Bai Juyi And His Poems' Influences On Genzi Monogatari

Japanese people, especially those in noble class in Ping'an Dynasty, were greatly influenced by the cultures of Han and Tang Dynasty. Genzi Monogatari absorbing Chinese traditional cultures and building up its own spirit of Japan was created in this period and has been regarded as the peak of Japanese classical literature. With no exception, Genzi Monogatari was greatly affected by Chinese ancient literature and traditional cultures, especially the well-known writer Bai Juyi and his poems in Tang Dynasty. This paper discusses how Bai Juyi and his poems influenced Genzi Monogatari. Firstly, this paper, from the text itself, analyzes Bai Juyi and his poems' impact on Genzi Monogatari's writing techniques and skills. Then it discusses the similarities and differences of their creating ideas and living philosophies, especially Bai Juyi's perspectives on literature and Zishibu's creative literary concept of mononoaware. Lastly, by comparing Bai Juyi's life in Jiangzhou period and Guang Yuanshi's in Xu Mo, the paper tries to discover the reasons why Bai's perspectives on literature has changed and how it had an influence on Genzi Monogatari. From the micro and macro aspects, the paper tries to find out that Zishibu absorbed Bai Juyi's perspective on literature and, meanwhile, created her own new ideas on literature in her own fashion. By penetrating into the Genzi Monogatari, this paper points out that Zi shibu did not only simply absorb Bai juyi's literary creating idea, but with combining Japanese literature's own characters and people's national personalities, she transformed it and built up a new esthetic judgment which was based on realism and romantic mononoaware. This declared that Japanese literature was free from Chinese cultures and began to found its unique new culture patterns.