Thoughts after translating Takeuchi Yoshimi’s Ro Jin 鲁迅 (Lu Xun)

ABSTRACT

Despite the ups and downs in their relationship, China and Japan have been engaged in a process of cultural exchange for nearly two millennia. A recent outcome of this interaction has been the discourse surrounding the founder of modern Chinese literature, Lu Xun 鲁迅 (1881-1936), his foremost exponent in 20^th century Japan, the writer and thinker Takeuchi Yoshimi 竹内好 (1910-1977) and the effect of their interaction ever since on intellectuals in both countries. This is an interaction which had substantial influence on the intellectual climate in post-war Japan and still plays a role in intellectual discourse in contemporary China, particularly in the debates surrounding modernity and nationalism. I have worked with Joshua Fogel in making the first translation into English of Takeuchi’s classic monograph Ro Jin (1944) into English from the Japanese. In the process, we have attained new insights into historical and contemporary intellectual developments in both countries, as well as a deepening understanding of “Takeuchi’s Lu Xun”. I have also examined two rival translations into Chinese by Li Xifeng 李心峰 (1986) and Li Dongmu 李冬木 (2005) from the angle of fidelity to the original and readability.

KEYWORDS:

• Takeuchi Yoshimi
• Lu Xun and Japan
• Japanese-English Japanese-Chinese comparative literary translation

Takeuchi Yoshimi’s influential book Ro Jin (Lu Xun) was finished in November 1943 and published in December 1944 through his friend, the left-wing writer Takeda Taijun 武田泰淳 (1912–1976), who did the proofreading, after the author had been conscripted and sent to the front to serve in a “pacification unit” (senbuhan宣撫班) in Hu’nan, where the tide of the war had already turned against the Japanese. It is sometimes considered more of a meditation than a scholarly study, although it is clear to me that Takeuchi intended it as a study, both of the author and his works, and perhaps the swan-song of a young Sinologist before he died in the war, which Takeuchi anticipated, but fortunately did not transpire.

One salient feature of this book is that it was written in Japan during the war-era and under wartime censorship, but it still managed to carry enough truth to profoundly impress several generations of readers in the post-war era.¹ It catapulted a Chinese writer, Lu Xun, who had died in 1936, to prominence in Japan as a model for intellectuals who found themselves in a “semi-feudal, semi-colonial” society, having to live under the dual weights of the “Emperor system” and the American military occupation. In that sense, it did for Lu Xun something that no other single book or combination of books (except for those written by Lu Xun himself) produced in China ever accomplished.

Even more remarkably, it has now found its way back to China in two separate and very different translations (1986 and 2005), where it continues to make its mark on new generations, again in a way that no Chinese (or English-language) book has. Aside from a substantial number of scholarly articles and conference papers,² the book has inspired an international conference with a hundred participants in Shanghai in 2005 and an online international academic forum devoted to it, which met eight times over a series of weeks from April 2022.³

The book contains a chronological outline of Lu Xun’s life as an appendix, relating it to events in the external world, including both China and Japan. Aside from three afterwords, there is also a 1949 article “Shisōka toshite no Ro Jin” 思想家としての魯迅 (Lu Xun as Thinker) that Takeuchi later included in the appendix.

The main body of the book consists of five sections:

An Introduction: “Concerning Life and Death”

Chapter 1 “Doubts About [His] Biography”

Chapter 2 “The Formation of His Thought”

Chapter 3 “Concerning his [Creative] Works”

Chapter 4 “Politics and Literature”Conclusion: “The Enlightener Lu Xun”

Takeuchi was influenced by reading the brilliant young Chinese critic, Li Changzhi 李長之 (1910–1978),⁴ and quotes extensively from Lu Xun’s works, many of which Takeuchi translated into Chinese (his translation of the short story Guxiang 故鄉 [My Old Hometown] is still included in Japanese high school textbooks and lauded as exemplary Japanese prose) but the book takes certain positions that have come to characterize it. The first chapter famously begins by questioning the authenticity of the legendary lantern-slide incident⁵ as Lu Xun’s primary motivation for withdrawing from medical studies and holds that Lu Xun could become a writer only after going through a “period of gestation” in Beijing (1912–1918),⁶ when he worked as a functionary at the Ministry of Education and researched the ancient history of his native land of Kuaiji 會稽 at night, at the end of which he experienced a kaishin 回心 (turn of heart) – a change of mind to turn from this life of isolation to become a public intellectual. As Takeuchi puts it: 絶望に絶望した人は、文学者になるより仕方がない (“Those who have despaired of despair have no other way out but to become writers.”)⁷ He argues that Lu Xun was principally that – a literary figure (bungakusha 文學者), not a thinker, as the Communists were wont to characterize him.

