Religious Belief in Shimazaki Tōson's Aru Onna no Shogai: In Comparison with Morita Masatake's Consciousness of his Patients

Abstract

This paper focuses on Ogen, the protagonist of Shimazaki Toson's novel Aru Onna no Shogai (The Life of a Certain Woman, 1921), and how she spends the last years of her life as a psychiatric patient in “a hospital in Negishi,” which is modeled on Negishi Hospital. I begin by summarizing the writings of Morita Masatake, the director of this hospital, and argue that he translated the indigenous customs and beliefs of his patients into his accounts of various psychiatric cases. In doing so, his goal was to establish psychiatry as a science by providing rational explanations for the numerous threats Japanese society posed to religion early in the twentieth century. A similar logic can be found in the novel in the attitude of Ogen's relatives, who see her belief in otama-sama (protective spirits) as a sign of mental illness, and have her committed to a psychiatric hospital. I conclude that this issue of belief is treated critically in the text through the conflict between Ogen and her relatives as presented through the narrative.