하야시 교코(林京子)의 『기야망 비드로(ギヤマン ビードロ)』와 원폭 경험의 경계

Abstract

Discourses about atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have often been criticized for contributing to making victimhood-based nationalism of Japan as “the only atomic-bombed country” in the world. Focusing on the experiences of the victims(hibakusha), atomic bomb literature is no exception to such criticism. In this paper, by analyzing Kyoko Hayashi’s Giyaman Bidoro(cut glass, blown glass), I considered how readers can approach the experience of the atomic bomb.　As a writer from Nagasaki, Hayashi stands in somewhat different context from A-bomb discourse centered on Hiroshima. Like her debut work “Festival Field,” Giyaman Bidoro first shows what kind of experience being exposed to the atomic bomb was by contrasting the world before and after it. Based on her individual experiences, this novel shows the continuity of the atomic bombing as an ‘unfinished’ event. However, what stands out more in this novel is a lot of differences that exist among the hibakusha despite commonalities of the experience of being exposed to the atomic bomb. Through this, this novel highlights that the experience of ‘same’ damage does not confer collective homogeneity, nor does it necessarily guarantee solidarity and empathy. In this way, this novel defies the context in which the experience of the atomic bombing is understood as ‘Japan’s’, being nationalized and territorialized. What is important in this novel is not only the gap between the atomic bomb victims, but also the question of whether it is possible to overcome the boundary over the presence or absence of experiences. Just as there is an insurmountable gap between the dead and the survivors, even the atomic bomb survivors cannot fully understand their experience. The novel shows that the ‘unknown’ part always remains in the experience of the atomic bomb, and nevertheless seeks the possibility that those who have not experienced it can think about the atomic bomb without surrounding it with specific collective boundaries.