Japan's Edo Period, Reading Novels And Ancient Chinese Novels

In ancient East Asia,there was a Sinosphere.Chinese culture had long and deep effects upon Japanese culture for more than a thousand years.During the Edo period,large amount of Ming and Qing Dynasty novels including classical Chinese novel and colloquial novels had great influence on Japanese literacy. The greatest result of this influence is the creation of a new-style novel mode, the reading book,and then gave rise to the progress and perosperity of the Japanese literature.With appearance of PuDao ZiZhuan adapted from Tang Dynasty classical short novel YouXianKu at the end of Eighth Century in Japanese literature,a lot of adapted novels came one after another throughout Japanese history.Then it reached the peak during the Edo period with lots of masterpieces.Adaptation began with ASAIAROUI's JiaBeiZi adapted from JianDeng YeHua.A new stage of adaptation started after TUGATEISHOU's YingCaiZi adapted from SanYan.The adaptation reached the peak and had laid a basis for the reading book afterwards with UEDAAKINARI's YuYueWuYu based on both JianDengYeHua and SanYan.Adaptation in the Edo period had two different stages.In the early stage,the works of ASAIAROUI's mainly modelled after JianDengYeHua while the reading books mainlly modelled after SanYan.In the late stage,reading novels began to model after Chinese long novel like Water Margin.Water Margin was mostly popularly modelled after by lots of great works in the late stage of the Edo period.SANTOUKYOUTEN's ZhongChengShuiHuZhuan and KYOKUTEIBAKIN's NanZongLiJianBaQuanZhuan were two significantly successful works adapted from it.The two great works appeared when the creation of the reading novels reached its peak and at that time Japanese anciet novels were modernized. Thus it laid a foundation for the Japanese novels to transfer from ancient style to modern style.There are seven chapters besides Introduction and Conclusion.Chapter One gives a detailed introduction about the relationship between Japanese ancient culture and Chinese ancient culture.Chapter Two focuses on the history of Japanese ancient novels adapting Chinese ancient novels before the Edo period. With detailed comparison between works and on-spot rearch,Chapter Three,Chapter Four,Chapter Five and Chapter Six analyze how the typical reading books in the early stage and late stage of the Edo period adapted respectively from Jiandeng xinhua,SanYan and Water Margin.Chapter Seven gives an overview about the reading novels in the Edo period and briefly discusses the changing patterns from Japanese ancient fiction criticism and ancient novels to the modern type novels. On the basis of the researches done by both Japanese and Chinese scholars, this paper attempts to prove that reading books in the Edo period mostly adapted from Chinese ancient novels by thorough investigation,analysis of the typical type of reading books from certain authors in the early and late stage of Edo period.It also provides strong evidence that Chinese ancient novels had heavy influence on Japanese novels in the Edo period,and thus this attempt makes sense in both comparative literature and science of comparative culture.