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영어

Akutagawa Ryunosuke published ‘kamigami no bisho’ (1922) in January volume of ‘New Novel.’ It is a novel with the subject of conflict on the acceptance of foreign culture in Japan, appearing Organtino who is a catholic missionary as a god in a myth. The plot contains to recreate independent Japanized culture newly based on the culture passed down from foreign countries. The keyword of this story is ‘a power to revitalize’ Japanese culture. Influxes of foreign cultures in the story are described with contacts of ‘southern barbarians’ via ‘East Asian sea.’ ‘Southern barbarians,’ Portuguese and Spanish in 16th century, had pioneered colonies in India and part of Southeast Asia, and expanded their trading area into Japan. Starting the trade between Japan and these countries, they called the culture as ‘southern barbarians.’ Originally, they are names of savages in the border, but also called as the exotic and novel cultures. At the initial period of ‘trading with southern barbarians,’ most of tradings were marine trade. As the volume of tradings was increase, the trading place was moved from on the seas to the sea area. With drastic increase of movement from India to Macao, population in Macao was increased from about 800 to more than 5,000. Portuguese Catholic Jesuit was deeply involved for ‘trading with southern barbarians’ and a Portuguese who dispatched from Portuguese territory, India, became a minister in Macao. In Nagasaki of Kyushu where ‘ships of southern barbarians’ entered, many merchants gathered. Introduction of Christianity flown with ‘trading with southern barbarians’ disappeared ‘in the old folding screen 3 centuries ago’ with Organtino, which means in 1600s when was 300 years ago from 1922 in the background of the story. After that, warning to break Organtino’s dream does not mean to settle all the traces of Christianity culture introduction. Rather, it implicates the recreation by ‘a power to revitalize’ which is a keyword of the story. In this story, he claimed Japan was never conquered by foreign cultures, suggesting several cases such as Christianity, Buddhism, Chinese character, style of handwriting, etc. in the course of cultural introduction in East Asian sea.