일제말기 ‘대륙’의 의미 -한설야의 『대륙』을 중심으로

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the meaning of the continent that emerged in the literary world at the end of Japanese colonial period, focusing on Han Seol-ya’s The Continent, which has a unique imagination of Manchuria continent. ‘continent’ is the key word of ‘Continental Policy’, the colonial aggression policy actually practiced by the Japanese Empire, as well as an important concept to explore the geographical imagination of Japanese Empire. Especially in 1938, the year after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, the term ‘continent’ frequently appeared in discourse of Japanese Imperialism, with the implementation of the ‘Continental immigration Policy’ as a way to dominate the occupied territories. Subsequently, the ‘continental literature’, or ‘continental exploitation literature’, emerged as national policy literature. The colonial Joseon was also influenced by this, and many works about Manchuria were created. Among them, Han Seol-ya, with extensive experience in China, wrote the novel The Continent, which features stories unfolded between the urban and rural areas of Manchuria. The main urban spaces of this novel are Fengtian and Xinjing along the South Manchurian Railway, with Fengtian being the space where the protagonist’s love is frustrated, and Xinjing being negatively portrayed as a stage for spies of various countries. On the contrary, the remote countryside of Gando was the only space of hope for reconciliation and unity between ethnic groups, although it was an unstable space where bandits were rampant and wars were uncertain. From the perspective of the Japanese Empire, the continent was a vast conquerable space and the edge far from the center of the Japanese Empire. However, in the novel The Continent, through the kidnapping of Japanese by bandits, the Japanese youth are reformed from their “insularity” on the impact of the continent. Furthermore, the relationship between Japan and Manchuria was transformed from an imperial/colonial pattern to a hidden logic of island/continent, where the superior position of the civilized Japanese Empire was replaced by the inferior position of an island in contrast to the continent, and thus the empire discourse was reversed.