A Study on Yoichi Funado’s <i>Ezochi Bekken</i>：Exploring How the Armed Uprising of the Ainu People in the Kansei Era of the Edo Period was Described in Hardboiled Fiction

SAKAMOTO, Saori

doi:2019.9.1.129

The Journal of Japanese Language Literature Studies > Volume 9(1); 2019 > Article

Article

Border Crossings: The Journal of Japanese-Language Literature Studies 2019;9(1): 129-146.
doi: https://doi.org/10.22628/bcjjl.2019.9.1.129

A Study on Yoichi Funado’s Ezochi Bekken：Exploring How the Armed Uprising of the Ainu People in the Kansei Era of the Edo Period was Described in Hardboiled Fiction

Saori SAKAMOTO

Associate Professor, Fujen Catholic University

船戸与一『蝦夷地別件』論――｢寛政アイヌの蜂起(メナシ·クナシリの戦い)｣を｢ハードボイルド·ミステリ｣はどう描くか

坂元さおり

天主教輔仁大学日本語文学系副教授

Correspondence Saori SAKAMOTO ,Email: 049296@mail.fju.edu.tw

Published online: 30 December 2019.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the significance of Yoichi Funado (1944-2015), a Japanese writer of hardboiled fiction. Mitsuo Oda attached great importance to Oyabu Haruhiko and Jiro Ikushima, writers who were repatriated from Japanese colonies and introduced such fiction to postwar Japan. He questioned whether this genre might or should necessarily awaken “the memory of the Empire of Japan”, and recognized Funado as having taken up the mantle of resolving this problem. This is because Funado had always been a writer who strongly believed that hardboiled fiction was a way “to keenly excavate the faces of imperialism” since his debut novel in the 1970s. In this light, this paper examines his novel Ezochi Bekken (1995), which depicts the armed uprising of the Ainu people near the end of the period of early modern Japan, and also its legacy in modern Japan, in this way capturing for the first time this entire historical period. This study also examines how this novel affected Funado’s many later works, which centered on the theme of the history and memory of the Empire of Japan.

Keywords: Yoichi Funado, Ezochi Bekken, Hardboiled Fiction, Uprising of the Ainu People in the Kansei Era of the Edo Period, Japan as a Colonial Empire

キ―ワ―ド: 船戸与一, ｢蝦夷地別件｣, ハードボイルド·ミステリー, 寛政アイヌの蜂起／メナシ·クナシリの戦い, 植民帝国としての日本