『友情』の『生長』

Growth of “Friendship - A Striking Contrast between Nojima and Omiya -

“Friendship,” written by Mushanokoji Saneatsu, has been widely read as a youth novel and has been acknowledged as one of the masterpieces of the modern Japanese literature. It can be said that the central topics in this novel are Nojima’s love towards Sugiko, the friendship between Nojima and Omiya, and the gender issues, but I take a different approach to this novel by contrasting her relation to Nojima with her relation to Omiya and, in particular, considering the change of Nojima’s mental states. The feeling of the main character in “friendship,” Nojima, towards Sugikois considered to be idolatry, and it can be assumed that Nojima tries to attract her to resolve his lack of confidence. On the other hand, Omiya and Sugiko attract each other, developing a bidirectional love relation. In other words, Nojima’s love excluded the others, while the love between Omiya and Sugiko achieved an equal relationship between a man and a woman. However, the point at which Nojima is highly assessed in the novel is that his criterion for love is set on the personality of the woman. These criterion, in short, represent his honesty and cleanness, for which his personality “grows.” That Nojima highly values personality lets him be aware of his own problems and recognize the reality.