근대일본 ‘국문학연구’의 형성과 ‘문예’의 지식장: 오카자키 요시에의 ‘일본문예학’을 중심으로

Abstract

In Japan, poetry and novel have been recognized as “Art” since the mid- 1880s. However, in the field of the “study of national literature,” it is after the 1920s that artistic value came to be established as a criteria for assessing literature. Mainstream academic methodology of the Department of National Literature at the Tokyo Imperial University, the stronghold of Japanese “study of national literature,” had its foundation in “Philologie.” On the other hand, the stance that set store on literature’s aesthetic value became founded as an academic methodology through the introduction of Deutsch “Literaturwissenschaft” in the 1920s, and the establishment of Okazaki Yosie’s “Japanese Literaturwissenschaft” in the 1930s. This science of literature that values “appreciation” made its appearance as a resistance to the empirical Philologie. But it would be a simplification to state that the two were constantly in opposition. In the 1930s, there was an attempt by scholars of philology to combine the “appreciation” concept of the Literaturwissenschaft with that of the objective method of philology. Okazaki Yosie himself, who was critical of ideological influence on literature, participated in an government-run academic movement led by philologists. Okazaki focused in analyzing the particularity of Japanese literature in the late-1930s, but shifted to emphasizing its “universality” in the 1940s. His claim was that the wait-and-see aesthetics of Japanese literature, as it did not favor severe strife and struggle, was “purer” than that of Western art. He saw the literature as essentially unrelated to the teleological point of view. His theory of Japanese Literature is considered to be an example of “aesthetic Japan-centrism” as separate from political Japancentrism.