Late Qing China, Japan, Imagine (1895-1911)

The study of Japan like what Japan has of China does not exist in China. In Japan, there is a research tradition on studying China as"China in my mind". Actually it may be more precise that we can say there is no any tradition of Japan Studies in China. The first thing for China is to confirm the "existence" of Japan and to get such a path of "method", if Japan needs to re-establish this "approach" on studying China. Seeking the origin of this modern imagination in the late Qing Dynasty, is not the "Imperial Court" facing "Island of Barbarians", but both China and Japan accepting the "Kaleidoscopic nations" such a world situation. Only that the first time the two countries confirming the relationship between each other is country and country, could be the origin of the Japanese imagination.Selecting this novel as a path into the late Qing Dynasty intellectual history, is no rather than stressing the function of this text "fiction" "constructing" the history. There are no clear boundaries between Literary Imagination and Historical representation. The novel participates in account of history (or production) in a fictional way. It is because the novel concepts, ideas and images of the reading and acceptance are infiltrated into daily life that late Qing Dynasty novel representation and representation in Japan are in the process of circulation with the production and reproduction. And precisely because it keeps the classical meaning of "From the Talk and Hearsay on the streets and lanes ", the novel can understand the collective imagination of the era via the "history of general knowledge, ideas and beliefs world" way.Let's go back to the text, to the novel to find the history, to look for the imagination of Japan as An Other, to research the first generating of Japanese imagination as a whole, and to reveal the relationship and interaction between self and the other. The aims of the research are not only to try to provide a historical perspective to understand the Chinese and Japanese modernizations, but also to provide a literary memory to look forward to the contemporary understanding between China and Japan.