ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

The purpose of this paper is to understand the representation of the sterilization of the victims of Hansen’s disease from a gender perspective, through Tsukida Masashi’s novel Twenty-Nine’s Virginity(1950) and Tadokoro Seiji’s novel Fetal Movements(1949). Infertility surgery and artificial abortions in the name of eugenics were the means to drive out the victims from the society and family because of their ‘bodily deformity.’ Twenty-Nine’s Virginity depicted the reality of the National Sanatorium where the sexual desire of male patients can only be resolved through marriage on the condition of a sterilization surgery, and Fetal Movement deals with, through the psychological description of pregnant women, a situation in which female patients’ gender roles are used for the management of the Sanatorium while they are completely deprived of the reproducing rights and custody of the newborn. This is especially suggestive in that the irrational wartime policy of the victims persisted into the post-war Japanese society, resulting in an aggravation of the stigmatization of the victims. And the study of Hansen’s disease literature restores the voice of the victims and recalls the memory. The examination of the representation of the sterilization of the victims of the disease through these literary works shows how the alienation accompanied by the management system of the modern Japanese society based on the ‘bodily deformity’ of the other, has reached the point of deprivation of reproduction rights and custody.

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