일본 한센병문학의 의의와 현재성

Abstract

Attempts are made in the present paper to determine the significance and nowness of leprosy (Hansen's disease) literature by reviewing the life and literature of Hojo Tamio (北條民雄), who caught leprosy at the age of 20, through his masterpiece The First Night of Life. This work brought leprosy literature to light in Japan. In his novella, the writer sent Asia a message about the real states of leprosy and lepers who had long been maltreated and dealt with as objects of extreme fear, hatred and discrimination. A literary self-expression about lepers kept in isolation in a sanatorium might be the truest definition of the novella The First Night of Life. The process in which lepers are hunted down to be confined in to sanatoria is no more than a sort of ostracism, from living within society to being forced to exist outside of it. The essential nature of sanatoria for lepers is isolation, signifying the fierce confrontation between insiders and outsiders. A sanatorium is a strange and unknown world for a leper in which his sense of resignation and futility develops into suspense and horror. Immediately after being admitted, he has to face the horrible sight of the impaired bodies of advanced stage lepers, which before would drive him to shuddering and now urged him to commit suicide since he knows it is the unavoidable course he will follow. Leprosy or Hansen's disease was a world that lepers themselves did want to accept under any circumstances. It cannot be denied, however, that leprosy is a source of suffering, and at the same time a condition which absolutely defines the existence of a leper. The events from the moment a leper receives a strange other up to the moment he has lived his life with this stranger are described calmly but vividly in the novella The First Night of Life. Such events are only possible because the leper eventually accepts his life as a leper after killing the part of himself which had persistently stuck to his past life, looking upon lepers simply as others. The tragic fate of lepers whose disease does not kill its host until all parts of the body are totally destroyed is transformed into an insistent life force in the novel. It may therefore be said that leprosy literature belongs not to a particular world at all but is closely connected with the universality of our lives. This is because our will to live in any way and struggle to find a way to live are common issues for all who endeavor to orient themselves toward life. This is why the significance of leprosy literature, though a minority branch, should not be underestimated. The novella The First Night of Life is said to open a new dawn of life for leprosy literature by heating up the first night of life in a sanatorium for lepers who have been set aside behind the curtain.