岡田八千代「黄楊の櫛」を読む

――鴎外・杢太郎の影――

抄録

OKADA Yachiyo is one of the pioneer women playwrights in modern Japan. Her one-act play A Boxwood Comb (Tsuge no Kushi) is regarded as her masterpiece. The heroine, Tsuna, is forced to be separated from her husband on account of her behavior toward her father-in-law. She meets her husband and begs to be allowed to return to their home, but he refuses her wish, respecting his filial duties. The desperate wife is driven to kill her husband and commit suicide. This play has been regarded as a tragedy depicting the yoke of the feudal family system of the Meiji era, and the heroine has always been compared with Nora in Ibsen's A Doll's House. This essay pursues the possibility of a totally different understanding of the play, by paying attention to the remarkable similarity to Mori Ōgai's A Half Day and the influence of Ōgai's Mask and KINOSHITA Mokutarō's Izumiya Dyehouse.