-sustaining and critical attitude. Meanwhile, Japanese writers who had suffered the death of their neighbors showed their determination to overcome death even as they were feeling grief and lethargy caused by the massive death. Ryuko Kawazi expressed his desire to rebuild the city and regenerate the human race with the words of strong masculine vitality. As for Korean literature, Dong-Hwan Kim depicts the incomplete life and death of Korean colonists, as the keyword “Living Dead” used repeatedly in The Rising Youth suggests. However, Dong-Hwan Kim does not show a strong motivation to get over the suffering but regards death as the only means to gaining freedom of the soul for the sufferers, as he ends the story with the murder of the main characters: the lady and the young man. In contrast, Sang-Hwa Lee expresses his strong will to survive despite the miserable reality and his obsession with complete life. In sum, the examination of the poetry of Korean and Japanese authors on the theme of the Great Kanto Earthquake suggests that while Japanese writers recited the death of the modern city of Tokyo and expressed their willingness to overcome the death, Korean writers portrayed the tragic fate of colonial Koreans and revealed their resistance as the colonized.