In October 2017, Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House launched the only full translation of the Japanese literary masterpiece "The Legend of Chinese the Eight Dogs". "The Legend of the Eight Dogs" is a super long novel written by the famous Japanese novelist Qu Ting Maqin in 28 years, which integrates history, chivalry, and gods and demons, with a handsome and majestic conception and a gorgeous and magnificent article, which can be called a masterpiece of Japanese samurai literature, and it is also a rare epic masterpiece in the history of Japanese literature, which still has a far-reaching influence. If "The Tale of Genji" is equivalent to Japan's "Dream of the Red Chamber", then "The Legend of the Eight Dogs" is equivalent to Japan's "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" + "Water Margin" + "Journey to the West".
The Biography of the Eight Dogs (all 7 volumes) [Japanese] by Qu Ting MaQin, translated by Li Shuguo, published by Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House in October 2017
Set in the Sengoku period of Japan, the Tale of the Eight Dogs is based on a historical fact of the Daimyō Rimi family, borrows the name of "Satomi Hachigushi" from the Barnyard History, arranges eight samurai with inuyasha characters as the central characters, and designs the birth, encounter, separation, and reunion of the Eight Inuyasha. At the end of the Muromachi period in Japan, Yoshishi Tsimi, a samurai who broke through during the Battle of Yuki castle, fled to Anbo to establish the state. When the city was about to fall after being attacked by a neighboring country, Yishi's dog, Yafang, came to the enemy to turn the enemy into a disaster, and in order to fulfill his promise, Yishi married his daughter Fuji to Hachifu. When Fu Ji was pregnant by canine qi, in order to express her innocence, a cloud of white qi flew out of her abdomen and scattered in all directions, and from then on, the eight dog warriors who held eight spiritual pearls of benevolence, righteousness, etiquette, wisdom, loyalty, faith, filial piety, and compassion were born. True and false village rain pills, Fangliuge duels, revenge against Niu lou, Gengshen Mountain Demon Cat, pro-soldier Wei Fuhu... The majestic, whimsical legend begins. Real characters such as the Emperor, shogun, Ashikaga clan, Uesugi clan, Takeda clan, Nagao clan, hojo clan and other real characters appear one after another, and historical celebrities such as Ichigo monk also make cameo appearances, and the legendary nature of the story is integrated with the authenticity of history. Ma Qin first expressed the ideas of "persuading the good to punish the evil" and "honoring the king and destroying the king" in the "Biography of the Eight Dogs". Prior to this, no one in Japan had discussed the relationship between the emperor and the shogunate since the Sengoku period, expressing the demand for social change.
Yukio Mishima was highly regarded by Maqin, and he adapted his novel "Bow Moon Talk" into a Kabuki script. Ryunosuke Wasagawa, a talented Japanese writer who has loved to read "The Legend of the Eight Dogs" since he was a teenager, took Ma Qin as the protagonist and the spokesperson for his own literary concept, and created the short story "Drama Samadhi" to pay tribute to this predecessor novelist. "The Legend of the Eight Dogs" is also a super IP of Japanese culture, with numerous adaptations and derivative literary works, fan fiction, movies, TV series, stage plays, anime, and games.
Stills from InuYasha
Japanese manga artist Akira Toriyama once said that his manga "Dragon Ball" was a mixture of two stories: China's "Journey to the West" and Japan's "Eight Dogs", and the idea of collecting Dragon Balls actually came from "Eight Dogs". The super popular manga "InuYasha" created by manga artist Rumiko Takahashi was greatly influenced by the "Eight Inuyasha" in various details, and the concept of the eight spirit beads of "Ren yi Li Zhi Zhi Zhongxin Filial Piety" in "Eight Dogs" is the prototype of the "Jade of the Four Souls" in "InuYasha". In addition, well-known Japanese actors Hiroyuki Sanada, Hideaki Takizawa and Kenta Yamazaki have all starred in movies, TV series and stage plays of the same name.
According to Wu Jianwen of Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House, each volume of the new edition of "The Legend of the Eight Dogs" includes 2 high-definition ukiyo-e illustrations of the "Biography of the Eight Dogs", which are from the hands of Japanese ukiyo-e masters such as Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Utagawa Yoshihide, Tsukioka Yoshinen, Andyohara Kuniyō and others. Translator Li Shuguo, is a famous Translator of Japanese Classical Literature, who has been engaged in the study of Japanese classical literature for many years, and the translation of "The Legend of the Eight Dogs" is currently the only Chinese full translation, elegant and beautiful. At this launch, the translation has been comprehensively revised, and the repertoire text has been added according to the original Japanese version, making the translation more perfect.
"The Legend of the Eight Dogs" Color Illustration (YoshiyukiKaku Yoshio, Tsukioka Yoshinori painting)
In the preface to "The Legend of the Eight Dogs", the translator Li Shuguo introduced the life and creative experience of Quting Maqin, revealing the internal connection between the book and "Water Margin", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "Journey to the West". Quting Maqin blended Confucian morality and Buddhist cause and effect to establish a view of the novel marked by persuasiveism. Through comparative reading, Chinese readers can clearly see the presentation of classical literary elements such as the theme of persuasion and punishment, the subtle technique, the pattern of chapter return, and even the Ming and Qing vernacular in Japanese literature. The original title of the preface was "The Crown of Edo Novels, the Crystallization of Chinese and Japanese Culture", thanks to the authorization of Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House.
