To Mourn Each Person's Death: A Study of Hasegawa Shiro’s Chiisanareihaido

Abstract

Shiro Hasegawa's short story, "Small Chapel" ("Modern Literature" August 1951, later "Siberian Story" in 1952, Chikuma Shobo), was written based on his own “Siberian Detention Experience: Shiro Hasegawa.” This paper begins by analyzing the works of Shiro Hasegawa and Yoshiro Ishihara's discourse on the Siberian detention experience. The results highlight a disinterest in “accusation,” as a short-cut for the divide between victim and perpetrator. The analysis also reveals both the possibility and impossibility of attempting to reproduce the past as “memory.” “Small Chapel” reconsiders the viewpoint of the quantification of mass murder as death from the perspective of cultural annihilation, and looks at Siberian detention as an act of destruction and disturbance against human dignity. The portrait painted is one of self-recognition as a human who survived by chance, and confirmation of the divide between the living and the dead. The story also touches on the limits of the perception of genocide itself.

Keywords

• Shiro HASEGAWA
• Detainment of Siberia
• Memory of war
• Individual death
• Genocide criticism