Translations of four short stories by An Hoe-nam, with an exegesis

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  • HATANO Setsuko
    University of Niigata Prefecture : Professor emeritus Research Center for Korean Studies, Kyushu University

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Other Title
  • 安懐南の４つの短編の翻訳と解題
  • アンカイミナミ ノ 4ツ ノ タンペン ノ ホンヤク ト カイダイ

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For this article, I translated four short stories by Korean writer An Hoenam into Japanese and added a commentary. The stories were part of his collection Fire published in 1947 by Eulyu Munhwasa （乙酉文化社）. They include An iron chain broken（鐵鎖 끊어지다）, An island（섬）, A horse（말）, and The fire（불）. An Hoe-nam was born in Seoul in 1909. He debuted as a writer in 1931 and wrote many short stories depicting his private life in a style very similar to the Japanese I-novel. His work mainly described the life of the urban petit bourgeois. In September 1944, he went to Tatsugawa Mine in Saga Prefecture in Kyushu as a forced laborer. It is unclear why a 34-year-old writer like him was conscripted. I suppose that it could be driven by his financial situation. He had fallen into bankruptcy owing to his extravagant lifestyle and drinking habit. However, it appears that he did not work underground as an ordinary coal mining laborer, but rather at the office managing labor. After the defeat of Japan in 1945, he returned to Korea, writing actively and drawing on his experience as a forced laborer, to produce ten short stories as part of Fire. The novels written by Korean writers about the return from Manchuria, China, Japan etc. after the Japanese collapse are characterized as Repatriate Novels. His collection Fire is one of them. Later, An Hoe-nam published several novels that were appreciated by critics on the left. In 1948, he crossed 38th parallel to go to North Korea with his family and literary friends after the division of the Korean Peninsula. After the end of the Korean War, many writers who had come from the South were purged. An Hoe-nam was not targeted although there is little information regarding his actions thereafter.

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