The Images Of Japanese Female Of Kwaidan By Koizumi Yakumo

Throughout Koizumi Yakumo’s lifetime, the descriptions of "Female" had taken quite a considerable proportion in his literary works. It is not only an important element in the constitution of beauty,but also the core in his works. There are two tendencies in Koizumi Yakumo’s female descriptions: One is the understanding and the praise for the traditional Japanese female, and the other is the expression of the western view of female: “the eternal femininity”.Known as the "modern monstrous originator" in Japan, Koizumi Yakumo had paid close attention to the Japanese traditional culture and traditional Japanese female,who are carrying kindness, beauty and truth. Based on Japanese monstrous and folktales, Koizumi Yakumo had blended both his views on Japanese female and western female into his "Kwaidan", created a series of images about traditional Japanese female, portrayed pictures of cultural nature of traditional Japanese female surviving in the world of "spirit", and revealed the characteristics of oriental culture and western culture inside them.There are 4 chapters in this paper. The first chapter divides the images of Japanese female into human, ghost, elf and Buddha according to their original attributes. The second chapter mainly summarizes and analyzes the Exoticism, which is the oriental cultural characteristics of Japanese female images in "Kwaidan". The third chapter mainly summarizes and analyzed the hidden western cultural characteristics inside Japanese female in "Kwaidan". The fourth chapter analyzes the nature of the Japanese female images in "Kwaidan".Based upon analysis of the oriental & western characteristic of Japanese female in "Kwaidan", this paper concludes that their images are also part of the orientalist discourse system. Compared with the contemporary Japanese female images written by westerners, the images in "Kwaidan" possess relatively objective “exoticism”: the oriental characteristics, which mainly include Buddhist color, self-denial and loyalism. Buddhism is the Japanese belief in religion; self-denial and loyalism are reflections of Japanese nationality. Buddhist color highlight the pure and sincere of female images; self-denial highlight the female spirit of gentle, endurance and dedication; loyalism highlight the devotion and grateful heart of female for their master and benefactor.Compared with the Japanese female images in local monstrous, the Japanese female images in Kwaidan reflect the characteristics of western culture: "love is weightier than death" & "the eternal femininity". The former can sacrifice themselves for love, and the latter are sacred existences which are hard to achieve and beyond understanding, possessing the guidance to help the men and the destructiveness to kill them.Through the shape of the female images with variety cultural characteristics, Mr Koizumi Yakumo’s "Kwaidan" speculated about the survival significance of traditional Japanese female and explore the cultural value of them, which shows the writer’s "sympathetic understanding" for Japanese culture. But, it still can’t change the fact that he comprehended orient, oriental and oriental female as a westerner(although he had already joined the Japanese nationality).