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Tanaka Komimasa and the Korean war －focusing on Landing－

  • Journal of Japanese Culture
  • 2019, (81), pp.227-250
  • DOI : 10.21481/jbunka..81.201905.227
  • Publisher : The Japanese Culture Association Of Korea (Jcak)
  • Research Area : Humanities > Japanese Language and Literature
  • Received : April 14, 2019
  • Accepted : May 7, 2019
  • Published : May 31, 2019

LEE MOONHO 1

1이바라키대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study reviews the position and meaning of the Korean War in the literature of Tanaka Komimasa. Before the outbreak of the Korean War, Tanaka was stationed on the Chinese war front as a railway guard. He never faced any major battles, but witnessed many deaths and suffered from a contagious disease. When the Korean War began in 1950, he began working at Camp Yokota. Japan had been swept into the Cold War by the United States occupancy and Tanaka witnessed the progression of the Korean War within the U.S. military. The Korean War liberated Japan from hunger and poverty prevailing through the pre-war era. In Landing, published in 1957, Tanaka intended to scrutinize the convergence of post-war Japan and the Korean War. He encountered the demise of many core values of post-war democracy with the outbreak of the War - namely pacifism, national sovereignty and basic human rights. In the novel, the protagonist is shipped to Korea during war time on a boat carrying U.S. tanks. As he internalizes post-war democratic values, he escapes at Moji. This irony of the protagonist landing in Moji, Kita-Kyushu instead of Korea, is Tanaka’s attempt to restore lost humanism. Landing, thus, shows the importance of the underappreciated Korean War among Tanaka’s war novels

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