In Ro Jin there seems to be an identification of the author himself with Lu Xun as a bungakusha 文學者, a “litterateur,” meaning a man of letters, an author. This concept may have been close to Takeuchi’s own self-definition and aided in maintaining his distance from Japanese militarism. In a departure from the two earlier Japanese biographers of Lu Xun, Masuda Wataru 増田渉 (1903–1977) and Oda Takeo小田嶽夫 (1900–1978),⁸ Takeuchi asserted that many of Lu Xun’s “autobiographical” writings were fictionalized accounts. He depicts Lu Xun as maturing and developing during his period of silence and gestation when he lived alone in Beijing and spent his spare time researching stelae inscriptions. Takeuchi says Lu Xun eventually experienced a “turn of heart” (kaishin 回心)⁹ away from his emotional suffering, after which he began to write his stories. He portrays Lu Xun as a lone wanderer engaged in constant struggle against all the dominant attitudes of his time, summing up Lu Xun as an advocate of one thing: teikō 抵抗 (resistance). “Lu Xun did not build the foundation of his literary work on these [non-literary, extrinsic factors],” he tells us. “Rather, his literary work took shape by rejecting all of this.”¹⁰ Takeuchi admits that there was a subtle interaction between politics and literature going on in Lu Xun, but asserts that Lu Xun, as a true man of letters, never let politics overpower literature. In this Takeuchi was influenced by Li Changzhi’s bold work Lu Xun pipan 魯迅批判 (Lu Xun, a Critique) (Beijing: Beixin, 1936), which argues that Lu Xun was a poet, not a thinker.¹¹ As Takeuchi summarized it: “Namely, he views Lu Xun from a literary point of view.”¹²

Takeuchi goes on to emphasize that he is interested not in the ways Lu Xun changed throughout his life, but rather in what ways he remained unchanged.¹³ This stance was similar to my own reading of Lu Xun, and I have drawn encouragement from it once it came to my attention. For that reason I have always felt a kindred spirit with Takeuchi. I remember bringing this point (about the ways Lu Xun remained unchanged) up with the late Marxist Lu Xun scholar from Tokyo University, Maruyama Noboru 丸山昇 (1931–2006), who did not express agreement, but neither did he express disagreement. I felt at the time that Maruyama was telling me: “That depends on where you go with this idea.” Takeuchi’s book was understood by Maruyama more as a meditation inspired by reading Lu Xun than a biography or an analysis of his writings per se. Maruyama comments:

He wrote the book as an expression of his revulsion for the mainstream of Japanese literature, which had been diverted completely to serve the purposes of the war … . In a sense, Ro Jin was his defense against the tyranny of the age … . “I do not consider Lu Xun’s literature to be in its essence utilitarian,” he wrote. “Nor do I consider it as literature for the sake of life and patriotism.” This statement eloquently reveals Takeuchi’s vehement opposition to the misuse of literature by politics, a misuse from which he had to suffer tremendously.¹⁴

That much said, Takeuchi holds that Lu Xun became more influential politically by avoiding direct engagement with politics in his works. “He saw literature as powerless, or at least he saw literature trying to be powerful as powerless.”¹⁵ And Takeuchi quotes Lu Xun’s 1907 classical-style essay Moluo Shi Li Shuo 摩羅詩力說 “On the Power of Mara Poetry” on the uses of the uselessness of pure literature (bunshou muyou no you文章無用の用).¹⁶ In terms of his philosophy, Takeuchi says that Lu Xun asserts that “although the only thing that is certain is that our final destination is the grave,” his conclusion is “people must go on living.” The essence of Lu Xun, as Takeuchi sees it, lies in sousatsu 掙紮(struggle).¹⁷

So far as Lu Xun’s creative works are concerned, Takeuchi expresses idiosyncratic views, considering some stories successful and others “failures.” For instance, he has a high opinion of “Zai jiulou shang” 在酒樓上 (In the Tavern) and “Guduzhe” 孤獨者 (The Loner) because of their deft creation of characters and hints that they have autobiographical elements. He is enthusiastic about “Dixiong” 弟兄 (Brothers) and “Lihun” 離婚 (Divorce) but considers “Shang shi” 傷逝 (Regret for the Past) a poor work, “Feizao” 肥皂 (Soap) “a silly piece of writing (gusaku 愚作), and ‘Medicine’ a failure as a work (shippaisaku 失敗作).” These are personal reactions, he admits, but he points to concrete reasons such as structure, character development and where action takes place. In that sense, he offers a sophisticated criticism differing from Li Changzhi.

