On The Chinese Characters Created In Yasushi Inoue’s Novels On Western Regions Of China

Yasushi Inoue（1907~1991）, a famous contemporary Japanese writer, critic and poet,published a lot of works loved by the people. He wrote a few historical fictions on Chinesethemes, which presented his unique writing style. His first historical fiction Hu PaintedBottles was written in1950, depicting the cultures in Western Regions of China. Later, hewrote a sequence of historical fictions on Western Regions of China. He compiled all theseChinese theme historical novels in a collection in1965, and named it Western Regions Stories,which is the world’s first collection of historical novels set in China’s Western Regions.Western Regions Stories depicts a fantastic mystery of Western China, picturing fascinatingChinese cultures in Western Regions. It collects a total of ten works, but only five of them canbe called authentic Chinese Western Regions Novels. These five works are Hu Painted Bottles,Alien, Loulan, Tun-huang and Flood. This paper explores the Chinese Character types createdby Yasushi Inoue, analyzes its reasons and evaluates its significance, so that it can provide acomprehensive understanding of Yasushi Inoue’s literature and new viewpoints on his literarystatus in Japanese Post-war Literature.There are three categories of Chinese characters created in Yasushi Inoue’s ChineseWestern Regions Novels—swordsman image, literati image and beauty image. The studyshows that Yasushi Inoue’s creation of the Chinese characters is affected by the Japaneseconcept of China as well as his own concept of China, which comes from his personal growthand life experiences in China.The creation of these Chinese characters shows that they are inline with a kind of traditional Japanese aesthetic taste of sorrow and sublime. It is no doubtthat Yasushi Inoue’s creation of Chinese characters not only has a great significance in hisChinese Western Regions Novels, but also has enriched the writing style of his novels.Yasushi Inoue’s creation of Chinese characters is not only an inheritance of the tradition ofJapanese literature, but also the embodiment of the Japanese literary aesthetic consciousness.Furthermore, Yasushi Inoue has made great contributions to the Sino-Japanese literature andcultures especially in the post war period when Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations started tobecome normal. Finally, it has become an important symbol of communication ofSino-Japanese literature and cultures.