Accepted Paper
Paper short abstract
This paper examines the concept of the “South” in Haruo Sato’s writings, focusing on his Indonesian travel works. It explores how Indonesia functioned as the furthest expansion of his southern imagination, shaped by wartime discourse as well as personal engagement with cultural difference.
Paper long abstract
In the literary works of Haruo Sato, the “South” emerges not as a self-evident geographical entity but as an imaginative space that is gradually formed and expanded through its contrast with the “North.” In his early writings, Kumano is depicted as a space of wildness infused with nostalgia, standing in opposition to the pastoral imagery conventionally associated with Musashino. This contrast already signals Sato’s distinctive orientation toward the South as a space marked by alterity and emotional depth. As his literary career developed, the scope of this southern imagination expanded beyond the Japanese archipelago to encompass Fujian and Taiwan, and during the wartime period it was directed more explicitly toward Southeast Asia, particularly Java.
A key moment in this process was Sato’s journey to Southeast Asia between October 1943 and May 1944. Traveling through Manila, Singapore, and Malacca, he arrived in Jakarta in mid-November, then moved on to Surabaya and Bali before returning to Japan in late May 1944. These experiences of travel and movement played a crucial role in giving concrete geographical and cultural form to the South within Sato’s literary imagination.
This paper examines Sato’s Indonesian travel writings, with particular attention to The People of the East Indies and A Journey to Bali. In these texts, representations of Indonesian culture are shaped by the ideological climate of wartime Japan and by contemporary discourses surrounding the “South.” At the same time, however, Sato’s writings also display a personal mode of engagement grounded in sensory perception and curiosity toward cultural difference. His depictions of landscapes, religious practices, and everyday life reveal a layered image of the South that cannot be reduced to political rhetoric alone.
By focusing on the intersection of wartime perspectives and individual imagination, this paper explores how the boundaries of the South were formed and transformed in Sato’s literature. It argues that Indonesia represents a critical point in the expansion of Sato’s southern horizon, functioning as a space where ideological frameworks and personal sensibilities converge, and where the limits of his southern imagination are most fully articulated.
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed): | 佐藤春夫の文学において〈南〉は、固定された地域概念ではなく、〈北〉との対照関係のなかで次第に広がっていく想像的な空間として描かれてきた。初期作品に見られる熊野は、武蔵野的な田園空間とは異なり、郷愁を内包した野性の空間として表象されており、そこにはすでに佐藤春夫固有の〈南〉への志向が認められる。その後、この〈南〉の射程は福建・台湾へと広がり、戦時期には爪哇を含む東南アジアへと具体的に向けられていく。 1943年10月、佐藤春夫は東南アジアへ渡航し、マニラ、シンガポール、マラッカを経由して11月中旬にジャカルタへ到着した。その後、スラバヤ、バリ島などを巡り、1944年5月下旬に帰国している。こうした移動の経験は、佐藤春夫の文学的想像力において〈南〉の地理的・文化的輪郭を具体化する重要な契機となった。 『東インドの人々』や『バリ島の旅』におけるインドネシア文化の描写には、戦時下の日本社会に共有されたイデオロギーや「南方」言説の影響が色濃く反映されている一方で、異文化への関心や感覚的な魅了に基づく、佐藤春夫独自の南方像も重層的に読み取ることができる。本稿は、戦時的な視線と個人的な南方想像が交錯する地点に注目し、佐藤春夫文学において〈南〉の境界がいかに形成され、変容していったのかを明らかにするものである。 |
Where Is the “South”? Transnational and Literary Perspectives in Modern Japanese Literature