キャサリン田中先生の論考が Japanese Studies という英語圏での一流誌に掲載されました！幸田露伴の「対髑髏」を分析した力作です。仏教の文化や思想などの伝統文化と強く結びついてそれを発展させながら、欧米で受け入れられたハンセン病という概念を取り入れるという緊張した構図が描かれ、その中で、人々のハンセン病に対する恐れが減少していくというよりも、社会的スティグマが強くなっていくという議論です。納得できる部分がとても多い議論です。ぜひお読みください！
「対髑髏」は、医学と文学や疾病と文学というジャンルの中のとても重要な作品であり、キャサリン田中先生の議論はその中での新しい中核となる論文です。ぜひお読みください！
Tanaka, K. M. (2019). "The Abject Woman and the Meaning of Illness in Kōda Rohan’s ‘Tai Dokuro’ (Encounter with a Skull)." Japanese Studies 39(1): 57-74.
ABSTRACT
Koda Rohan's (1867?1947) "Tai dokuro" (Encounter with a Skull) is often treated as a tale of karmic retribution and transcendence. In addition to drawing on Buddhist philosophy, the text is rich in allusions to classical literature and philosophy. Yet, as this paper argues, Rohan's tale is decidedly modern. His depiction of illness places his story in dialogue with modern regimes of health, gender, and class, while also drawing on traditional notions of illness and Buddhist aesthetics of decay as associated with the Kusozu (Nine Stages of Death Scrolls). For centuries, Hansen's disease was feared as an illness that reduced sufferers to a living corpse, and the 1873 discovery of bacilli that caused the illness did little to assuage public fear: rather, the new attention to the disease increased social stigma. Rohan's 1890 piece, written before Japan's 1907 legislation calling for quarantine of sufferers in some cases, draws on modern understandings of Hansen's disease while at the same time complicating the stigma surrounding the disease. Through a close examination of "Encounter with a Skull", I draw attention to the meaning of illness and the abject woman, as well as the play between archetype and innovation in this distinctly "modern" text.