He even had the foresight to dispute the political interpretation Lu Xun gave of his own work Yecao (Wild Grass) in his 1932 preface to the first English translation.¹⁸ Nevertheless, Takeuchi is perplexed by Gushi Xinbian (Old Tales Retold) to the extent that he does not want to analyze it, but attempts to account for this in an endnote, where he writes: “By so saying, I am not making an evaluation of Gushi Xinbian as a literary work; I am just suggesting it is not indispensable for an understanding of Lu Xun’s ‘thought.’”¹⁹

Up until the present undertaking, Ro Jin has never been translated into English. One reason may have been its challenging, idiosyncratic and indirect style.

The first example of issues I have encountered in translating Ro Jin is the term kaishin 回心 (Chinese: huixin), which has a central position in Takeuchi’s analysis of Lu Xun’s intellectual development during the second decade of the 20^th century. Li Xinfeng 李心峰 in his Chinese translation of Ro Jin/Lu Xun (Hangzhou: Zhejiang wenyi chubanshe, 1986), postulates (p. 46, n. 1) that the term kaishin 回心, as used by Takeuchi, is derived from Buddhist terminology: “It describes a turn around in one’s mind in terms of religious faith; or taking up an ascetic lifestyle due to repentance or a revelation.” (指對信仰的回心轉意; 或指由於悔悟而皈依). Li Dongmu interprets it as the Christian “conversion” (he cites the term in English in Jindai de chaoke, p. 45, n. 1).

Morohashi 諸橋 defines kaishin as: 1. “To change the heart; change one’s thinking; reform one’s thinkng” (kokoro wo aratameru心を改める。改心。), citing a passage from Jia Yi’s 賈誼 Shangshu chen zhengshi 上疏陳政事 (Memorial to the throne setting out the affairs of government): “The Master could transform the customs and ways of the people, making All-Under-Heaven turn around and return to the Dao; this is a feat of an order which no common official could ever accomplish.” (夫移風易俗，使天下回心而鄉道，類非俗吏之所能爲也。)

He also cites: “All-Under-Heaven change their Ways” (天下回心) from the Han shu 漢書 (History of the Han dynasty), “Liyue zhi” 禮樂志 (Treatise on rites and music); and “All-Within-The-Four-Seas are reformed” (海内回心) from the Wei zhi 魏誌 (Chronicle of the kingdom of Wei), “Wang Can zhuan” 王粲傳 (Biography of Wang Can). 2. “To restore the feelings of love from former days” (往日の愛情を回复する).²⁰

In the context Takeuchi creates, I would submit that it signifies a “turn of heart,” meaning a change of mind or change of direction, because that was the point or moment at which Lu Xun decided to leave his period of quiet research and venture out to take up a new role as a creative writer.²¹

During the online international forum, known as the Lu Xun Yuanzhuo Pai 魯迅圓桌派 (Lu Xun Roundtable) Jindai de Chaoke Dushuhui 《近代的超克》讀書會 (“Overcoming Modernity” Reading and Discussion Group), convened by Liu Chunyong 劉春勇at Chuanmei University 傳媒大學in Beijing, it was suggested by one of the participants that a Japanese Christian scholar claimed he had asked Takeuchi in person if the term kaishin meant “conversion,” and Takeuchi replied in the affirmative.²² I would question firstly the reliability of such third-hand evidence and secondly the logic of the argument. If it really were to mean “conversion,” then that suggests that Lu Xun was persuaded by someone else (Jin Xinyi 金心異/Qian Xuantong 錢玄同，1887–1939) to take on a new faith, something that would contradict Takeuchi’s interpretation of what really happened (as opposed to the account given in the author’s Preface to Outcry (Nahan zixu《呐喊》自序). In my reading of him, Takeuchi would never accept the idea that Lu Xun was “converted” to the cause of the May Fourth and New Culture Movements by Qian Xuantong or anyone else.

