아시아 태평양전쟁과 라디오 방송

The Pacific War and Radio Broadcasting: A Study on the Representations of the Radio in the Literature of Osamu Dazai

The aim of the present article is to shed new light on the war literature by paying special attention to the radio, the propaganda which instigated the Japanese to get involved in the war, whose effect was huge compared with other medias such as newspapers and magazines. During the period of the Pacific War, the radio served as a device free from spatio-temporal constraints on the advertisement of the war, which controlled the life and the thought of the Japanese. In this article, we consider the role and the meaning of the radio, and presents a new interpretation of the literary works by Dazai in terms of the “radio.” Our inquiry suggests that the radio was differently represented in the literary works under the wartime and in the post-war works. In “8th December”(十二月八日), written under the wartime, a character listens to the raid and becomes excited, which is a typical instance of the war representation in the war literature. On the other hand, in the postwar novel “Happiness of home”(家庭の幸福), the radio was quite negatively depicted. That is to say, the positive representation of the radio under the wartime was turned into the detestable representation of the radio in the post-war works. Furthermore, although “8th December,” written under the wartime, represents the amalgamation of the war-acceptance and the war-detestation, the viewpoint of the war-detestation depicted in Dazai’s post-war works is consistent, as corroborated by the statement of radio-detestation by the “master.”