Япония: цивилизация, культура, язык 2022

«ISSUES OF JAPANOLOGY, vol. 9» St-Petersburg State Univ 2022 235 Monsters, Ghosts, and Robots in the Stories of Contemporary Japanese Writer Otsuichi (Хронопуло Л.Ю.) This paper explores how monsters and other supernatural creatures are functioning in the stories of popular Japanese writer Otsuichi (pen name; real name Adachi Hirotaka, born in 1978). Basing on two collections of stories by Otsuichi (“Zoo-1”, “Zoo-2”), and three novels – “Ishinome” 1 , “The Flat Dog” 2 , and “This Child’s Picture is Not Finished” 3 – I analyze how monsters are functioning in the human world, as well as the way they are interacting with the character whom they choose to be their “friend”. Special attention will be paid to the circumstances in which monster meets its human friend. I examine Otsuichi’s stories from a comparative perspective, and consider the image of a monster in Otsuichi’s creative activity as a metaphorical one. The novel “Ishinome” (literally “stone eyes”, Ishinome is the name of a fairy-tale character) was first published in 1999. The central topic of the novel is an opposition of a weak female character, a victim of circumstances, and a female criminal. S., the principal character of the novel, a young schoolteacher of drawing, who lived and worked in a small village, went together with his colleague and friend to investigate what had happened to his mother, or at least to seek for her remains if she had been killed. According to what the young man’s father and uncle said, his mother was a 1 Otsuichi. Ishinome // in: Heimen Inu (The Flat Dog). Tokyo, 2003. Pp. 9-84. (In Japanese). 2 Otsuichi. Heimen Inu (The Flat Dog) // in: Heimen Inu (The Flat Dog). Tokyo, 2003. Pp. 257-336. (In Japanese). 3 Otsuichi. Kono ko-no e ha mikansei (This Child’s Picture is Not Finished) // in: Nanatsu-no Kurai Yume (The Seven Dark Dreams). Tokyo, 2006. Pp. 9-33. (In Japanese).