A Study On The Fox Imagery In Classical Chinese And Japanese Literature

Foxes are intelligent, alert, cunning, and skeptical in zoology. They are good atliving in holes and the tree holes, and often appear in areas not far from humanresidence. Therefore, foxes are not strange to human beings who are, instead, familiarto them. However, not limited to the sense of foxes in zoology, the author in this thesisfinds the similarities of ideology or feature between human beings and foxes inliterature, and finds the suit points of the thought and emotion between the two by theway of comparing thoughts on the basis of full understanding of the foxes’ nature,thereby, probes into foxes’ cultural attribution in Chinese and Japanese literature.Foxes, in literature, have already been deeply engraved on human mind, and havebeen gradually personified. Reposed in the consciousness of the countless humanfeelings, foxes become the carrier of ideas. Foxes, as one of the religious objects ofworship in Chinese and Japanese folk, often appear in the image of unpredictabletransformation, omnipotent power and quite human nature. Through plenty of readingand literature arrangements, the author found that,“the love between human andfoxes”, known as a special marriage topic, is especially outstanding in Chinese andJapanese classical literature. Marriages with the participation of foxes, has theextremely important significance in the research of ideology, culture and psychology inboth Chinese and Japanese classical literature. Social consciousness, culturalpsychology, the relationship between human and nature and that between human andhuman beings showed by foxes to human beings are more subtle, complex,comprehensive and profound. Therefore, as fully as possible, the author collected theclassical literature relevant to foxes (to the end of the Qing dynasty in China and Japanto Edo Bakufu), firstly reorganized the basic situation of the topic in “the love between human and foxes” and “the love without human or foxes” macroscopically so that tograsp the basic pattern of foxes literature between the two countries, and thendiscussed the formation of the social and psychological reasons, learned about theessence behind the topic and so that to do the comparative study in-depth, and finallyrevealed the connotation of the specific cultural of the two countries.This thesis is divided into five chapters, and the specific contents are as follows:Chapter One consists of four sections. Section One mainly introduces the basicattributes of foxes from the perspective of natural ecology, such as foxes’ theappearance, characteristics, types, distribution of foxes, and in particular the authordistinguished the difference between foxes and wildcats to some degree. Section Twosummarizes images of foxes in literature and national folk stories around the world.Section Three and Four describes respectively and comprehensively with the object ofthe study in the origin, development and evolution of the foxes belief in two countries.Foxes belief comes from China, later introduced to Japan, has experienced the fightwith the local snake faith and gets the final success and then became Japan’s nationalwidely respected folk belief.Chapter Two is composed of three sections. In Section One the author defines theconcept of “love and marriage stories between foreign matters” respectively from twoaspects of broad sense and narrow sense, while this paper is based on “the relationshipbetween human and foxes” as the main research object, and therefore its narrow senseis taken, namely the study object is the love relationship between foreign bodies likepeople and animals and also the animals derived into the miraculous identity. SectionTwo mainly discusses the reasons of foreign love and marriage stories, and the authordiscusses from the aspects of “all things have spirit”,“totem worship of primitivecliff-paintings” respectively, and at the same time reveals essential problems such asthe problem of “the relationship between human and nature” and “the conquest ofhuman society and conquered sexual relationships and sexual consciousness” and soon reflected by the foreign love and marriage in the stories; Section Three mainlystudies the types of “foreign love and marriage stories”. Based on the German scholar, Wolfram Eberhard’s the types of Chinese folk story, Ding Naitong’s the type index ofChinese folk story and Japanese folklore Guan Jingwu’s Japan’s words integration, theauthor gives the comprehensive summary, and finally presents it in the form of table,respectively from the four aspects of type, quantity, plot summary and geographicaldistribution.Chapter Three is the most important section in this thesis and it is composed offive sections. In this chapter, studying on the object of “fox wife”, the authorresearches the literature in two countries with the plot of love between human andfoxes, and from the core plot, such as gratitude, vengeance expressed by the skeletonparts as the basic starting point, the author further divides the “fox wife” story into fivetypes, namely, the type of god marriage, the type of a complete, the type of tragedy, thetype of revenge and the type of lust. Each type is one section, and the authorrespectively carries on the profound analysis and comparison of the fox image inChinese and Japanese classical literature, and explores the cultural roots.Chapter Four mainly consists of two aspects. One is the discussion around thecharacteristics of male fox’s image in Chinese literature, while the main researchobjects are considerable scholar foxes and also “fox sir” in foreign marriage story, etc.;The other is to investigate the fox men’s image of Japanese literature,, and the reasonof non-existence of “fox sir” in Japanese literature of foreign marriage story. In thestory of “fox sir” type in Chinese and Japanese “love between human and foxes”(asopposite to a "fox wife" story), because of lack and diffuseness of the male image of“fox”, the author merges the male fox images such as scholar foxes, fox friends, foxfathers, fox servants etc. into one chapter and studies respectively.Chapter Five discusses the relationship between human and foxes ofnon-marriage stories in Chinese and Japanese classical literature, and sets examplesfrom the two aspects of “harmonious coexistence of human and foxes”, and “antithesisbetween human and foxes”, and together with thorough analysis. And then discussesthe relationship between the “foxes and moral principles” from the perspective ofethics. To sum up, the author hopes to investigate the deep culture of ideology system,some essential things on the level of national culture together with the similarities anddifferences of the Chinese culture and Japanese culture of the Chinese culture circle,and finally to seek the law of Chinese and Japanese literature’s emergencedevelopment and evolution under different cultural background, and to reveal itsspecial cultural connotation and cultural value, through the comparative research of“fox images” in Chinese and Japanese literature.