The deaf and their circumstances described by NISHIMURA Kyotaro

From Yottsu no shūshifu [The four periods] (1964) to Totsugawa keibu, chinmoku no kabe ni idomu [Inspector Totsukawa challenges the wall of silence] (1994)

Abstract

In 1945, the Japanese mystery novelist NISHIMURA Kyotaro wrote his first novel, Yottsu no shushifu, in which a deaf youth is a suspect in the case. Thirty years later, in 1990, Nishimura published Totsugawa keibu, chimmoku no kabe ni idomu, which also portrayed major characters who are deaf. The two novels are (perhaps) unique in that both are fictional works (mystery novels) written thirty years apart by the same author depicting the deaf and their circumstances. In this paper, I compare the two novels with reference to the changes in views of the deaf and their environment on the part of both Nishimura and Japanese society from 1960 to 1990. Specifically, from the perspective of my interest in the dynamics of modern Japanese language, the differences between the depictions of the deaf and their environment in the two novels are outlined and the significance of the differences between the two novels and how they were received in Japanese society is discussed.