시마자키 도손의 「幼き日(어린 시절)」론 - 새로운 문학적 소재의 발견 -

Abstract

This study focuses on the fact that key words of Tōson’s works - hometown, childhood, family and the Japanese - were not sought after in his stay in France, but showed up in 「Childhood(幼き日)」 published just before he went to France, and thus tries to shed a new light on the literary value of Childhood, which has been relatively unappreciated so far. 「A Letter to a Lady(ある婦人に與ふる手紙)」, which was written by request from a literary magazine for <women(婦人画報)>, was intended to write about women around Tōson. However, as the story went on, steadily extended to include his own childhood and became his own autobiographical story. Another interesting point is that unlike his other works, which were published after a thorough planning and investigation, this work went towards the direction not originally intended by him, leading to a change title of the book, 「Childhood」. However, in the process of publishing the work in a newspaper, Tōson came to make a few significant literary discoveries. First, he found out that with just ‘hometown’ and ‘childhood,’ he could write a decent story. Second, as he went back to his own childhood, he could see the significance of family whose meanings he had not recognized before. It is especially interesting that he newly discovered ‘motherhood’ which had previously been just a metaphor of disbelief to him. Lastly, it is noteworthy that Tōson had to deal with the Japanese traditions such as Japanese religions when he was and is known for his pursuit of scientific and objective facts in his works. It is certain that new literary discoveries in 「Childhood」 was the foreground where his various foreign experiences were combined with his experiences after returning to Japan, which resulted in a wide range of other works.