核時代における「文学者の責任」

――円地文子『私も燃えている』を中心に――

抄録

　 Enchi Fumiko is known with a high reputation for her profound scholarship in Japanese classics. For this reason, researchers have assumed her novels have little to do with the social issues of her time. It is noteworthy, however, that Enchi in the 1930s sensitively responded to the proletarian literary movement, demonstrating her keen concern for society.

　This paper analyzes Enchi's I'm Also in the Flame (Watashi mo moeteiru) to illustrate this aspect of Enchi's writing and discusses how Enchi related herself to the social situtation of the time. In 1958 Enchi traveled to Europe and North America. Though she was impressed with what she saw during this trip, she also became apprehensive about the future of the world under the leadership of the United States, which led her to write I'm Also in the Flame. Her sense of anxiety was gradually amplified by her encounter with a physicist, Tomonaga Shin'ichiro, and a book entitled Brighter than a Thousand Suns by Robert Jungk. Enchi realized that the peaceful use of nuclear energy had the potential of easily being shifted to a serious threat to the human society by the will of politics. Enchi wondered how scientists could retain their morality and also what she as a writer should do to confront this crisis. The solution she attained was to find what scientists and writers shared in common and to seek how they can work together to maintain a sense of responsibility.

　This aspect of Enchi's activity as a literary figure has not received much attention to date. This paper is an attempt to re-evaluate her works by shedding light on her contribution as a socially concerned writer.