본문 바로가기
  • Home

A Study on Kawabata Yasunari’s “Makeup” - Recognizing of Life and Death -

  • 日本硏究
  • 2015, (38), pp.349-364
  • Publisher : The Center for Japanese Studies
  • Research Area : Humanities > Japanese Language and Literature
  • Published : February 20, 2015

김일도 1

1한국외국어대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

In Kawabata’s 『Make up』, ‘Make up’ is a behavior to assure that he is alive rather than an insincere behavior or sympathy on a fatality. the meaning of a toilet in a funeral hall changes depending on the character. Firstly, for an old woman, it does not mean a place for maintaining or confirming life. On the other hand, for a young lady, that is a place for check her life stirred by a dead person. And for a girl, that is a place for condolences to dead people and checking her own life. And it display a depth of self-examination by generalization of a living thing by disposing the flow of time and life through the death which disappeared as the seasons rolled by. It is effectively draw the inevitable fate of life and death through the object are moving from plant to human and the path that ‘Should not avoid to see it.’ It is implying that death is a natural phenomenon to accept. Make up in a toilet at a funeral is a behavior with selfishness and sense of guilty. At the same time, funeral is for expressing one’s regret for the deceased but feeling the aliveness of oneself. Highlighting the question about the nature of human being by bring a thing that a double meaning place and behavior into relief. And also,comparing these two meaning of ‘Make up’ and combining it, shows the attitude of a self-awareness. It is shown that the work is interested in the death through the background of a work is funeral. Even more,through the scene of observing a withering flowers, deepen into a thought of human being’s life and death. It is showing that the narrator ‘I’ is reflecting the author himself. And also, reconfirmed that this connection between Kawabata’s work and the death could be a keyword to understand his work.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.