Intimacy in the Traditional and the Post-Family：Sagisawa Megumu’s Watashi no Hanashi

Sagisawa Megumu has been regarded as a writer of Zainichi Korean literature. However, this paper focuses on the representation of the post-family in Sagisawa’s I-novel Watashi no Hanashi because this work has features that represent both the traditional family and the post-family. It examines how the traditional family is deconstructed and how post-familial intimacy is established in Watashi no Hanashi.In this work, Watashi is continuously concerned about maintaining familial intimacy in her parents’ home, but at the same time she is oppressed by her family based on the assumption that she should take care of both them and herself. Eventually, she succeeds in forming intimate relationships with Zainichi Korean women by sharing their hardships. This can be evaluated as an element that plays a role in deconstructing the traditional family. What is more important is the way in which intimacy with the Zainichi Korean women is connected to the methods employed to maintain familial intimacy. Watashi no Hanashi’s achievement is in the expression of one possibility for creating post-familial intimacy without denying the importance of traditional familial intimacy. This characteristic differs from the thrust of other contemporary novels which depict the post-family.