モラエスの庭 : (5)モラエスの著作の位置づけと第五回内国勧業博覧会

This paper and report is based on the oral presentation delivered on 29th, November 2014, as part of Symposium ‘Moraes in Kobe and Tokushima’ held at the Faculty of Integrated Arts and Sciences, Tokushima University, in Tokushima. This is also part of the outcomes of the Project Studies by the activities in 2014 of Moraes’s Studies Group launched on July 31, 2010.
The members of Moraes’s Studies Group, T. Miyazaki (English Literature, Comparative Literature), E. Ishikawa (German Literature, Comparative Literature), M. Satoh (Plant Physiology), M. Sakai (Clinical Psychology), all at the Institute of Socio-Arts and Sciences, Tokushima University, have been continuing to try to analyze Moraes’s works and to explore new facets of Moraes’s biographical facts. Moraes was fascinated by the far-east Japan and fell in love with Ó-Yoné, who died young at the age of 39 in Kobe. After her death, Moraes decided to leave Kobe and live in Tokushima, which was Ó-Yoné’s hometown. He lived with Ko-Haru, Ó-Yoné’s niece, for a while until she died from tuberculosis at the age of 21. He led his life until his death in Tokushima for 16 years as a kind of hermit, neglecting his fame as the Consul General and Navy high-rank Officer of Portugal, and other financial merits entailed with the post.
Though Moraes is often regarded as a kind of hermit in Tokushima, we should pay more attention to and reevaluate his aspect of a diplomat and consul in Kobe days before coming to Tokushima. He was a very able diplomat and consul, and once actively involved with the 5th National Industrial Exhibition held in 1903. In Tokushima he wrote and published O ‟Bon-odori„ em Tokushima and afterwards Ó-Yoné e Ko-haru. These works might be regarded as based on the forms of diary and essay, seemingly as reports from Tokushima to Bento Carqueja, editor of Comércio do Porto (Porto Commercial Newspaper) in Portugal. Concerning these works as such there seems to be an undercurrent of the image of garden, or paradise, which is strongly connected with the Exhibition he was concerned. In this paper, a tentative reevaluation of his works in Tokushima and the undercurrent of the image of garden related with the 5th National Industrial Exhibition he was involved with in Kobe days.