오오카 쇼헤이(大岡昇平)의 『들불(野火)』에 나타난 신 - 국가, 집단과 개인과의 거리를 매개로

Abstract

Even though a main character, named Tamura, was abandoned by group of people, he was rather calm and unconcerned at first. This may have been possible because from a start, he was a person who kept certain distance from a group so he wouldn't put himself in the same class as them. As he coincidentally found a cross within (solitude) that he was placed in, he brought up religious feelings towards christianity, which he considered to be full of illusions in his childhood, then he pleads for salvation to god when he experienced religious ecstasy that's close to madness. However, when he didn't receive any answers, he returns to violent remnants and commits random murders. His temporarily aroused christian emotions subsided as he joined other Japanese remnant group. When he was in extreme situation, such as crossing across the nation at his peril, he came to see 'somebody's' existence, who is viewing and looking at him, and this recognition was proven by the sensation on his body. Moreover, as a creature who controls cannibalism that could come from extreme starvation, he came to realize that 'somebody' is doing their function. And through a process of actual physical sensation of action on a left hand beginning to take its shape, he finally recognizes clearly on 'somebody' as transcendental and pantheism god. Meanwhile, he felt strongly that his left (religiously sacred) and right(worldly desire) are separated in his body that he is not included within "God on earth," and he manages to manure religious austerity, starvation, to become one with God. Even though he became a member of a group by an encounter with Yasuda and Nagamatsuwa, his religious beliefs, unlike previously portrayed instant extinct appearance, were kept publically, and he finally became 'angel' and carries out a murder under a name of execution of God's judgement when he kills Nagamatsu and Yasuda and starts to eat their flesh. After the war, when he faced re-entry to the Japanese society, he was submitted to a mental institute because he rejected to recurrent as an earthly grown-up, as he was before joining the war. Series of incidents that he went through in Leite island made him to aggressively isolate himself from the group more, as it deepened his mental disposition of keeping distant from others.