가이코 다케시(開高健)의 「패닉」에 나타난 전후 일본에 대한 비판 의식

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present a new perspective on Kaiko Takeshi’s debut work, Panic, which is said to have built up a strong fiction world with a dense and destructive style. In this work, the release of animals’ collective energy is a fable of the human world. It has been also read as a story that reproduces the relationship between organization and individual. Nevertheless, this paper aims to consider the work as a metaphorical criticism of postwar Japan. First of all, this work, which makes clear the boundaries between humans and animals, and artificial and natural, breaks down these binary confrontations, seeks a reading that goes beyond speciesism, and analyzes the observation that the swarm of mice threatening the human world symbolizes the human world. Next, this work sharply and satirically portrays the darkness of the contemporary Japanese political society, but it focuses on depictions of corruptions, especially, those made by bureaucrats and politicians in untimely manner to give a strong criticism of modernism without substance. Finally, this paper argues that the work sees the panic of the human world caused by a flock of mice as a kind of disaster and in describing the response to this disaster functions as a reminder of the memories of tragedy, pain, harm and damage brought about by the war of Imperial Japan. In addition, this paper aims to capture the point that the ultimate goal of the work is to present the contradictions created by the disaster and capitalism and the voices of social underdogs and argue that the force to respond ethnically is of utmost significance.