4　吐き気を生きること　大岡昇平の『野火』における戦争神経症

抄録

Shohei Ooka’s novel Fires on the Plain (1951) narrates the experiences of a Japanese soldier deployed in the Philippines during the final days of World War II. The story is told by an ill private named Tamura, who is soon abandoned by his party and wanders alone through the Philippine jungle, where he confronts extreme hunger and finally suffers from a severe mental disorder as a result of his own acts of murder and cannibalism.

Most critics have interpreted this novel simply a description of a soldier’s traumatic experiences on the battlefield. However, we should not forget that the events were narrated by and express the perspective of Tamura after he had survived the war and was confined to a mental hospital on Tokyo’s outskirts. Tamura is suffering from war neurosis and writing his memoir was a way of treating his disease.

In this paper, I interpret Fires on the Plain as a literary challenge whereby Ooka attempted to identify the nature and origin of war neurosis. Ooka, a former Japanese soldier who had been deployed in the Philippines, felt that an unidentifiable force resided within the body of a soldier who had committed unbearable deeds. His concern was not limited to violence on the battlefield. Ooka also sought to explore the strange force residing within humans who have committed extreme violence against other humans.

The most important challenge of this novel is that war neurosis is described as a violently ethical force that originates in unethical, violent deeds committed by a soldier. Tamura’s act of murder and cannibalism brings him feelings of “nausea” and this existential affect later causes his war neurosis; however, when the Korean War breaks out in 1950, his war neurosis comes back and violently rejects eating, namely, a self-deceptive life of “post-war” Japan, which is trying to survive on another war and colonialism. Fires on the Plain seems to identify “nausea” or war neurosis as a fundamental resistance to ongoing “murder and cannibalism.”