The Study On Lu Hsun’s Wild Grass In Japan

The collection of prose poetry Wild Grass of Lu Hsun is one of his major literarycreations. Understanding and distinguishing the real meaning of Wild Grass andexploring its secret of thoughts and art have always been the unremitting pursuit forthe researchers of Lu Hsun both in China and the overseas regions. SinceTakewuchi Yoshimi once evaluated Wild Grass as “the prototype, index andrepresentative work of Lu Hsun’s literary creation, as well as aguide book to the studyof Lu Hsun”, the researchers in Japan either verified their views toward Lu Hsun byWild Grass, or took the interpretation of Wild Grass as the source of their views towardLu Hsun or the starting line to do research on Lu Hsun. As a consequence, the researchin Japan today is much enough to constitute a separate academic subject, in which weare able to get inspired by the Japanese scholars.Takewuchi Yoshimi, Maruyama Noboru and Ito Toramaru interpreted Wild Grassby means of fitting it into their “portray of Lu Hsun”.“Conversion” is a far-reaching word of Takewuchi Yoshimi’s study on Lu Hsun.The importance of the study on “conversion” for the research on “TakewuchiYoshimi’s perception of Lu Hsun” is self-evident. Wild Grass is precisely an approachto understanding Takewuchi Yoshimi’s views toward “conversion”. From“metaphysical” point of view, Takewuchi Yoshimi is convinced that the implied“nonexistence” is expressed in Wild Grass. From “physical” point of view,“conversion” is represented as the “resistance” of the subject in the historical context.After World War II, with his study on Lu Hsun, Takewuchi Yoshimi intervened into thefamous work What is Modern Times: Taking Japan and China for Example, which wasthen the cultural debate in Japan. One of the kernel texts interpreted is Solomon, Fooland Flunkey in Wild Grass. What is seen by Takewuchi Yoshimi in the article is the“resistance” against “humanitarianism”.One of the academic characteristics of Maruyama Noboru’s study on Lu Hsun is“proving the text through history”. That is, interpreting Lu Hsun’s literary works withthe help of the historical records of his life and the historical situation of the time. Here,the history he used to prove the literary works was the history of Lu Hsun’s spiritualdevelopment: he devoted himself to the political revolution, only to feel frustrated when the revolution really came, but he stuck to his revolutionary ideals in spite of thesetbacks and exhaustion. The other sticking point of Maruyama Noboru’s research onWild Grass is the unique relation between the creation of Wild Grass and the “actualcombat” of Lu Hsun. In Maruyama Noboru’s opinion, the split and falling tide of theMay4th New Culture Movement leaves nothing but the lonely echo of Lu Hsun’s Callto Arms. In this case, Lu Hsun must first of all know clearly that he combats “as who”,which means,“Who I am”. Such everlasting question is just what Wild Grass ischarged with. The thinking line of Maruyama Noboru is very helpful for us to solvesome difficult problems in studing Wild Grass.Ito Toramaru considers “Mara” praised by Lu Hsun as the incarnation of Jesusspirit. In this sense, he thinks it is the Jesus written in Revenge (Ⅱ) in Wild Grass thatis the very Jesus in Christian beliefs. That is to say, although Lu Hsun changes theimportant plot about Jesus’ essence in the Gospels, he understands the real essence ofJesus. He emphasizes the spiritual strength of “heterogeneity” and the trend of“transcendence” contained in Revenge (Ⅱ). Wild Grass is consistent with the notion of“individual” in Ito Toramaru’ Lu Hsun study either in “content” or in “form”. WildGrass has an exceptional significance for Ito Toramaru as in his “Lu Hsun’s portray”.In Japan, Chinese acts as a foreign language for researchers. Using studyingannotations is an effective way in researching modern Chinese literary classics. Thus,they can not only overcome the language obstacles, but also find some clues tounderstanding the text of Wild Grass. In this way, they can also present the advantagesof “references” and “demonstrations” in the study of Lu Hsun in Japan. The famousresearchers of Lu Hsun in Japan, Kiyama Hideo, Katayama Tomoyuki and MaruoTuneki all have treatises on studying Wild Grass in the form of annotation. KiyamaHideo’s problem consciousness is the logic and writing techniques of Lu Hsun’s“construction of subject”. Katayama Tomoyuki’s problem consciousness is Lu Hsun’s“realism”. Maruo Tuneki’s problem consciousness is to find out Lu Hsun’s heartfeltwishes in the “hesitating period” of the “disgrace and recovery” movement from WildGrass. All the three scholars’ annotations give meticulous explanations of terms as wellas referential implication interpretation. Annotations of Revenge, Revenge (Ⅱ) andarticles starting with “I dreamed of…” in Wild Grass are paid great attention by thethree researchers. The contents of the annotations are relatively abundant and accurate and are in a certain interpreting system. By comparing the annotations of the articles,we can see the differences among their thoughts and writing techniques and also getvarious inspirations.Studing Lu Hsun’s Wild Grass by approaches of comparative literature hasoccupied a large proportion in the reseraches of Wild Grass in Japan nowadays.Especially the researchers after1970s, who had consciously maked lots of efforts inthis respect, tried to enrich the researches on Wild Grass of the predecessors likeTakewuchi Yoshimi and Maruyama Noboru by means of demonstrative attitudes andmethods of comparative literature. The success of this outstanding endeavor does notconsist in how much impact or how many changes it brings to the elaboration frame ofWild Grass established before in Japan. It lies in the method of comparative literaturethat has been a successful and innovational paragon.Yamada Keizo’s comparative research unfolds around the “existentialism” inWild Grass. His originality is in his metaphysic perception of the “existentialism”instead of mental analysis. On the other hand, he does not take the definition orclassical analysis of “existentialism” as a frame of reference. He uses some literaryworks which have some similarities with Wild Grass as a frame of reference. Thus, bycomparing different literary works, he demonstrates the “existentialism” in Wild Grass.Fujii Shozou’s study on Wild Grass has a unique comparative thinking, which islooking for “literary resources”. His researching axis of Revenge and Revenge (Ⅱ) isthe idea and emotional context reflected in the articles. By tracing back to the source ofthe images in the articles, we can realize the value and literary significance inheritedfrom the magnitude of Lu Hsun’s works and we can also further understand themagnitude of his works from the fact of literary heritage. The research on Hope tracesback to the source of “poetic quality”. Fujii Shozou’s research on Wild Grass involvesa way of literary heritage which is the heritage of “literary resource”. His researchindicates that when writing Wild Grass, Lu Hsun’s heritage is based on some similarthoughts or emotional images and poetic language and these images and language canbe used to express his unique thoughts and emotion. And the creative and exquisiteworks are composed of the artistic quality and ideological content of these sublimedimages and language.The most distinctive characteristic of Ainoura Ken’s research on Wild Grass isthat he studies the influence of Symbolism of Depression on Wild Grass by way of sentence analysis. Ainoura Ken relates with Symbolism of Depression to give aninstinctive explanation of the “symbolism” style of Wild Grass. Besides Symbolism ofDepression, Ainoura Ken also studies other resources of the style and subject of WildGrass in his thesis.After making a comprehensive survey of the study on Wild Grass in Japan, wecan see that besides the illumination of its findings, there are five other strengthsdeserving our study, namely: emphasizing evidence research, being good atcomparative research, the clearness of problem consciousness, attaching greatimporatance to the originality of the views, and interpreting prose poetry in a poeticway.