유미리의 『도쿄 우에노 스테이션』 고찰: ‘자의식’에 대한 물음에서 ‘현실 세계’를 향한 목소리로

Abstract

This paper pays attention to the substance of Tokyo Ueno Station by Miri Yu, which viewsthe existence of individuals and distortion of Japanese society, from the perspective of changingworld perception of the author. At the award ceremony of the 71st National Book Awardsheld at the end of 2020, Miri Yu won the Translated Literature Award. She appeared on thenews with Donmee Choi, a Korean American who won the Poetry Award with an English poetrybook titled DMZ Colony, for sweeping two awards together. The National Book Awardsin the United States also awarded the Fiction Award to a Korean American author namedSusan Choi for Trust Exercise in 2019. This issue is still discussed in Korean society as a breakthroughmade by authors of ‘Korean descent’ while no Korean has won an award yet. By looking upon all works of Miri Yu, it becomes easily apparent that most of them aredistant from topics like ethnicity, nation, and ideology. Japanese society in the 1990s whenshe began to produce works showed the crisis of ‘self-awareness’ throughout the entire culture. Miri Yu is the first case of Zainichi literature approved by the general public of Japan as a bestsellingauthor. This achievement was made possible because the author intentionally eliminatedelements like the history of Zainichi Korean and the reality of Zainichi society that hadbeen expressed in previous Zainichi literature. In other words, Miri Yu strictly viewed ‘anxiety’and ‘alienation’ faced by the protagonist from the perspective of ‘self-awareness’ instead ofproperties like ‘nation’ and ‘ethnicity.’ Such characteristics allowed her to create her activityspace while appealing to contemporary Japanese people. Such attitude of the author changes slowly in the 2000s. While the primary interest ofJapanese society shifted from self-awareness to the questioning of the real world, Miri Yu beganto look into ‘people who lost a place to stay’ and reality conditions that shook the lives ofsuch people. The Yamanote Line series that has continued for over 17 years since 2003 comprisesworks that densely depict changes in the author’s viewpoint. Among them, Tokyo UenoStation, published after the Great East Japan Earthquake, catches attention by capturing existential‘despair’ of characters in connection with the group awareness symbolized by the‘Japanese emperor,’ ‘religion,’ and ‘nation’ and the irrationality resulting from the groupawareness. It is difficult to prejudge the directivity of Miri Yu’s future works after marking aclear turning point by starting to face the real world of Japan. However, her destination willdefinitely be remote from the nationalistic desire contained in signs like ‘Korean descent’ and‘Japanese descent.’ In this sense, the outlook of the world to be illustrated by Miri Yu as a‘Zainichi author’ raises much expectation.