The second example I will give comes from Ro Jin chapter 3 Sakuhin nitsuite 作品について (Concerning His Works), part 2, where Takeuchi writes: “Watashi wa, Ro Jin no shousetsu wo mazui to omou.” 私は、魯迅の小説をまずいと思う (I consider Lu Xun’s fiction to be mazui).²³ This is a colloquial word that my collaborator, Josh Fogel, had originally translated as “terrible” at one point and “horrible” at another, perhaps inspired by Hashimoto Satoru’s paper given in an online conference on Lu Xun at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in which he had translated it as “bad,” but my initial feeling was suspicion about the accuracy of that rendering into English. It did not fit in with the context. I suggested a number of alternative translations, but my strongest vote was for “awkward.” My belief is that the best way to determine a word’s meaning is through context, so let us look at what Takeuchi has written before and after that sentence:

[In fact] there are far more items of a polished nature among his zawen 雜文 (miscellaneous essays) than in his creative works. His zawen, as in the case of his other written work, have generally been assembled chronologically. In many instances, the compiling itself already implies some sort of action. Compiling his own works was for him an important undertaking … .

I have no intention of drawing a sharp distinction between creative writing and zawen or offering a literary theory on the basis of that distinction. There is only one thing I should like to do, and that is to determine Lu Xun’s position. Not thought, nor works, nor daily life, nor artistic value, what I would like to know is the nature of the spring of origin that makes such an admixture possible. I think that Lu Xun’s stories are mazui. I say this only because I think for Lu Xun as a writer, this mazui-nature was important, and I am not stating it in a conclusive way. More than anything, Lu Xun was a bungakusha 文學者 (literary figure). Nothing makes me think of this sense of being a man of letters more keenly than Lu Xun. I am wondering what it was that Lu Xun had to give up to become a writer. If we can reliably say that these collections of writings in a narrow sense are what Lu Xun said “might plausibly be called creative work,” I’d like to get a clue of some kind, though I’m not trying to dub it criticism. In fact, creative writing is the easiest to understand.

Nahan 呐喊 (Outcry) and Panghuang 彷徨 (Hesitation) are essentially of the same nature, with no sharp distinction as far as I am concerned. Li Changzhi noted an inclination to move “from memory to reality,” and descending artistically from there. I can’t quite buy that. Yu Dafu 郁達夫 offered high praise for Liang di shu 兩地書 (in his commentary to Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi xiaoshuo erji 中國新文學大繫·小說·二集), and I would agree even more than half with his opinion, but for the reasons outlined above, I cannot adopt it here. Standing in opposition to Nahan and Panghuang would be Gushi xinbian 故事新編 (Old Tales Retold), which he compiled in his later years. The opposition here is not in subject matter or manner of treatment but in the way that fiction is approached in the first place. I even begin to suspect that it was written in an effort to negate Nahan and Panghuang. However, Gushi xinbian is his most difficult work for me to understand. In another sense, standing in opposition to Nahan and Panghuang would be Wild Grass 野草 and Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk 朝花夕拾, which are more-or- less chronologically linked. There is definitely an oppositional relationship between Wild Grass and Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk, but together they preserve a kind of commentarial linkage with Nahan and Panghuang. For me, Wild Grass is an extremely important work.

It is unique and insightful that Takeuchi proposes to read Lu Xun’s prose collection Wild Grass and his fictionalized reminiscences in Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk as having a commentarial relationship to Lu Xun’s first two collections of short stories, Nahan and Panghuang, which are normally considered very different works, indeed different genres, but back to the question of how to translate mazui. I suggested to Josh and Hashimoto Satoru, the latter of whom had translated mazui as “bad” in a conference paper on Takeuchi, that in this context it meant “awkward,” “uncomfortable,” or “unsettling”. Mazui can indeed mean “unpalatable” or “ugly,” which would justify Josh’s reading of “lousy” but mazui can also mean “awkward” or “clumsy” in the sense of unskillful or rough. For instance, in Japanese one can say: This is an “awkward translation.” This job has been “bungled.” This piece is written in a poor (clumsy) style”. “It would be mazui (awkward) if this situation were to become known to the boss.” If one stumbles into the boss’ office and sees he is having an affair, that is also termed mazui (an awkward situation).

In Li Xinfeng’s (1986) Chinese translation, he renders mazui as zhuoben 拙笨, meaning “rough” or “unpolished.” The whole sentence is: 我認為魯迅的小說是拙笨的 (I think Lu Xun’s fiction is zhuoben)²⁴ The latter translation (unpolished) would be rather unlikely, as Lu Xun went over his short stories many times, editing and re-editing them. So, aside from “rough,” in this context mazui might also mean [intentionally] unsophisticated, grading, prickly, or challenging.

