The Poetry about Isolation and the Sanatorium : Resisting Hatred toward People in Sickness

Abstract

This paper considers the issue of isolating people in sickness by referring to an ideological view over disabilities that is presented by the offender of the Sagamihara care center massacre in 2016 and criticisms from researchers toward such a view. To build my own discussion, I will refer to the literary work by residents of a Hansen’s disease care center, who are also zainichi Koreans(resident Koreans in Japan) who had to remain in the care center even after the liberation from the Japanese Empire after the end of World WarII. The literary activities of two figures, Kim Ha-il and Koyama Sueko, are targets of literary analysis in this paper. I will trace a process of reconstructing their self-identification and recognition of the situation of isolation through creating tanka(Japanese poetry) and poetry. I will especially pay attention to the relationship between their own bodies and languages and how they understand their surrounding discrimination that were structured through the modern history of Japan. This paper discusses not only the internal psychological world of the two poet/poetess but also how their expressions were inevitably tangled with the environment in which they were forced to stay against their will by the government eugenic policies and societal prejudices. A goal of this paper is to get a clue from such an experience of isolation to reflect on hatred in the age of the pandemic. 本稿では、2016年に起きた相模原障害者施設襲撃事件で犯人が露わにした「障害」観 とそうした考え方に対する研究者たちの警鐘を契機として、「病者」を「隔離」すること について考察する。その際に参照するのが日本帝国主義の崩壊後も日本に残らざるを えなかった在日朝鮮人のハンセン病者による文学作品である。金夏日、香山末子という 二人の文学的営為を分析の対象として、彼・彼女らが歌/詩を作るという行為を通して 再構築する自己認識と「隔離」という状況への理解を辿っていく。特に、植民地朝鮮出身 のハンセン病療養所入居者が、交差性(intersectionality)をもった構造的差別のなかで、 自らの身体と言語の関係を構築し、そして自分の「居場所」をどのように認識していっ たかを考えていく。本稿がそうした文学表現から見出したいのは、病者個人の内的な精 神世界だけではなく、病者が自身の表現を手に入れていく過程で、自身が置かれた環境 がどのように構築されたかを理解することと不可分に結びついていることである。そこ で描き出される「隔離」という現実から「パンデミック時代の嫌悪」を考える手がかりを 得ることがこの論文の目的である。