| The Naturalism between 1906 and 1920 was a particularly important event in the modernization of Japanese literature,during the same period most of the significant historical novels in modern Japanese literature were written as naturalistic literature dominated the literary world.Why did the influential Japanese writers of this period coincide in producing novels on Chinese history? In this paper,two novels with distinctive features and contrasts in terms of authorial genre,ideology and style-Koda Rohan’s Destiny and Tanizaki Junichiro’s Kirin – are chosen as representative examples of how modern Japanese writers wrote about Chinese historical themes.On this basis,this paper will analyze the underlying motives of their works,and examine their relationship with the modernization of Japanese literature and the naturalistic literary movement by combining study on the history of literature.On the basis of explaining the background and significance of the topic,this essay begins with an analysis of Destiny and Kirin--the two novels chosen for study.The examination of the context of the works focuses on locating the works in the writer’s career and in literary history,while the interpretation of the texts is aiming at explaining both the themes and the stylistic forms of the novels.Destiny,published in 1919,was one of the masterpieces of Koda Rohan’s(1867-1947)later years.It narrates the historical events surrounding the Jingnan campaign of Ming Dynasty in China which are mainly drawn from The History of Ming and The Major Events of Ming History,and is written in kanbun style or kundoku style(classical Chinese-based style).Rohan expresses his understanding of historical truth through the selection and compilation of original historical sources,giving "cause and effect" to historical events through the compilation of historical sources,and in this way expressing his own view of destiny rooted in on Confucian morality and Buddhist ideas of "karma" and "impermanence".On the other hand,the use of kanbun style in Destiny was of great importance to Rohan himself and to the literary world of the time,as the combination of Chinese historical themes and the writing style learned from Sinology studies allowed Rohan to connect his own scholarship and writing,and allowed the modern literary world to re-examine the power of tradition even after the completion of the vernacular style.Kirin is a short story by Tanizaki Junichiro(1886-1965),published in 1910 just after his debut in the literary world.The story is mainly based on the allusion--Confucius and Nanzi,and incorporates some other material from the Analects of Confucius and the Records of the Grand Historian.The main body of the novel is written in fluent vernacular style,but the neoclassical style and kanbun styles are also consciously applied in certain parts.In Kirin,Tanizaki made full use of the blanks left in the original material to develop his imagination and reconstruct the theme through the addition of details and the compilation of several allusions.By this means,Kirin inherited the theme of the ’evil beauty’ in his previous work Shisei(“The Tattoo”),and further clarifies the triumph of ’beauty’ over ’goodness’.The direct quotations from the original Chinese text and the use of the classical writing style in the novel create a performative effect,transforming Chinese historical allusions into a stage device used for creating exotic atmosphere.The very different styles in adapting Chinese historical themes by Koda Rohan and Tanizaki Junichiro reflect their different attitudes towards Chinese history and culture,with the former viewing it with fondness as a spiritual homeland and the latter as an exotic landscape to be admired.These two attitudes are also reflected in the works of other writers of the time,showing that the Chinese history and culture emerged in those writers’ minds were not objective perceptions but always imaginary projections.However,the fantastical nature of Chinese historical themes in the writing of Japanese writers made them ideal to counter the Naturalistic literature prevalent in the literary world at the time.Through the distance in time and space created by the stage of’ancient China’,writers rebelled against the trivial everydayness in Naturalistic literature,which was purported as ’realness’,and re-examined the relationship between western civilization and tradition and between "Self" and "Other" in the process of modernization. |
