‘나마즈에(鯰絵)’의 현대적 변용으로 읽는 애니메이션 <스즈메의 문단속>

초록

Shinkai Makoto’s film Suzume has been widely analyzed as a text through which Japanese society and culture can be examined, particularly because it directly addresses the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011. This study proposes that the film is strongly influenced, in both its narrative and constituent elements, by Namazu-e, woodblock prints produced after the 1855 Ansei Edo earthquake, and conducts a comparative analysis on this basis. Namazu-e, or “catfish prints,” typically depict three central elements: the catfish (namazu), believed to cause earthquakes; the deity Kashima Daimyōjin, who restrains the catfish; and the Kanameishi, a stone used as a means of suppression. While actively borrowing these three elements, Suzume reinterprets and incorporates them in ways aligned with its own thematic concerns. The earthquake-causing namazu is transformed into Mimizu; Kashima Daimyōjin, the divine force that suppresses earthquakes, is reconfigured as the human lineage of the Tojishi; and the Kanameishi, formerly a mere tool for restraining the catfish, is multiplied and diversified in form. Among these elements, the Kanameishi undergoes the most significant transformation and active reinterpretation compared to its representation in Namazu-e. Although becoming a Kanameishi presupposes the necessity of someone’s sacrifice to prevent earthquakes, the narrative does not culminate in a redemptive structure in which people are saved from disaster through the protagonists’ sacrifices. Instead, the film concludes by affirming an active will to live. To articulate this thematic stance, the representations of both the Tojishi and the Kanameishi emphasize human agency rather than the will of supernatural beings. While commemorating and mourning the victims of disasters, the film simultaneously affirms the continuation of everyday life for survivors. In this sense, Suzume may be regarded as a twenty-first-century “new Namazu-e,” one that reinterprets Namazu-e as a form of contemporary cultural content.

키워드