In Li Dongmu’s 李冬木2005 Chinese translation, he renders the entire sentence: 我認為，魯迅的小說寫得併不漂亮.²⁵ – thus translating mazui not with a single word but rather using the colloquial phrase bing bu piaoliang (not very pretty). The word piaoliang 漂亮was one which my undergraduate professor at Columbia, C.T. Hsia 夏誌清, liked to scoff at as an example of why modern Mandarin falls far below the elegance of classical Chinese. Aside from its vagueness, in that sense at least, Li Xinfeng’s rendering zhuoben wins hands down in my opinion. But one point in Li Dongmu’s favor is that this contradicts the stereotypical view in China that his is the lesser in terms of “readability.” I would argue that depends on the passage.

Back to the Japanese! Josh then consulted with Dr Hashimoto Satoru (Johns Hopkins University), whom we had both met virtually at the conference on Lu Xun and World Literature at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (4 July 2021) and who had, in his conference paper on “Lu Xun, Takeuchi Yoshimi and a World Literature,” translated mazui as “bad..” Hashimoto originally wrote to Josh (27 January 2022):

I did put much thought to translating “まずい;” but I would pick an English term that can flesh out the clear irony implied in this characterization. I was able to explain the context in my paper, so I opted to use “bad” to emphasize the irony. But if I were to translate it without an explanation, I would think either of your suggestions – awkward or clumsy – would work well; or even “poor,” or “faulty” (to gesture toward Takeuchi’s judgment that Lu Xun’s fiction “doesn’t have a cosmos”).²⁶ Please let me know your thoughts!

On February 1, after Josh forwarded my suggestions, Hashimoto again wrote:

I agree with Professor Kowallis that Takeuchi uses “mazui” in the affirmative in the context of the sentences that immediately follow it. But in a larger context of his entire treatise, Takeuchi in the end praises Lu Xun as a quintessential writer. So the question seems to be: How could someone who writes such “mazui” fiction can be appreciated as such a great writer?

My solution would be to read Takeuchi’s judgement as an emphasis on the deviation of Lu Xun’s fiction from existing literary/aesthetic norms, (or even an expression of the critic’s attitude for reading Lu Xun’s fiction outside of such norms). Then Takeuchi’s criticism, it seems, boils down to a contention that the kind of literature that Lu Xun so powerfully performs––which I’d call “modern literature”––hinges on just such deviations from existing norms. So, by precisely writing “mazui” fiction, Lu Xun becomes a great writer; hence the “irony” of the judgment.

This might be a tricky interpretation, which I don’t know if you may agree or not … But for the sake of translation, I actually think Professor Kowallis’ suggestion “awkward” might be a nice middle ground. Please let me know your thoughts!

Ultimately, Dr Hashimoto came over to my suggestion of “awkward,” writing directly to me:

These look like excellent suggestions for “mazui”! I went back to the original once again, and the immediate context reads: “魯迅の小説はまずい。近代文学の伝統の浅い中国では、小説は一般にまずいが、しかしそれにしても魯迅の小説はまずい。” (In China, where the tradition of modern literature is shallow [meaning “as yet young/undeveloped”], fiction is generally mazui, but even so, Lu Xun’s fiction is [for its own part] mazui – JvK trans). I’d still lean toward our original candidate, “awkward,” which I think can be used for the three instances quite naturally. “Problematic” sounds to me a bit too strong for Takeuchi’s aesthetic judgment, although “mazui” can certainly mean that.

A third example, also drawn from part 4 of chapter 3 (p. 123 of the Miraisha edition of Ro Jin) is how to render the phrases hyotto suroto tonde-mo-nai ひょっとすると飛んでもない. Hyotto suruto ひょっとすると is relatively direct, it signifies possibility or that something occurred by chance or happenstance. But tonde-mo-nai is more of a challenge. In Japanese it can mean absurd, preposterous, outrageous, monstrous; unexpected, inconceivable; or strange. For instance, in Japanese: one can speak of “a preposterous demand;” “an exorbitant price;” “a terrible mistake.” Josh initially translated tonde-mo-nai as “dreadful” but I felt it was closer to “absurd.” (There is certainly an element of the absurd in Gushi xinbian [Old Tales Retold]).

