재난 이후의 문학적 상상력과 길항(拮抗)하는 디스토피아 ‒다와다 요코(多和田葉子)의 「헌등사(献灯使)」를 중심으로‒

Abstract

Tawada Yoko’s works have been discussed mainly in conjunction with themes such as boundaries, language, identity and diaspora, taking the author’s career as a background. The world of Tawada’s work will be transformed into a new era of the March 11, 2011, disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Published in 2014, “Honryungsa” tells the story of Japan, which has been in a state of complete lockdown since the nuclear accident, children who are physically ill and cannot live without someone’s care, and elderly people who maintain a near eternal life and health. Drawing a future society, whether Utopia or Dystopia, has an inseparable relationship with reading behavior that projects modern society into the future. The fact that Dawa chose to portray none other than dystopia shows that he is staring squarely at the trends and crises of modern Japanese society. In the original book, we intend to expand the extramarital view of the interpretation of “Honryungsa” by examining what the literary imagination of Tawada, which depicts the “Honryungsa” after the nuclear accident, ultimately means to say, and how it is in line with the current Japanese society, while reflecting on its implications.