Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's Appreciation Of Chinese Culture In His Works

Akutagawa Ryuunosuke is a major Japanese writer of new thought trends school. His works are lively and delightful, scholarly and concise, full of interest and charm, and have a wide readership at home and abroad. But he put an end to his life by committing suicide at the age of thirty five. After he died, the explanations and comments about his life and art are too numerous to list. People take delight in talking about his doctrine of art for art's sake, analyzing the egoism reflected in his works, finding out the reasons that made him commit suicide continuously, and they also talkabout his relations with Christianity......However, the subject "Akutagawa Ryuunosukeand China", which is very important in the research on Akutagawa Ryuunosuke, has not been thought highly for a long time. With regard to "Akutagawa Ryuunosuke and China", some limited comments, such as "Akutagawa Ryuunosuke learned from Chinese classical literature","Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's influence on LuXun's historical novels", can be often seen, but there is no macroscopic comment upon this subject. Meanwhile, there is the trend in the academic circles to think poorly of "The Journey to China" that records Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's only journey to China. In my opion, "Akutagawa Ryuunosuke and China" is the subject that runs through all his life, China has a great influence on Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's outlook on life and world, which began from his childhood, reached a crescendo when Akutagawa Ryuunosuke visited China, and lasted until the last minute of his life. Combining abundant, full and accurate bibliographical materials and using influence research in comparative literature as means, this paper tries to make a systematic and comprehensive discussion on the subject "Akutagawa Ryuunosuke and China".This dissertation consists of five chapters, except introduction and epilogue.The introduction consists of two parts. In the first part, the research on Akutagawa Ryuunosuke in the field of comparative literature in China and Japan is organized and reviewed, through investigation I find that the researches in the two countries are similar, concentrating on the three points: the first one is the research to compare the historical novels that Akutagawa Ryuunosuke drew materials from China with the original versions; the second is analyzing the influence of Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's works on LuXun through comparing some Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's works with LuXun's; the last is the partial interpretations and comments on Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's travel to China and "The Journey to China", of which the negative comment is the main aspect. The research on"Jiechuan and China" in the two countries is primarily partial research, in which there are wrong explanations on "The Journey to China". In the second part of the introduction, I distinguish Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's conceptions of China with "Orientalism" through analyzing Japanese "interest in China" in modern times. After 1990s, a new trend emerged in the field of Chinese and Japanese comparative literature, which is to interpret Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's conceptions of China with Sayid's oriental studies. These scholars think that Japanese "interest in China" in modern times (including Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's conceptions of China) has the flavor of Sayid's Orientalism, so in their works concerned with China we can find their pursuit of exoticism in a arrogant position, which tallies closely with westerners' psychology of discrimination and pursuit of exoticism when contemplating oriental culture, i.e. the so called "composition of Orientalism". But I think that first of all Japan is an oriental country, no matter how they want to break away from Asia and join Europe, the cultural accumulation that formed in history can not be changed, even though they stand in a position of the "subject", there are too much oriental elements that can not be removed in their heart of hearts, so they can not contemplate the "object"--Orient, which includes themselves, with the same visual point as Westerners. The"interest in China" which was popular in the period of TaiShoo is also a complex conception, which contains three modes of understanding, Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's "interest in China" should belong to the second one, it is not tinged with Sayid's Orientalism, but even opposite with it. In Chapter One "Akutagawa Ryuunosuke and Chinese classical literature", I analyze Chinese classical culture's great influence on Akutagawa Ryuunosuke, such as Chinese classical novels,Chinese paintings and Chinese poems, and the formation of Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's conception of China in his springtime by meditating on Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's dairy,letters and essays . In Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's youth there was a group of works called "Chinese matter". The so called "Chinese matter" was that authors wrote about Japanese people and matters in the present-day world, making use of the stage of "China". That is why people like to talk about what the meanings contained in these stories, but neglect the "stage" where these stories happened, even turn a blind eye to it. But I focus on the stage what "Chinese matter" depends on and discuss how Akutagawa Ryuunosuke put the image of China in his mind into his works, taking the examples of "Faerie","Weisheng's Letters","Adventures","Du Zi Chun"The Chapter Two is "Facing Modern Times: Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's psychology of cultural return". Chinese classical literature's influence on Akutagawa Ryuunosuke not only reflected in his writings, but also influenced his outlook on life and his attitudes toward modern times and Japanese society at that time imperceptibly. In the beginning of the 20^th century, Japan developed by leaps and bounds in the field of economy and military affairs, etc, after Meijiyisinn's baptism. The reality that the nation was prosperous and the people were powerful made many people's attitudes toward western civilization change from resistance to yearning and worship. Akutagawa