〈いじめ〉をめぐる主体形成 : 山田詠美「風葬の教室」論

Amy Yamada has published many works that describe the world from a young boy/girl’s point of view. Among these, “Fūsō No Kyōshitsu” (Classroom for the Abandoned Dead, 1988) highlights the problem of ijime (bullying), which became a social issue in Japan in the mid-1980s. Considering the publishing date, we can say that “Fūsō No Kyōshitsu” was among the earliest novels to address the issue of ijime, and certainly one of the most significant.
Many previous studies have discussed the importance of this novel. However, from the perspective of contemporary research on bullying, “Fūsō No Kyōshitsu” has certain aspects worth further consideration, particularly whether the plot development, which seems to resolve the problem of ijime by transforming the victim’s subjectivity, is akin to self-responsibility theories that put responsibility on the individual victim to deal with bullying.
In this paper, I discuss this problem by focusing on the image of the narrator An’s image as a “strong subject,” described as “mature” and “lonely.” Furthermore, I re-evaluate the significance of this novel by comparing it with the discourses on the subject formation regarding “ijime suicide” from the same period.