Images of childhood in the works of Japanese writers

The paper discusses the peculiarities of the works written by the Japanese authors in the first part of the twentieth century and devoted to children. The objects of the research are children stories and diaries created by the famous female poets and writers Yosano Akiko (1878-1942) and Okamoto Kanoko (1889-1939). The specifics of the children stories makes to evaluate the works as the whole complex of the oral children culture taking to account the fact that language and art images are interacting, intersecting and interpenetrating into each other. The linguistic and cultural features of the works are the individual approach to the adolescent who is entering into the life during the encounter of the Eastern and Western civilizations. The goal of the analysis was the axiological world picture, which had been created in the consciousness of the readers and their mentality in 1910-1930. The didactic approaches to the readers in the works of Yosano Akiko and Okamoto Kanoko, as the female authors, have been studied as well. The former writer juxtaposes the world of the educated people to the world of the feudal stagnancy and enclosure, introduces their readers to the discoveries made by themselves and their heroes. The latter writer expresses her own position to the search of the place in the life of her son Taro ran at that time. Yosano Akiko, introduces to the young reader the discoveries made by her heroine in the story «The year in the life of Tamaki» («Tamaki no itinenkan». 1912). This character, the girl Tamaki, comes through some adventures, first in Japan, later in France and England. Young and adult readers knew the life of the Japanese chidren in Kyoto in the beginning of the twentieth century. The early 1910s was the time when the old traditional life was in state of current transformation - the rules were changing, the new, emancipated women were appearing, the Japanese started moving to and from their country with striking freedom. On the other hand, Tamaki faced the old patriarchal Japan - the surrounding of her friend Rinko, however girls could manage to meet their good friends. The circumstances and the story-telling genius of Yosano Akiko let Tamaki go to Europe; the heroes visited France and England. The new character Mary, a kind of mediator between the European people and the small Japanese girl, appears here. The role of Mary, the French girl, the new friend of Tamaki, is to present the achievements of the Western democracy to the implied Japanese reader and to help young readers to realize the image of another culture, other ways of communication. The writer tried to use her own experience of the European travel in 1912 in the form of the children story, though she used it in her travel writing «From Paris» («Pari yori», 1912) and the tanka collection «From summer to autumn» («Natsu yori aki e», 1914). The other female writer and poetess, Okamoto Kanoko, expresses her attitude to the life experience and to the new generation. In the serial diary, in the form of correspondence «From Letters to Taro» («Taro-e-no tegami yori», 1930-1034), she appeals to her son, the teenager who started studying in Paris. Kanoko wishes to leave him her ideals, values and life styles in the form of messages, short letters dated according to the rules of Japanese diaries. In the diary-and-correspondence form the author presents the features of the transformations of the Japanese vernacular language and the changes of the Japanese literary style as the works of Okamoto Kanoko are samples of the so-called «women style» of the Japanese modern literature. The presented discussion deals with the works of the Japanese modernist female writers which presentation of the childhood and their values are new for the East Asian literary studies.