大江健三郎「生け贄男は必要か」論 -ベトナム戦争に見る善意の両義性と日本社会を中心に-

Abstract

Ōe Kenzaburō published “Is a sacrificial male human necessary?” in 1968 when the Vietnamese War was worsening. The book was created with a motif of cannibalism, overlapping two historic events: the Vietnamese War and the Korean War. This paper took a deeper look into Zen, the main character of the book, and focused on the cannibalistic elements including the introduction of Lu Xun’s ‘A madman’s diary’ to extend Ōe’s understanding of the Vietnamese War beyond warfare and rehabilitation. Being a humanist on the one hand and a violent man on the other, Zen speaks and acts on the basis of his good will. In other words, his good will was expressed through rabid behaviors at times. The description of his brutality based on his good will can be understood as the description of the United States that intervened in the Vietnamese War with its unilateral good will to stop the communization of the region. The ‘young man’, a blinded follower of Zen, can be perceived as a symbol of Japan that joined the war following the United States at the time. Lu Xun’s ‘A madman’s diary’ is highlighted in the book to depict Zen as a person who actively participates in the war with ‘conscious parallelism’, while symbolizing the other non-active characters around him as the onlooker attitude of Japan. This implies that the double-sidedness of Zen, where nothing seems right nor wrong, can be viewed as the ‘ambiguity’ of the good will. The lunatic behaviors of the ‘war veteran’ and the ‘boy’ were not derived from their ill will but from their background as the war victims and their struggling to protect their own lives. Through this enunciation, their ‘innocence’ becomes clarified, and their atrocity can be considered the madness of the ‘innocent’, which also applies to the Japanese society described in Ōe’s work. Japan, which joined the war without any malice, is this ‘innocent agent’ despite its indifference in the appalling war and the spectator’s attitude it maintained while enjoyin the economic benefits from the increasing demands. This suggests that Ōe paid attention to the ambiguity of the good will reflected in the Vietnamese War and the prevailing madness of the ‘innocent’ Japanese people. By overlapping the Korean War and the Vietnamese War, Ōe described the system of the repeated warfares and rehabilitations as well as the Japanese society that could not give up on becoming part of the system. Through Zen’s quote, “Save the children!”, Ōe tells the readers whether the cycle of the innocent madness that was prevalent in the Japanese society can be stoped.