著者

北條 文緒(1935-)

雑誌

東京女子大學附屬比較文化研究所紀要

巻号頁・発行日

vol.46, pp.85-105, 0000

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The books with which this essay deals were mainly published in the 1970s. They were chosen according to the two criteria of literary value and popularity. To avoid the risk of arbitrariness and personal bias in the selection, two lists of English school stories were consulted: one, in a 1982 issue of the quarterly journal Children's Literature in Education, is a list of school stories published between 1970 and 1980 selected according to the above criteria by three specialists; the other is a list of representative recent children's books compiled by the well-known expert in children's literature, J. R.Townsend. For Japanese school stories, Nihon no Jido Bungaku Sho, 1947-1981 (.Japanese Children's Books'. Awards and Prizes) was consulted. This was edited by the staff of Tokyo Children's Library, whose collection is a good resource for a study of this kind. On the basis of these reference materials ten English and five Japanese school stories were selected for discussion. Reference is also made to several more stories from both countries. The difference between English and Japanese stories proved to be most marked in their denouements. Almost all the Japanese stories end in unqualified happiness, with problems solved, troubles eliminated, feuds overcome and bonds of mutual understanding strengthened by shared causes and purposes. The characters are brought closer together and matured or re-born through their experiences. The English stories, on the other hand, end on a drier, less emotional, note, and the characters continue on their school lives more or less unchanged. This difference may be attributed to differences in the two societies in the openness of the ego to the incursions of the outside world. In Japanese stories the protecting shield surrounding the ego is somehow less rigid, less dense. Private lives are more frequently intruded on, the characters, whether adults or children, more readily confront and confess to each other. In English stories the shield is far harder. The characters seldom intrudeon each other's privacy. Instead of intrusion, confrontation and confession we tend to find self-assertion and defiance. Two indices of this difference are crying in the presence of others and the game of staring out one's opponent. The former is almost always deprecated in English stories but is movingly described in Japanese stories. The latter, on the contrary, is encountered rarely in Japanese stories but frequently in English stories. Thus in Japanese stories, mutual understanding is more easily attained and united efforts more readily directed towards a common purpose. Teachers are more sympathetic to pupils and students and more willing to accept their point of view. All sorts of problems arising in present-day Japanese schools are introduced into the stories, and a dominant theme is the enthusiasm of pupils (or students) and teachers to create better schools. In English stories schools are more static. Problems are solved in terms of individual adaptation, and human relationships develop within a framework of strictly observed social distances. Paradoxically, however, what the English school story seems to lack in realism it redeems in such literary qualities as depth of insight, richness of characterization, and narrative skill.