Ryuunosuke detested the craze to imitate various kinks of Western things under the banner of "breaking away from Asia and joining Europe", sighed for the traditional culture getting far and far, and had the deep misgivings about the methods and results that Japan learned from Western culture. Facing modern times, Akutagawa Ryuunosuke held the attitude of cultural return. I find the thread of formation and development of this Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's psychology through organizing and analyzing Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's representative works in various periods of his life. From his first essay "The Water of Big River" to his last writing "The Life of a Fool", we can see the existence of cultural origin, of which Chinese culture is the root and Japanese is the head, it is the psychological root of this Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's attitude. It is like an underground stream, flowing in Jiechuan's heart all the time. But the irreconcilable contradiction between individual and the times caused by it was always gnawing his weak body. At last, he ended his short life with "hazy uneasiness about future".The Chapter Three is "The Visit to China". His journey to China in 1921 was not only the only one that Akutagawa Ryuunosuke visited China, but also his only travel he went abroad. He made a comprehensive record of this travel's situation in "The Journey to China". I analyze "The Journey to China" and the letters he wrote to his friends and his family in this period carefully and thoroughly, at the same time I see the situation of China in the 1920s with Akutagawa Ryuunosuke. The nation which was nibbled by great powers and divided by warlords at that time had lost the splendor in the past, it was not the ideal world that accompanied him growing up any more, and there was no "heroes" living there. The disparity between ideal and reality made Akutagawa Ryuunosuke feel sad. What made him more disappointed was that the ancient nation with Eastern civilization was the same as Japan, turning into "another Western World". He could not help sighing with regret:"I don't known when it began that the influence of western world is like hydrochloric acid" ,which erodes Japan and China. But the Chinese who were carefree and content, indifferent and apathetic when their nation was in a precarious situation made Akutagawa Ryuunosuke feel worry and uneasy. All these emotions of sadness,disappointment and fury that Chinese failed to live up to expectation were reflected by acid and caustic words in "The Journey to China", which incurred negation and attack of literary world, especially Chinese literati. I think that as LuXun said in "Writing under the Light","If there is a foreigner, who damns Chinese present situations for us now, when he is qualified for dinner, he is the man who has conscience and is worthy of adoration!"(Note 3 LuXun: "Grave", the first volume of "The Complete Works of LuXun",Beijing: People's Literature Press, 1981, p.215) The acid words in the travelogue demonstrate his kindness to China. "The Journey to China" not only records Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's travel to China, but also reflects his complicated attitude toward Chinese reality, it is a travelogue of great value, the underrating even negative evaluation is wrong.The Chapter Four is "The Meeting of Akutagawa Ryuunosuke with Chinese Scholars and Revolutionists". Akutagawa Ryuunosuke had ever met with Chinese scholars and politicians in Shanghai and Beijing. This chapter goes on analyzing "The Journey to China" and his letters in this period. Through comparative analysis, I find that Akutagawa Ryuunosuke was disappointed at the people who were pessimistic and waiting for miracles, such as ZhangBinglin and ZhengXiaoxu, but well disposed toward LiRenjie who went hither and thither in order to save the nation. Since he saw the reality of China, he had been clear that the nation which was bullied and humiliated by imperialist powers and exploited by cruel officials was far from the ideal world in his mind. After the sufferings, he began to face reality and consider how China got out of dilemma. And then the Japanese writer famous for "art for art's sake" began to pay attention to politics that had no relation with him. This reflected Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's kindness to China. What is noteworthy is that LuXun was the first one who translated Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's works into Chinese, when Akutagawa Ryuunosuke visited China, "The Nose" and "Luosheng Gate" translated by LuXun were serialized in "Morning Paper Supplement", and further when Akutagawa Ryuunosuke stayed in Beijing, LuXun should be also in Beijing, but it seemed that the two men didn't meet. According to rich materials, I discuss the riddle, based on the fruit of predecessor's research.The Chapter Five is "The Influence of Visiting China on Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's Literary Writing". Starting from text analysis, I investigate the influence of the journey to China on Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's outlook on China and world, and his literary writing. After his visit to China, there was no "Chinese matters", of which Chinese classical works were materials and ancient China's idyllic landscape was background, in Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's works, such as "Du Zi Chun","Adventures". And further, in the novel whose background is modern China, the description of Chinese female was somewhat less gentle with more heroic spirit. All of these were closely related with what he saw and heard in China. When he visited China, Japanese invaders were pressing on China at every stage, and Chinese anti-Japan sentiments were stronger and stronger. As he went on traveling, Akutagawa Ryuunosuke felt Chinese people's great animosity towards Japan all the time in all parts of the country. He was deep in thought after suffering from shock and decided to put what he saw,heard and thought into his writings. His social consciousness was stronger and stronger after coming back to Japan. In Japan where the war was advertised just, he published "General","Tao Tailang" and "The Fan of Hunan", etc, what were best works with anti-war ideas in the danger of being banned by officials, they were results of the journey to China.The epilogue sums up the full text and puts forward the research direction in the future.