경계 위의 조선인－사타 이네코(佐多稲子) ｢가슴에 그리다(胸に描く)｣를 중심으로－

Abstract

This study looks at how Sata Ineko’s 1953 short story Mune ni Egaku(Painted on the Hear) portrays the life of a Korean man living in postwar Japan. Through the figure of Choi, the narrative shows how the traces of Japan’s colonial rule continued to shape everyday relationships, often placing Koreans in an uneasy and highly visible position within Japanese society. Choi appears as a familiar neighbor, yet he never fully enters the narrator’s world. The way others notice his face, his Japanese, or his clothing quietly marks him as “outside,” and these details reveal the kind of distance that remained between Japanese and Koreans even after the war. Scenes such as his attempt to offer raw pig entrails, or the way he walks without looking around, hint at a person who has spent years managing other people’s gazes―balancing pride, embarrassment, and a habit of holding himself back. His living situation also reflects the instability many Koreans faced at the time. Moving from one temporary lodging to another and losing his position at a Korean school after its forced closure, Choi drifts between jobs and homes. He also avoids returning to his family in Korea. Taken together, these aspects echo Robert E. Park’s description of the “marginal man,” someone who belongs fully to neither society and survives in the space between. Although Sata’s depiction inevitably carries the assumptions of her era, the story also shows her attempt to understand the emotional weight carried by people like Choi. Mune ni Egaku thus illustrates both the persistence of discriminatory ways of seeing and the vulnerable humanity of those forced to live along the borders of postwar East Asian history.