That passage from Ro Jin was initially translated:

My initial plan was to write from Nahan (Outcry) to Yecao (Wild Grass), and naturally Gushi xinbian (Old Tales Retold) would be included in the mix; when I finished writing, far from it being included therein, I sensed a whole new world utterly opposed to the idea. Beyond my judgment that this was not an important work, I vaguely feared that it might be a dreadful (tonde-mo-nai 飛んでもない piece of work, and my first thoughts of omitting it jibed with my inescapable feeling that for expediency sake, if possible to go without mentioning it, doing so would also save time. My hunch was still indistinct, but perhaps it would hit the mark.

Li Xinfeng’s translation of tonde-mo-nai 飛んでもない was hao wudaoli 毫無道理 (utterly unjustifiable; completely irrational; lacking logic or reason). He renders the whole sentence:

最初想省去它，除了判斷它併不是一部重要作品之外，也有或許這是毫無道理的作品這樣一種淡然的畏懼。因而，我還有如果可能的話就不去談及它，省些工夫這樣圖方便的想法。我的預感雖然還不能說清楚，但也許猜中了。(At the outset, I wanted to dispense with it, aside from judging that it was definitely not an important work, I also had the vague fear that it was perhaps a hao wudaoli (completely irrational) work.²⁷

Li Dongmu translates the phrase as huangtang wuji 荒唐無稽 (preposterous, absurd, fantastic; dissipated, intemperate, uncontrolled), rendering the whole sentence:

當初考慮到省卻，除了判斷其中的作品併非重要之外，也併非不是出於一些投機取巧的想法，以為說不定是些荒唐無稽的作品，心裏有種漠然的恐懼，覺得還是少碰為妙，免得給自己找麻煩。我雖然還說不清楚自己的預感，不過或許中的也未可知。(At first I thought of cutting it, aside from judging that the works in it are definitely not important, I rather opportunistically hit on the notion that these are perhaps ridiculous works; in my heart I had a vague fear, feeling that it would be best to touch on them as little as possible so as to avoid bringing trouble upon myself. Although I am still unable to describe my forebodings, it may be that they do not fall far from the mark).²⁸

Again, with Josh feeling one way and I another, I consulted Matsui Kimiyo, a linguist and native speaker of Japanese, also a colleague at the University of Sydney, with whom I had read and translated other material from Japanese on Lu Xun’s early essays. Her interpretation differed from both Josh’s and mine, to say nothing of Li Xinfeng and Li Dongmu. She wrote me:

“I think hyoutosuru tondemonai ひょっとすると 飛んでもない basically refers to something unexpected either in a positive way or negative way. According to the context, I read the meaning of this ひょっとすると飛んでもない as something “significant” or “influential” – something beyond the author’s imagination/expectation.

From halfway through of page 122 to line 5 of page 123 [of the 1961 Miraisha edition of Ro Jin], the meanings there are roughly something like this, I think:

At first, I thought that Gushi xinbian 故事新編 was an unimportant and uninfluential work that could fit within Yecao 野草 from Nahan 吶喴. In reality, however, there is a sense of a new world in Gushi xinbian 故事新編 that is in opposition to the whole of Yecao 野草 and Nahan 吶喴. The reason I first decided to remove Gushi xinbian 故事新編 from the description was partly because I didn’t see much importance to it, but partly because I was wary of hyoutosuru tondemonai ‘ひょっとすると飛んでもない作品.’ I had the opportunistic feeling that it would be easier for me to avoid touching on Gushi xinbian 故事新編 as much as possible. That hunch may be right.

On the next follow-up passage (from lines 6–14 on page 123), the author basically says it is a failure. But in the very last line of the passage, he eventually says “However, Gushi xinbian 故事新編 gradually increases its significance or influence (重さ= weight) as a work in my mind.” So, to me, the interpretation of hyoutosuru tondemonai ひょっとすると飛んでもない is something like “unexpectedly significant/influential.” What would you think, Sensei? “

Again, the approach of an educated native-speaker reader of Japanese was similar to mine – to arrive at a translation of the term, not through lexical or one-for-one equivalency, but by determining its connotations through the context in which it is used. The key line is held to occur at the end of the next paragraph: しかし《故事新編》は、私の中で次第に重さを增してくるようである。(However, “Old Tales Retold” gradually seems to take on more and more importance in my mind).

