『요코 이야기』와 『떠나보낼 수 없는 세월』의 ‘기억’ 문제 비교 연구

Abstract

Desire to restructure memory matrix with searching the past memory marks usually rises to surface by some 'ex post facto matter. In the case of So far from the bamboo grove, it is found out, as the writer Yoko Kawashima Watkins says in a preface, that she came to know a pampered American girl who was so peevish although living affluently in a gorgeous house. Watkins wanted to tell that girl her own story of survival from the bottom of the bottom in the maelstrom of World War 2. Necessarily she focused the gendered wretched spectacles of war and the victory of young courageous girl, passing over the Japanese historical responsibility in the East Asia. However, we should remember the eleven-year-old heroine Yoko is not the girl who were in the whirlpool of war but a character to be created through a 'revolving door' of memory by Japanese-American writer Watkins. As the act to remember is done in the nowness of time and space, the past remembered is to be 'produced' by the remembering subject. The World War 2 is over more than 60 years ago, but the war of memory is not over. On the other hand, the 'ex post facto matter to give rise to memorizing motive to Sook Nyul Choi, the writer of Year of impossible goodbyes is the situation that So far from the bamboo grove is chosen as school textbook for young children in America. So the plot of Year of impossible goodbyes is to be woven with memory materials of national sufferings and resistance, confronting those of Yoko. In short, So far from the bamboo grove can be told to be an irresponsible answer to call of a great many Asian who survive past violences of war but live as painly as ever. So is Year of impossible goodbyes, In spite of a few precious merits. Year of impossible goodbyes resembles So far from the bamboo grove in that it is based on victimhood nationalism, too.