Plotting Illness: Cancer in Ogino Anna’s “Nue” and Yamauchi Reinan’s The Spirit of Cancer / がん闘病者のフィクションについて語る： 荻野アンナ「鵺」と山内令南の闘病記「癌だましい」

Abstract

Abstract:This article explores two works of fiction dealing with illness from the mid 2010s, a high-water mark for literature of this kind. Ogino Anna’s “Nue” and Yamauchi Reinan’s The Spirit of Cancer (Gan damashi) both were published in Bungakukai and both focus on living with cancer. In contrast to nonfiction accounts of illness (tōbyōki), these fictional treatments of cancer employ a variety of literary devices, including fantasy, metaphor, and nonlinear narrative. I argue that reading Ogino’s and Yamauchi’s works together allows us to see the role of illness—and cancer in particular—as lived experience, imagined presence, and artistic vehicle in twenty-first century Japan.