子どもが描いた昭和初期の家族生活　―『鑑賞文選』『綴方讀本』掲載の綴方をてがかりに―

抄録

  The aim of this study was to examine family lives in the first half of the Showa period from the point of view of children in that period. To achieve this, children’s compositions appearing in the “Kansyobunsen”(later renamed “Tsuzurikatatokuhon”) magazine between June 1925 and October 1934 were analyzed, focusing on events in family lives. The results obtained in this study may be summarized as follows:

  In the first half of the Showa period, families were large in size and members who lived in the same household often moved out for the following reasons: (1) death or hospitalization due to disease or accident; (2) medical care in distant places; (3) apprenticeship, education, marriage, or military service; (4) placing of a child in the care of a relative or other person; and (5) working away from home. At that time, diseases and injuries in many cases led directly to death. In particular, parents’ disease, death, apprenticeship or the need to stay in a different place separated children from their families. Therefore, many compositions that were related to events in family lives expressed anxiety about bereavement and separation from family members, sorrow when the bereavement and separation was experienced, and joy when reunited with family members. Family lives in the first half of the Showa period were regulated primarily by poor economic conditions, and bereavement and separation from family members often occurred. Therefore, children were exposed to severe realities and their emotions fluctuated between hope and fear. Through family lives children learned that they could not do anything about certain realities their families experienced. Moreover, children learned how to live, how to die, how to sympathize with others, and how to help each other.