芥川龍之介『西郷隆盛』論 = A study on Saigo Takamori by Akutagawa Ryunosuke

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This work is a short story that belongs to the so-called historical work of Ryunosuke Akutagawa, which was published in “Sin syousetu” in January of Taisho 7. Akutagawa wrote many works covering history, but most of his historical works did not follow historical facts, but simply based on historical facts and wrote themes.In other words, history was just a way to make use of his theme. For Akutagawa, history was used as a tool for “avoidance of unnatural obstacles” in novels. However, in this work, through Saigo Takamori, his own ideas on the history of the author Akutagawa itself are written. The story is about Honma, who met an old gentleman on the train on his way back to Kyoto for his graduation thesis, and it is a dispute over the Western-South War. The old gentleman said that there were many misrepresentations in the Western-South War, and among them, the biggest misrepresentation was the death of Saigo Takamori in the Battle of Siroyama. On the other hand, as a student studying history, Honma thought that Saigo Takamori's theory of survival was beyond consideration by using “all accurate historical materials.” An old gentleman expressed skepticism about history, saying, “There is no such thing as accurate historical material as it is enough to make a historical judgment.” Honma says that historical materials are reliable, but old gentlemen have many misrepresentations and many are unreliable.He said that history is written mainly on the side of winners or powerful people in history, so it is more likely that it will be written according to their convenience than the facts, so there are many “misrepresentations.” Akutagawa calls attention to the problems of historical distortion and historical window dressing, citing the fact that Saigo Takamori is unreliable and the inaccurate historical materials that inevitably arise from it.