| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 日本語文學研究所 === 105 === The purpose of this paper is to discuss the way "food" is used in describing the characters created by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, a writer during the Taisho period. Akutagawa''s "Imogayu" is one of the commonly tackled subjects in studies about food and literature. However, there were more than one early literary work and at least seven related pieces from Akutagawa that used "food" as a source material. The term "food" in this paper refers not only to food per se, but to everything related to food, such as body language associated with eating, tableware, interpersonal relationships, a character''s desire for food, and other concrete and abstract matters related to "food". The "food"-related writing technique in Akutagawa''s literatures involves the images of food which are typically used in describing the characters. Understanding the way Akutagawa used "food" to show the perspective and property of the characters, and how he conveyed a thematic setting through these characters, enabled us to learn about his technique of character shaping, and explore deeper into his works in order to interpret the theme and central idea.
The prologue of this paper gives a general introduction of Akutagawa''s position and distinguishing quality in the area of literature, as well as writing technique using food as a source material in his early works, relevance to the theme, interpretations or implied meaning of "food" and characterization in previous studies. The first, second, and third chapters provide a comparison between the original and adapted versions, and identify the relationship between the image of food and the characters based on Akutagawa''s adaptation. The fourth chapter presents the interpretation or implied meaning of characterization in several works that adopt Buddhism as a common source material, and explores the influence of Akutagawa''s personal experience on characterization.
In analyzing the three leading characters in Hana, Shu-Chu and Imogayu; namely, Nigu, Ryutaisei, and Goi, it was found that their body language related to eating demonstrated loneliness, which led to obsessions and struggles with self-esteem, liquor, and taro porridge, resulting in egoistic behavior. This type of behavior has several similarities with those of hungry ghosts described in Buddhism. Hungry ghosts are the consequence of negative karma due to greed and stinginess, which are akin to the concept of egoism. Therefore, images similar to hungry ghosts are present when describing egoistic characters.
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