Li Xinfeng translates this “clincher:” 然而，《故事新編》的價值在我這裏卻在逐漸增加。 (Nevertheless, the value of “Old Tales Retold,” by contrast, gradually increases for me). And Li Dongmu renders it: 然而，《故事新编》的分量在我這裏似乎是逐漸增加著的。(Nevertheless, the weight that “Old Tales Retold” carries for me seems to keep gradually increasing).

In the end, Josh and I ended up translating the passage into English as:

Aside from my initial judgment that this was not an important work, I vaguely feared that it might be unexpectedly significant, and my first thoughts of omitting it jibed with my inescapable feeling that for expediency sake, if possible to go without mentioning it, doing so would also save time. Although I have been unable to articulate my forebodings clearly, they nevertheless may not fall all that far from the mark.

This translation of the term was later reviewed and confirmed in correspondence with me by Dr Kurashige Taku 倉重拓, a Japanese scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing, specializing in Lu Xun studies.

My conclusion from all this is that in translating terms like this in a text that involves idiosyncratic literary criticism, one simply cannot be too lexical or too “literal.” Takeuchi Yoshimi was “irreverent” and a “rebel” sinologist – he comes off that way in Ro Jin in terms of being the first to suspect that there was something wrong in Lu Xun’s narration of the significance of the “lantern-slide incident,” to say that his “memoirs” have been fictionalized to a certain extent and in his assertion that Lu Xun was a man of literature but not a thinker was certainly greeted as refreshing by some. But to insist on reading that side of him onto the translation, without contextualizing his use of words and phrases, does a disservice to both the text and the man. As Confucius put it: guo you bu ji 過猶不及 (going over the mark is like not coming up to it). I hope I have not overstated my case.

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Notes on contributors

Jon Eugene von Kowallis

Jon Eugene von Kowallis is Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, where he teaches Chinese literature, film and critical theory (orientalism). He received his PhD in Chinese literature from the University of California, Berkeley. Monographs include: The Lyrical Lu Xun: a Study of his Classical-style Poetry and The Subtle Revolution: Poets of the ‘Old Schools’ during Late Qing and Early Republican China. He is currently completing an ARC Discovery project on the formation of Lu Xun’s early thought during his Lerhjahre in Japan, and an annotated bibliography of scholarly works on Lu Xun in English, Chinese and Japanese. He also publishes on Chinese-language film.

Notes

1. The first edition of Ro Jin came out in 1944 from Nippon Koronsha 日本公論社. The second was in 1952 in the Sōgen Bunko 創元文庫 series. The 1952 edition used the new orthographic conventions, corrected a number of typos, and added some footnotes, but did not rewrite portions of the text. By 1980 the Miraisha 未來社 edition (Tokyo, 1961) had gone through 17 printings. Ro Jin came out again at the beginning of volume 1 of the Takeuchi Yoshimi Zenshū 竹内好全集 (Complete Works of Takeuchi Yoshimi) (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō 筑摩書房, 1980), pp. 3–175.

2. Xue Yi 薛毅 and Sun Xiaozhong 孫曉忠, ed. Lu Xun yu Zhunei Hao 魯迅與竹內好 (Lu Xun and Takeuchi Yoshimi) (Shanghai: Shanghai Shudian Chubanshe, 2008). This is an edited volume based on a conference held in 2005 at Shanghai University by scholars from China and Japan. Of the 25 papers included in this volume, only three are by Japanese scholars.

3. Organized by Dr Liu Chunyong at Chuanmei Daxue in Beijing, this online forum became known as the Lu Xun Yuanzhuo Pai 魯迅圓桌派 (Lu Xun Roundtable) Jindai de Chaoke Dushuhui 《近代的超克》讀書會 (“Overcoming Modernity” Reading and Discussion).

4. Li Changzhi, a young philosophy student, published Lu Xun Pipan 魯迅批判 (Lu Xun, a Critique) (Shanghai: Beixin Shuju, 1936), which Lu Xun himself read over and in which he corrected some factual errors. The book later got the author into trouble after Liberation, mainly due to its title in Chinese, which if taken literally, could be interpreted as “Lu Xun Repudiated.”

5. As recounted by the narrator in the 1922 Nahan zixu 呐喊自序 (The author’s own preface to Outcry, the first collection of his short stories).

