『여자 없는 남자들(女のいない男たち)』론 -남자, 여자, 그리고 ‘없는’ 것의 의미를 중심으로-

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the meaning of an absence through men's attitude and women's role who appear in the book『Men without Women』. Although the men experience their lives being ruined, they try to evade rather than actively to solve the problem. However, making them recognize it in their lives is none other than the women such as Misaki who is a driver of Kafuku, an unknown woman who drops by a bar, and a woman Dokai loves. The men come to know, by the women, that they are evasive and lay the cause of their failure to other's charge. In addition, they come to realize that the 'absence' in them is 'self-reflection', deeply thinking over and over their own existences. With the absence of women and self-reflection, the image of the men, who agonize on 'who I am', suggests the portrait of Japanese men who suffered from the Great East Japan earthquake in 2011. Haruki's concern that "we should blame our own selves who accept and show toleration to our distorted mind-set" and create "a story we can share" to make to a new ethical standard might be projected in this novel. The men and the women in the work, in fact, indicate the entire human race. Accordingly, it is the importance of self-reflection and the danger of avoiding issues that the author wants to strongly express through an easy topic, so called parting between men and women.