무라카미 하루키(村上春樹)작품 속에 나타난 재난 표상 연구

Abstract

This study divides Murakami Haruki’s works into three periods and focuses on the second era, the most important turning point of his life. We analyze his description methods on the two disaster occurred in 1995 and the relationship with his works. In that year, the Kobe earthquake occurred in January and the sarin gas terror in subway was in March. These two disasters were the direct momentum that turned Haruki’s eyes from “individuals” to “society”. The earthquake destroyed his hometown Kobe. He was shocked by huge physical and psychological loss. But this wasn’t a kind of disaster you can be prepared, or even if you are, the damage is inevitable. On the contrary, the “subway sarin gas release” was a man-made disaster in a literal sense. A pseudo-relation organization named “Aum Shinrikyo” massacred people under the name of salvation. Even though these two tragedies had occurred by different causes, Haruki categorized them as problems belong to “underground”. This doesn’t mean the physical space. It means all the negative elements beneath surfaces; subconsciousness, negative feelings, cancer of society, historic violence, religion issues, etc. Haruki entered into another plane as writer and started to have a critical mind on social problems because of these two tragedies. Despite of the fact that these disasters exerted huge influence on Japan society, no writer like him ever investigated these major incidents in person. Given his promise about “social responsibility” made at the US, we can see he is trying to fulfil his words and building a solid foundation for world-renowned author.