「히스테리」로 읽는 『신케이카사네가후치(真景累ヶ淵)』—도요시가(豊志賀)를 중심으로—

Abstract

The term "hysteria" became extremely popular as a women's disease from the late Meiji to the Taisho periods and was used in many literary works. However, because it is a women's disease, it is mainly used to describe female characters and, due to the social context of the time, is applied to various situations that can occur at home and between men and women. Thus, most sexisting studies on hysteria were conducted from the viewpoint of gender studies, such as women's social problems and the dynamics of male-female relationships, which are mediated by hysteria, and mainly studied works in the naturalistic literature series. This article adopts a slightly different approach from the existing previous studies. I will take the fact that hysteria was recognized as a type of neurological disease before the term "hysteria" became popular as my starting point, and I will explore the influential relationship between hysteria and neurological diseases. The work to be discussed is Sanyutei Encho's ghost story "Shinkei kagafuchi," and I will explore how the term "nervous disorder" is used and how it relates to hysteria.