6. Takeuchi tells us that Lin Yutang 林語堂 (1895–1976) first used the term zhefuqi 蟄伏期 (period of gestation/hibernation) to describe this part of Lu Xun’s life, when he lived in near seclusion. Takeuchi elaborates that this was “the period in which Lu Xun’s kokkaku 骨格 (lit. skeletal formation/backbone/character) took shape” and considers it the turning point at which he took on a new perspective (kaishin 回心, lit. “a ‘turn’ of mind”/“a change of ‘heart’”). See Ro Jin (Tokyo: Miraisha 1961), p. 55; Takeuchi Yoshimi zenshū 竹内好全集 (The Complete works of Takeuchi Yoshimi), 17 vols (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1980), 1:46 (hereafter cited as Zenshū).

7. Ro Jin (1961), p. 129.

8. Masuda (1970) had been Lu Xun’s student and early on published a short biography in a journal that Lu Xun had read over first. He is better known for his collection of essays Ro Jin no inshō 魯迅の印象 (Impressions of Lu Xun) (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1970), 326 pp., an expanded version of the original 1948 edition. Oda Takeo’s work was titled Ro Jin den 魯迅傳 (Biography of Lu Xun) (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1941) and had several Chinese translations.

9. This term could also be translated as a turn of mind, a transformation, recovery, or redemption. Li Dongmu 李冬木 translates kaishin with the Christian term “conversion,” with which I would not agree, as conversion refers to moving over to a different religion or ideology. See Sun Ge, ed., Jindai de chaoke 近代的超克 (Overcoming modernity) (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2007), p. 45, n. 1.

10. Ro Jin (1961), p. 71; Zenshū 1:61.

11. The title of the book, which in Chinese carries the connotation of “Lu Xun refuted,” brought the author to grief after 1949, especially during the Cultural Revolution. But Lu Xun himself read over the manuscript for Li in 1935, correcting some of the dates of his writings and factual errors; so, in a sense, it was published with Lu Xun’s imprimatur. After 1978 Li was offered the chance to publish a revised version by a major publishing house, but he responded that he would prefer to let the book stand as it is.

12. Ro Jin (1961), p. 46; Zenshū 1:39.

13. Ro Jin (1961), p. 47; Zenshū 1:40.

14. Maruyama Noboru, “Lu Xun in Japan,” in Leo Ou-fan Lee, ed. Lu Xun and His Legacy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p. 230.

15. Ro Jin (1961), p. 160.

16. Ro Jin (1961), pp. 164–5.

17. Ro Jin (1961), p. 83.

18. Ro Jin (1961), p. 112. That translation was lost in the fire that consumed the Commercial Press building after the Japanese bombing in 1932.

19. Ro Jin (1961), p. 178, endnote 9.

20. See Morohashi Tetsuji 諸橋轍次, Dai Kan-Wa jiten 大漢和辭典 (Great Sino-Japanese dictionary) (Tokyo: Taishūkan shoten, 1984), 3:54.

21. See Ro Jin, chapter 2 “Shisō no keisei” 思想の形成 (The formation of his thought), part 1, in Ro Jin (1961) pp. 55–65; Zenshū 1:46

22. On August 16, 1954 a student newspaper at Tokyo University (Tokyo Daigaku gakusei shinbun東京大學學生新聞) published an interview with Takeuchi titled Tenkō wo meguru mondai 転向をめぐる問題 (Concerning the question of conversion [tenkō]), in which Takeuchi (1954) links the term kaishin to St Paul’s conversion to Christianity: “Kaishin (conversion) ‘Paul changed to believe in the Christian religion.’” Here the English term “conversion” appears in katakana in parentheses. A question of the possibility of confusion of terms arises here, however, as tenkō, the subject of the interview, is normally translated as “conversion.” Tenkō 転向 (lit. “a change of direction”) is an historical term indicating the renunciation of Marxism by Japanese intellectuals, who were “persuaded” to go over to the imperial government’s side during the War.

23. Ro Jin (1961), p. 97

24. Li Xinfeng李心峰 trans., Lu Xun 魯迅 (Ro Jin) (Hangzhou: Zhejiang Wenyi Chubanshe, 1986), p. 83.

25. The entire book is included in Sun Ge 孫歌, ed. Jindai de chaoke 近代的超克 (Overcoming modernity) (Beijing: Sanlian, 2005/2007), p. 80.

26. Here Takeuchi uses the borrowed word kosumo コスモ (cosmos), meaning “universe.”

27. Li Xinfeng, trans. Lu Xun (1986), p. 105.

28. Jindai de chaoke (2007), p. 101.