일본 근대 탐정소설을 둘러싼 과학적 상상력 ー 유메노 규사쿠(夢野久作)의 변격 탐정소설을 중심으로 -

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between modern Japanese detective novels (especially “altered detective stories”) and science focusing on the works by Yumeno Kyusaku. Modern scientific knowledge is used in various forms in many detective stories regardless of whether they were “authentic” or “altered”. “Authentic detective novels” depict logical science based on solving cases while “altered detective novels” are more intended to portray scientific imagination in stories, because “altered detective novels” are more suitable to show such imaginations as they don’t follow the typical detective story structure. The protagonist of Yumeno Kyusaku's Ghosts and Propulsion (幽霊と推進機) rationally concludes ‘ghosts' as phantoms or illusions caused by anxiety based on his psychopathological knowledge, while the captain of The Wrecked Ship and a Boy (難船小僧) who denied superstition, experienced a mysterious event and believed in incomprehensible beings, showing the very opposite ending. In Human Egg (人間の卵) and Artificial Human (人造人間) which deal with similar subjects and the time, Yumeno uses the latest science such as an artificial womb through Egg (卵) which depicts the futuristic imagination of an artificial human. While introducing a technological discourse, these novels also portray the mystery of the supernatural. This shows the academic movement of the 1920s and 1930s that tried to solve all phenomena scientifically, and at the same time reveals that people who still have superstitions about transcendental existence coexisted. Yumeno tried to portray an era in which modern wisdom and pre-modern superstition collide, by utilizing incomprehensible phenomena to raise an alarm on the blind faith in science. The format of the altered detective novel, which was relatively free from scientific logic, provides a valid arena where the fantasy world and the mystery of science could be exquisitely harmonized.