Kafka Studies In Japan:Focusing On"the Metamorphosis" And The Castle

The study of Kafka has become a miniature of the globalization of contemporary humanities research.According to research,overseas studies on Kafka have amounted to650in total by the end of2012, including treatises, dissertations, manuals and articles, among which there are approximately250documents in German and200in English,a number of studies are the inter-translation among different languages. Besides, Kafka studies in Japan has long history and has made a lot of achievements as well. Nevertheless, Japanese academic research does not attract enough attention from the domestic scholars for various reasons. Although predecessors, like Ye Tingfang, Xie Yingying, Sheng Ning, Zeng Yanbing, Hu Zhiming, once overviewed and appraised foreign academic history of Kafka research.on the whole,the communication between Chinese academia and Japanese academia are relatively few. As a result, there are a wide gap left in the area of commentaries on the academic development of Kafka studies in Japan. Thus, the paper is based on the previous research, it exposures to contemporary critics views, aims at introducing and carrying on more comprehensive combing to the research status of Kafka in Japan.The author try hard to fill in this gap by comparison, critique and conversation, thus to give a overall outline of Kafka studies in Japan and provide reference for Kafka studies in China.It has been nearly seventy years in the research of Kafka and his works in Japan.These Japanese scholars have devoted to explore new research methods with an increasing passion, and meanwhile have already produced plenty of valuable accomplishments. After the Second Word War, the research on Kafka started from the perspective of expressionism interpretations to religious analysis, combined with sociology. It has experienced a rapid development since1980, such as the popularity of numerous biographical interpretations and comparative studies. Finally, the21st century turns out to be a multi-perspective study of Kafka, especially the academic enthusiasm for the work itself "two tendencies" and the characters’spiritual world.With the effort of long-term reorganizing and browsing Japanese materials among the vast data base, the author selected phased and remarkable research achievements of Franz Kafka and his literature works, and made a further conclusion. The writer combined with the format of academic research thesis, objective situation of research on Franz Kafka in Japan, the thesis structure what writer most expected and the guidance from tutor.Therefore, writer organizes this thesis as follows: Chapter1mainly describes Japanese scholars’ research on Franz Kafka and his literature works in separate period from the holistic perspective,the period is mainly classified by the emergence of translated and re-translated editions, the arise of remarkable thesis, the emergence of representative academic groups and transformation of research methods. This separating approach is a general categorization but not followed by a strict criterion. Chapter2and Chapter3select "The Metamorphosis" and The Costle,utilizing a micro perspective to build connections and search for common features among Japanese scholars,and further analyzing the research on Franz Kafka in Japan,thus having more specific, detailed and deep knowledge of Japanese research status. Chapter4talks about viewpoints and blind spots of Japanese researchers, hoping to explore Japanese researcher’s study methods in a more complete way. All in all, the writer hopes to test her own study quality in these years through accomplishing this thesis. Meanwhile, writer expects to provide possibilities of knowing academic characteristics of different nations, strengthen the cultural communication between China and Japan, and establish a distinctive and helpful pattern for our studying and learning foreign academic achievements as well as for the domestic development of studying Franz Kafka.