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영어

This paper is a structural analysis of the mysteriousness of ‘Nageki no mon’. This work has a pattern of repeating the exercise of first presenting a ‘mystery’ to attract the reader’s interest and then solving that ‘mystery’, but between the presentation of the mystery and the solving of the mystery, the story is developed in a way that it is ‘drawn out’ for as long as possible. The reader is thus left with the story being stretched out without being told how to resolve the interest in the ‘mystery’. The effect of this is that the mystery is enhanced by the fact that the reader is left with a sense of dread after the mystery has been presented, without being told how to solve it.By the way, such a technique was used not only by Tanizaki Junichiro, but also by Sato Haruo ‘Shimon’ and Akutagawa Ryunosuke ‘Yoba’ around 1918 or 1919. However, the characteristic of ‘Shimon’ is that it gradually becomes a fantasy novel in which the distinction between the reality and delusion of the protagonist is blurred as the story is stretched out. In the case of ‘Yoba’, the story is developed by stretching it out with bizarre episodes, thereby providing it with the characteristics of a bizarre novel. In contrast, Tanizaki Junichiro’s ‘Nageki no mon’ is characterised in that, while stretching the story, it weaves the images of ‘ruin’ and ‘decadence’ associated with the title ‘Grief’s Gate’ into the story like a ‘縁語’. The three leading figures in the world of mystery fiction of the Taisho period drew their works at the same time and in a similar manner, indicating a relationship of mutual influence.