著者
田中 雅史
出版者
徳島大学
雑誌
言語文化研究 (ISSN:13405632)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.10, pp.87-108, 2003-02-20

Dogura Magura (Going Around in Circles) is a long fiction written by Yumeno Kyusaku. It is an eccentric story told by a mental patient, dealing with the fearful figure of the modern civilization and what is the true nature of humanity. Dogura Magura begins with a man (the narrator) who waked to find himself in a small room of a mental hospital. He has lost his memory. A man called Dr. Wakabayashi takes him to an office, where the doctor shows him many things including a story entitled Dogura Magura and Dr. Masaki's testament. Dr. Masaki is a genius scientist who presented a new theory of psychology named Sinri iden (psychological heredity). The outline of this theory is given in his testament. He asserted that human embryos dream about their ancestors' experience in the womb, and that mental disease comes from this memory. I don't think that Kyusaku believed in the theory he had created in the novel, but the reader can grasp the depth of human psyche through this theory. The composition of this novel is remarkably complicated, which also convey Kyusaku's message. The narrator of Dogura Magura finds a story entitled Dogura Magura in the novel. Dogura Magura has confusions of timeline. The reader can recognize the mystery of human psyche through the experience of such dizziness.
著者
田中 雅史
出版者
徳島大学
雑誌
言語文化研究 (ISSN:13405632)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.9, pp.1-20, 2002-02-20

There is a distinction between standard and nonstandard detective novels in Japan. The standard means, in this case, the kind of detective novel with an excellent detective, mysteries, logical solution and so on. Writers who backed the standard detective novels introduced this distinction, and it and remains in effect among mystery lovers. Although the word nonstandard has negative conotatons, it has attracted many people including a famous detective novelist, Edogawa Ranpo, who openly declared that he was a supporter for the standard. Another Japanese detective novelist, Yumeno Kyusaku, wrote that he sometimes felt like hunting for an exciting novel in a bookstore. Why the nonstandard appealed to them. Such psycholigy of searching for the nonstandard seems to be popular even among people of today who are crazy about a B movie or a comic book. In this essay I try to show that nonstandard detective novels aren't mere mutation of orthodox detective novels. I argue that the essence of the nonstandard is transgressivity. In standard detective novels, apparent mysteries are solved by an omnipotent detective; yet, in nonstandard ones, chaotic elements like vice, terror, cruelty, perversion break the moral standard of society. Some writers think that psychology of searching for the nonstandard has a close connection with degradation of taste in civilized society. Yumeno Kyusaku and Oscar Wilde are in agreement with each other on this point. Kyusaku, like the Decadant artists in fin de siecle, thought that society of his age was declining, and that detective novels should aim at describing such degradation with grotesque and erotic images. Wilde thought that suppression of the true nature of the senses in modern western civilization was, in itself, degradation and caused crooked desire. Both of the two artists paid attention to the modern tendency toward immoral and sensational stimulus. Kyusaku tells us about the dreg of society in Tettui or The Iron Hammer, and Wilde describes the terrible fate of Dorian Gray in The Picture of Dorian Gray. The search for the nonstandard found in these novels is, I suppose, not an act of destruction for destruction's sake, but an expression of transgressive will to search for an exit from the status quo.
著者
田中 雅史
出版者
徳島大学
雑誌
言語文化研究 (ISSN:13405632)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.7, pp.1-15, 2000-02-20

In this essay I analize Natsume Soseki's Kokoro or The Heart and Uchida Hyakken's Hanabi or Fireworks, from the viewpoint of the labyrinthine images in them. These short stories have in common extraordinarily dreamy characteristics. In Kokoro, a man finds a strange bird that reminds him of vague memories within himself. Then he meets a strange woman who also gives him impression that she may be related to dim memories of his past. She leads him into a dark, narrow, mazy lane, that is, a labyrinthine space. In this story Soseki created a chain of images that showed his subjective world: a bird, a woman, memories, and so on. He created Kokoro on the basis of subjective visions, instead of the real world. On this point, Soseki can be compared with the Western subjective artists whom G. R. Hocke called the Mannerists. Kokoro's influence on Hanabi is obvious. In Hanabi, a man also meets a strange woman on a bank near the sea. They walk together towards the seaside. They saw splendid fireworks on their way, and he thinks that the fireworks resemble the memories of his past. That is, the image of fire or fireworks has the function of the bird in Kokoro. Getting into a small labyrinthine corridor, he feels uneasy. Finally the woman fall upon him, screaming a flirt!. Hyakken also created a subjective chain of images in his work. These works are quite neurotic, but I think pathological approaches are not sufficient to understand them. Because Soseki and Hyakken composed them deliberately from the viewpoint of artistic effects. They tried to express their inner enigmatic world, which they thought really valuable. They produced many labyrinthine images in the process of representing such enigmas.