Research On Ogai Mori's Novel Creation

Ogai Mori,one of the literary giants in modern Japan,has made great achievements in literary criticism,translation,poetry,novels and other fields.Ogai Mori is also a doctor who is proficient in medicine,and has served as a military doctor.His career voyage as a government official was full of ups and downs.The dual identity in the literary and medical circles has put a profound impact on Ogai Mori's novel writing.The Meiji spirit,with the core of “exploring,enterprising,seeking knowledge,and equal rights” and of the trinity of nationalism,populism and liberalism has influenced Ogai Mori in a profound and complex manner.As a Meiji elite intellectual who returned from Germany,Ogai Mori was born in traditional education,mastered the principles of Western natural science,and infused the Western scientific spirit and the free thinking of modern civilization.After returning to Japan,he served as a military doctor and took on the responsibility of enlightenment of literary thought.He was the person who confronted and integrated Japanese traditional culture and Western modern civilization in the widest range in the history of Japanese literature.Kato Shuichi called Ogai Mori“the personification of the times”,and thought that Ogai Mori included almost all the problems of Japanese culture in the work of more than ten years.Ogai Mori's novel creation is the expression of his thoughts and moods,and it is also the concrete manifestation of the spirit of the Meiji era,as well as an important basis for studying Ogai Mori's unique spiritual structure and its dynamic trajectory.We focus on the Meiji spirit reflected in his novels when considering the particularity of Ogai Mori's dual identity.In order to clearly grasp the dynamic spiritual structure presented by Ogai Mori's novels,we analyze Ogai Mori's novels in various periods,so as to examine the specific social and cultural conditions as well as Ogai Mori's own experience behind his works,interpret the creative intention of his novels,analyze the relationship between the spiritual structure of Ogai Mori's novels and various social strata,and discuss the social thinking,life thinking and spiritual tension in Ogai Mori's novels in the changing track of the Meiji spirit.Ogai Mori's various novels are related to the Meiji spirit,showing the awakening of the Meiji-style modern self,the thinking and anxiety of the new Meiji people,the confusion and persistence of the Meiji spirit after the passage of time and the change of circumstances.The expression of his personal spiritual destination reflected in his works is also rooted in the inner logic of the Meiji spirit.From the perspective of personal self-consciousness awakening,Ogai Mori's early works of romanticism such as The Dancer reflect his acceptance and integration of Western civilization.The “modern self”,which broke through the relationship and consciousness of personal dependence and obtained personal freedom and personal consciousness,had a strong conflict with the Japanese society and Japanese culture at that time.Such a fundamental contradiction made Ogai Mori particularly sensitive to the hesitation,helplessness,and pain after the awakening of “selfness”.He strived to find a possible connection between the modern self and traditional culture.In this process,various attitudes of the modern self to the traditional culture,such as yielding,confronting,and compromising,as well as the corresponding twists and turns,have emerged.The internal contradiction of the times is also the internal contradiction of Ogai Mori himself.He vividly expresses his “Meiji-style” modern self in his romance novels.The modern novels written by Ogai Mori in the 1940 s presented his self-contradiction and anxiety under the increasingly distorted development of the autocratic nature of the Meiji government.Ogai Mori explores the ideological structure of the new Meiji people through his creation.Along with the criticism of the repressive behavior of the Meiji government,the examination of the traditional Japanese spirit,and the attention to the situation of women,he practices the conflict and fusion of modern civilization and traditional thought in the spiritual world and continues the philosophy and issues of the Meiji Restoration in his own way.Samurai spirit and personal spiritual pursuit are intertwined and contradict each other in Ogai Mori's historical novels.Representative works that focus on the spirit of samurai,such as The Last Testament of Okitsu Yagoemon and The Abe Clan,reflect Ogai Mori's thinking on the relationship between the Meiji monarch and his subjects,the relationship between the state and the individual,and the traditional concept of order in Ogai Mori's thought.Representative works that focus on personal spiritual pursuits,such as Takase Boat and Han Shan-Shi De Legend,etc.,reflect the Taoist detachment thought in Ogai Mori's spirit and the softness in the Japanese spirit,that is,they are accustomed to adopting conformity to things.In short,Ogai Mori's work after the end of the Meiji era saw a general tendency in that his positive and revolted spirit in front of secular reality gave way to an attitude of transcendence and avoidance.That is to say,he was devoted to seek the destination of personal spirit in the oriental“observance” of order,detachment and let nature and adhered to his “Meiji people”consciousness in the noisy Taisho period with the attitude of “retirement”.The above analysis reflects that the development and changes of the society and culture in the Meiji era and the inner contradiction of the connotation of Meiji spirit have formed the special spiritual structure in Ogai Mori's ideological world.Meanwhile,they are also related to the issue that Ogai Mori,who has dual identity as a military doctor and a writer,has been concerned about throughout his life,that is,“Europeanization”during the Meiji period in Japan.His continuous attention to this issue is presented in his novels as reflections on how to reconcile the conflict between Japanese traditional culture and Western civilization;reflections on whether modern individuals passively obey or actively participate in state power,that is,the relationship between nationalism and populism.He also thinks about how to balance the mission of “public” and the practice of “private”,that is,the relationship between “public” and “private” in cultural traditions.These are the regularity and originality of Ogai Mori's novel writing.Ogai Mori,with dual identity,has been a “double-stand scholar” all his life(referring to a scholar who thinks from the perspective of Eastern civilization and Western civilization,as opposed to “single-stand scholar”,who only focuses on Eastern civilization or Western civilization).It is difficult for him to deal with the relationship between “public” and “private”.As a state official,he has to think about the interests of the government,while as a writer,he must use novels to spread Western democratic ideas and awaken people's self-awareness.Ogai Mori expressed two demands in his novel writing,trying to find a balance between Eastern and Western civilizations in a rational and harmonious way.With the initiation,prosperity,transformation,and end of the Meiji spirit,Ogai Mori was devoted to pursue the brilliance of the ordinary ideals of human nature,to sublimate the spiritual realm with the “contemplation of truth” of contentment,to reach the state of transcendence and detachment.By doing this,he has tried to fulfill the responsibilities of the country and obtain inner spiritual freedom.His novel is a monument to the pursuit of modernization in Meiji,as well as a vivid testimony of the predicament and dilemma of Japan's modernization road.