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Japanese Orientalism Represented in the Play, Sanpung of Song Yeong

Baik, Seung Suk 1

1영남대학교

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ABSTRACT

This thesis pursues to investigate the representative methods of Sanpung, the Japanese national theatre, written by Song Yeong. Sanpung was presented to “the 1st national theatre contest” held in Gyeongseong, the capitol of Joseon in 1942 under the Japanese colonial rule. And the play received the prize for the best production at this contest. This thesis will illuminate that how the way of discourse of Sanpung works to control, reconstitute, and suppress the people of those times. The results are as follows. First, the consciousness of imaginative geography, country/urban is one of the major ideas of this play. The imaginative geography, country/urban is also one of the main concept of occidentalism. Japanese orientalism is a kind of occidentalism influenced by Germany of Europe. ‘Mountain district’, the stage of this play represents ‘the quietness’, ‘humanity’, ‘courtesy’, and ‘straightforwardness’. The representative character is ‘mother’. Contrary to this, ‘urban’ represents ‘ungenerosity’, ‘licentiousness’, and ‘money-worship’. The representative characters are ‘HaeJu Jip’ and ‘Youngja’. And ‘the Buddhism’ is also used as the representation of ‘the oriental’. Second, ‘the appropriation of Japanese orientalism through socialism’ is found in Sanpung. This play was in a state of transition between socialism and Japanese orientalism among Song Yeong’s works. He regards Japan=the oriental as the proletariat that must win because of his moral superiority. The third, Sanpung intended to represent the ‘Japanese mind’ through the aestheticization of death. In Sanpung, ‘the death of mother’ purified the people in the mountain district that had corrupted through the temptation of ‘urban’ and ‘civilization’. Song Yeong could represent the ‘pure Japanese mind’ through the ‘death of mother’. This represents that to protect Japanese(oriental) originality from the invasion of the west, the courage that is not afraid of death is needed. In conclusion, the discourse of Japanese orientalism including ‘the cult of death’ of this play contributed to give the appropriate motivation and moral authority to the people of Joseon who died in the pacific war.

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