In this paper, I analyzed articles about war published in Haha no tomo (Mothers’ Companion) from September 1953 to March 2023. The aim is to contribute to understanding the reaction to the war in Ukraine by studying the history of the connections between mothers, picture books, and helping children understand war in Japan.

    This advertising-free magazine, first published in 1953, has served to promote Fukuinkan’s products to the mothers of young children. It contains practical information on raising children, such as original stories to read, but over the years many articles have also touched on famous events, such as war. The editors of Haha no tomo, which gradually developed a large readership, explained that thinking, knowing, discussing, and informing about war are a mother’s responsibility to her children.

    Across the seventy years of publication, Haha no tomo’s articles reflect the changing beliefs and opinions that mothers had about war based on their experiences. In the 1950s, those articles reflected strong beliefs in peace, but from the end of the 1960s to the early 1970s, the experience of watching the Vietnam War on TV made the magazine contributors reflect on their own experiences and how to explain the war to their children. Around the 1990s, the magazine argued that mothers, due to a lack of experience of war, should be storytellers about what happens during war. The magazine and its readers had been focusing on how to preserve the stories about the horrors of war. On the other hand, the question of why and how their mothers and grandmothers were ignorant before WW2 and cooperated with the war effort became forgotten. This reinforced the image of a peace-loving mother and made it difficult to talk about war when Japan was being drawn into conflicts such as the Gulf War.

    Currently the war in Ukraine is being ignored by Haha no tomo. Mothers and media have changed. New ways of telling the story of mothers and war are being sought.

本稿は、自らの物語執筆の過程をふり返り、文化人類学を学んできたことが、物語執筆と、どのように関わっているかを明らかにしようと試みたものである。

文化人類学と出会い、学び続けてきたことは、物語執筆に大きな影響を与えているはずだが、私はこれまで、そのことを、きちんと考えてみたことはなかった。学会賞をいただいたことを機に、初めて、真剣に自らの物語執筆と文化人類学の関係を考えてみたのだが、自分の思考の流れを追う作業は、近づくと消える逃げ水を追うようなもので、明らかにできなかった部分も多い。私にとって物語は「生み出すもの」であると同時に「生まれてくる」ものでもあり、執筆の過程には意識して行っている部分だけでなく、「自分の脳がなぜこういう動き方をしているのかわからない」と感じる部分が含まれているからである。

ただ、物語が生まれるきっかけとなる「いきなり頭に浮かぶ映像」が、実際の執筆に結びつくのは、特殊な「連想」が生じたときであり、火がついたように一瞬で広がっていくその「連想」には、私が文化人類学を学び、フィールドワークをしてきたことが深く関わっていることが見えてきた。人間の脳が物語を生み出す、ある意味普遍的な創作の過程に、個人の経験がどのように関わるか、わずかでも明らかにできているようなら幸せである。