Constructing The Other:A Study Of Chinese Western Characters In Yasushi Inoue’s Novels

As the era moves into the 21 st century,the world landscape has changed again.The rapid development of information and technology has made the "global village" predicted by Mc Luhan gradually become a reality,and the cultural factors influencing writers’ creation have become rich and diversified in the pulse of such an era.On the other hand,with the progress of technology,the difficulty of using media and the improvement of people’s media literacy,the discourse system has gradually changed.The present study is also based on the background of this era,and attempts to make a literary analysis by taking the works of Yasushi Inoue as the object of study.Yasushi Inoue is a major pioneer of Chinese-themed historical fiction in contemporary Japan,and was the first writer in postwar Japan to work on the subject of ancient Chinese history.Among the historical novels with Chinese themes created by Yasushi Inoue,the works set in China’s western region are unique.In the process of creating historical works on the Chinese West,Yasushi Inoue introduced mysterious characters from the West into Japanese literature without ever having set foot in the land,relying only on his canonical texts and personal imagination.The study of Yasushi Inoue’s works helps us to explore the creative style and cultural characteristics of Japanese writers after World War II.This paper uses the theory of comparative literary imagery to analyze Yasushi Inoue’s portrayal of Chinese Western characters,exploring how Yasushi Inoue incorporates the collective imagination of self and society into the narrative process of the "image of the other.The paradoxical expressions and the organic interaction between Yasushi Inoue’s self and the Chinese culture as the Other form a series of representative works of Chinese historical novels with Western themes.