English Introduction

I am studying Japanese because I am a student of modern Chinese Literature and having reading competency in Japanese is relevant to my research. I am interested in a set of major authors and theorists during the May Fourth period who interacted with contemporary Japanese intellectuals and translated major Japanese literary texts, the most famous examples of such Chinese theorists being Lu Xun and his brother Zhou Zuoren, both of whom were heavily engaged with Japanese intellectual and literary culture, albeit in different ways. I am also interested in later schools and trends within Chinese literature who also drew on contemporaneous literary developments in Japan, especially the authors of the so-called Xinganjuepai 新感覺派 school, who drew on the narrative methods of the Japanese literary faction of the same name. This literary school and its members in China and Japan sought to develop new formal techniques and literary styles with which to convey the excitement and terror of urban modernity, representing not only one of the most innovative sectors of literary production during the interwar period in their respective countries, but also a primary example of transnational literary influence and culture during that same period. Individual literary figures such as the "modern girl" (モダンガール, modan gāru) convey circuits of exchange between urban sites like Tokyo and Shanghai. I also have an interest in Japanese literature, encompassing Yukio Mishima from the post-occupation period and Takiji Kobayashi from the 1920s, the former for his penetrating insights into post-war cultural malaise in Japanese society, the latter for his renditions of working-class struggle from a complex period in Japanese political and social history. I hope within three years to be able to engage with these and other texts.