| Summary: | 碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 日本語文學系碩士班 === 103 === Tsushima Yuko and Shin Kyung-sook who represent Japan and Korea respectively have published a lot of works focusing on the contemporary problems in modern society such as family and woman as they have a lot of social consciousness. They have actively participated in the international literature and academic exchanges up to now. They are also famous for strengthening their friendship by publishing a book made of their exchanged letters between them in 2007 and are proper for the target of study for representative East Asian female writers.
In Chapter 1 of this paper, the process and meaning of their exchanges which is the fruit of their friendship and exchanges will be dealt with in the initial part while the themes of “family and women problems in modern society” and “modern and contemporary history asked by women” using their representative works will be focused in the body part.
The themes of “family and women problems in modern society” are expressed in “Danmari ichi” authored by Tsushima in Chapter 2 and “Please Look After My Mom” authored by Shin in Chapter 3. The book “Danmari ichi” is the early representative work authored by Tsushima in 1984 and published as a separate volume. It includes eleven short stories including the cover short story “Danmari ichi”. Most of the short
stories in “Danmari ichi” deal with the difficult and sad life of the single moms. The book “Please Look After My Mom” is the representative work authored by Shin and published in 2008. It shows the mother’s dedicated love and commitment to her children and the mother’s agonizing life and struggle under the patriarchal family system.
In Chapter 4 and 5, the book “Lee Jin” authored by Shin and “Too much Barbaric”
authored by Tsushima are studied with the theme of the modern history viewed by
female writers and the contemporary problems and the maternal affection which is the theme of their works would be dealt with here. Shin has reconstructed the story of a court lady who moved to France along with a French diplomat in the period where the
modern and pre-modern period meet and had the sad and unhappy life in the virtual space in her book “Lee Jin” published in 2007 while Tsushima told the life of the Japanese woman who moved to Taiwan which was Japanese colony with her man in
the Japanese imperialistic period and the socially unprivileged people such as women, children and ethnic minorities in her book “Too much barbaric” published in 2008.
In these works, the tragic historical events in East Asian regions such as “Killing of Korean Queen Min” and “Wushe Incident” appear not just exemplary incidents but the critical events. In addition, two authors disclosed in their books that they studied the reference in detail and visited the fields several times to write the stories based on
I historical facts. Two female writers criticized the imperialistic ideology in their
works. They focused on the sad lives and agony of people, which are the pain for general people around the world at that time as well as the sympathy for them by telling about the main female characters. We can look back the past of East Asian countries and get the new perspective on the expression of East Asian female writers through their books.
Keywords: Tsushima Yuko, Shin Kyung-sook, East Asian female writers, women and family, modern history asked by women
|
|---|
