KAWASAKI Kohei
Modern Japanese Literary Studies 日本近代文学会 91 (0) 111 - 126 0549-3749 2014
[Refereed][Not invited] In this paper, I discuss the theme of fear that characterizes Masao Yamakawa's novels. Fear in Yamakawa's works is caused by the loss of the sense of distance and an attendant disorder in the sensory perceptions, and is felt in situations where "human beings" and "things" or "life" and "death" overlap with each other in various forms. The archetype of such fear is the impact of images we experience when seeing films and photographs. The essence of Yamakawa's novels lies in the transformational process where the experience of such images is transplanted into real human relationships. By means of further analysis of the above phenomena, I attempt to clarify the fact that the experience of images and sensory fear constitute the central theme of all of Yamakawa's novels.