모리사키 가즈에의 ‘식민지 조선으로 가는 길’ - ‘두려운’ 타자에서 ‘상쾌한’ 타자로 -

Abstract

Kazue Morisaki (1927-2022) visited South Korea after the war, and the itinerary was published as The Road to Colonial Korea. It was the process of confronting the scars left by the modern Japanese colonialism and listening to the echoes that resonated with them. Morisaki spent her time in Daegu, Gyeongju and Gimcheon before the war, and there are many descriptions of Daegu and Gyeongju, but not many about Gimcheon. This article compares and analyzes the descriptions of Gimcheon that appear in Gyeongju is Mother’s Call (1984) and Into the Mountains and Rivers with the Sound of Echoes (1986), and clarifies Morisaki’s other points of view when looking at colonial Korea. In Gyeongju is a mother’s call, Gimcheon is a colony of Korea, which gives uneasy resistance and fear unlike Gyeongju. However, in Into the Sound of the Mountains and Rivers, Morisaki encounters Choi Song Seol-dang and a social entrepreneur Kim Im-sun, and discovers an Asian woman who has emerged as an individual through the resistance of colonial Korea, the war, and dispersion. Through this, Morisaki changes his emotional attitude from the disturbing resistance and fear she felt in Gimcheon to a relief. Kazue Morisaki’s travel essay on Korea goes beyond the original sinfulness of Korea and shows the journey to face the new other, modern Korea, and the discovery of the other is full of occasional encounters and discoveries. The same can be said of Morisaki’s decolonization process. It makes it clear that the path requires not only the shedding of the colonial scars of the non-colonial side, but also the dismantling of colonialist thinking and attitudes of the colonial side.