On the revision of “The Mail in Safety” by Yuzo Yamamoto

Abstract

　This paper is concerned with the following three points : (1) why The Man in Safety（『無事の人』）written by Yuzo Yamamoto in 1949 was revised after three years of its publication, (2) how the original work has been changed into another aspect, (3) what new evaluations can be given to the revised one.

　The Man in Safety, written shortly after the World War II was bitterly criticised because of the coexistance of two repulsive factors in the novel― the story of the blind man named Tame-san and the war-and-peace theory immaturely quoted from the Condition of Peace by Edward Hallet Carr, the famous British economist.

　But when the author carried out the revision of the novel in 1952, he condensed the tedious theory in short. Instead of that, the scenes of ‘darkness’ have been settled new in the last chapter. This idea of ‘darkness’ seems to have the significance that ‘any light comes through darkness’― the paradoxical manner of which he got hints from the scenes of “Die Augen des ewigen Bruders” （「永遠の兄の目」）by Stefan Zweig.

　This paradoxical idea of ‘darkness’ has made that too didactic and immature work lead to one of the deep insighted novels of man and life.