한국일본학회

This paper aims to examine the nature of imagination in Han Kang's The Vegetarian and Tomoyuki Hoshino's Shokubutsu-ki, which both attempt to use images of “other than humans,” especially plants, to resist violence, based on the idea of hate as a universal phenomenon in contemporary society. In the context of hate, discourses that animalize the other are often used. To escape from this violent world of human-animal dichotomy, certain writers have tried to approach the world of plants. Han Kang's The Vegetarian depicts a woman who sees the close ties between the patriarchal violence that oppresses women and meat eating, and who tries to stop eating meat and eventually transform herself into a plant. However, the desire to become one with plants cannot help but result in death for humans. Tomoyuki Hoshino also depicted a man who transforms into a plant in “Kioku-suru Mitsurin” in Shokubutsu-ki, to reject the masculinity associated with violence. In another work, “Ougenkyo,” however, he uses cherry trees, which have functioned as a symbol of the Japanese nation, to critically depict how the temptation to unite with plants leads to totalitarianism with the loss of the individual. From this, we can read that Hoshino's literature attempts to capture the other and otherness in its diversity. It can be said that the attitude of trying to listen to the voice of the other as it is, while avoiding excessive monstering or idealization of the other, is the source of the imagination to overcome hate.