P(論文)

Literary works, especially popular fiction, often reflect the realities and problems of a society in which such works are produced. The works of Charles Dickens, for exkmple, are inseparable from the social problems of Great Britain in the late 19th century. By the same token, voluminous novels writtes by Seicho Matsumoto, one of most renowned popular fiction author of contemporary Japan, depict social issues in a realistic manner. Indeed, being a detective story writer, he published a series of fiction works based on real stories and events. Matsumoto has been a keen observer of institutionalized higher education and his stance vis-a-vis universities has been critical, in the first place, he expressed his feeling of dissatisfaction and anger against Japanese society, where indivdiuals are treated and often discriminated against on the basis of educational bacp-grounds. Univesity graduates, regardless of their real ability and potential, are put on a successful "social escalator" almost automatically, while non-university graduates are regarded as socially handicapped. Matsumoto himself is a person who could not take the "escalator" because his family was unable to send him go to college. Based on his own experience, and a series of scandals (such as injustice in entrance examination, inside politics among univesity professors bribes and other pecuniary injustice of managerial executives of universities) he wrote at least ten (fiction related to university problems from a keen critical viewpoint. This monograph is a thematic and content analysis of Matsumoto's "university fiction" With these works the author tried to take a new step in the sociology of knowledge.