Wen 丨 Plum tree fruit
The Tale of the Eight Dogs, full name "The Tale of the Eight Dogs in Minami Tsuruza", is a masterpiece of Japanese Edo literature and a rare long work in the history of Japanese literature, which still has a far-reaching influence. It has been compared by Japanese scholars to Victor Hugo's "Les Misérables", Tolstoy's "War and Peace" and Cao Xueqin's "Dream of the Red Chamber". In 1990, the Japanese Iwanami Bookstore and the Japanese translation of "Dream of the Red Chamber" simultaneously launched a new version of the ten-volume "Tale of the Eight Dogs", calling these two books two legendary novels in China and Japan.
Statue of The Author Qu Ting Ma Qin (Katsushika Hokusai Painting)
This work was written by the famous Edo period novelist Qu Ting Ma Qin (1767-1848), from the eleventh year of culture (1814) to the thirteenth year of Tenpo (1842), which took twenty-eight years to write. Ma Qin's original surname was Takizawa, Quting is his pen name taken by the "Baling Quting" allusion in China, and there is also another Yuyin, which is also one of his common pen names. Ma Qin is a prolific writer, reading more than forty novels in this category alone, and "The Legend of the Eight Dogs" is undoubtedly a masterpiece, and has been warmly welcomed by readers since its publication. In the Tan Hai of Yida Hyakukawa (号学海), published in 1883, the Biography of the Eight Dogs was praised as follows: "The words are exquisite, the citations are exquisite, and Hai Nei does not read ma Qin's book, and the "Tale of the Eight Dogs" is the most written." Book-dwelling carvers, day after day, heeled his door, waiting for a piece of paper to be engraved into a piece of paper, a piece of paper into an engraved one, ten thousand books for sale, far away from the view. (At that time, the market was in full swing, and the witnesses who smelled it were all night clouds.) Three capitals and seven roads, border seclusion, princes and nobles, scholars and female farmers and merchants, Dao novels must call "The Legend of the Eight Dogs" a giant. "The legend of the Eight Dogs" is so popular because of its magnificent structure, magnificent and thrilling plot, as well as magnificent and colorful text and profound content, coupled with illustrations and embroidery from the hands of famous contemporary painters, in a unique graphic and elegant popular form, appeared in the literary circles at the end of Edo, won the praise of readers, and was known as the crown of Edo novels.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, in the Edo literary circles, there was a "Water Margin Fever" that imitated the adaptation of "Water Margin". During this period, there were many adaptations of Water Margin's reading novels. Ma Qin had read Ayazu Kenbe's "The Tale of the Water Margin of the Dynasty" and was very inspired, so he wanted to write a novel that could be compared with Chinese novels such as "Water Margin", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Journey to the West" and so on, and "The Legend of the Eight Dogs" was completed under his wish. In his appendix to the ninth series of the Tale of the Eight Dogs, he said that the number of one hundred and eight good men in the Water Margin is too much, while the number of only four masters and apprentices in journey to the West is too small; the former ends with a tiger's head and a snake's tail, and the latter repeats it more. In addition to the Eight Dogs, the "Tale of the Eight Dogs" he created, plus the Eight Dogs Woman, the Father and Son of the Marquis of Satomi, and the Grand Master, the protagonist is a total of nineteen, and he believes that there are neither more nor less. However, there are more than 400 people in the scene, and the scale of the event is not small in the 60 years of the late Tsumumachi period, centered on the nearby of Omi and The Heado, involving Echigo, Shinshu and even Kyoto. In the title of the book "The Legend of the Eight Dogs in Nanzong Limi", Nan is always a place name, which is the southern part of the present-day Fangzong Peninsula, Andi is the surname of the princes, and the eight dogs are the eight samurai with the character of indignation in their surnames. Set in the Sengoku period of the late Ashikaga period, the book is based on the historical facts of Yoshishi's escape from Yuki castle to Anbo during the Kagi Rebellion, and finally pacified Embaya and bred there, and borrows the name of the "Satomi Hagushi" in the Barnyard History, arranges eight heroic samurai as the central characters, and designs them with the birth of these eight inuyasha and their encounters and separations and reunions. It mentions some real people and intersperses some historical facts, but most of them are fictional. Ma Qin's original design did not seem to be so large, but in the process of writing for many years, it continued to add branches and leaves, extend and improve, and finally wrote a chapter novel of two million words and one hundred and eighty times.
The wedge at the beginning of this book is obviously a follow-up to the plot of the first time "Water Margin" in which "Lieutenant Hong mistakenly walked the demon". However, Ma Qin cites a large number of historical facts as the background, and even a plot of Fu Ji and Bafang also quotes the story of Gao Xin's gift of a young girl to a livestock dog in the Book of Later Han and the Book of Search for God. This paragraph alone is perfunctory thirteen times, and its careful laying out design sets a dense structure and cause and effect for the unfolding of the story. Traces of Water Margin can be seen everywhere in the work, but they are not so obvious. It is not a whole section, a raw and rigid set, but it is broken open and crushed and interspersed in it, neither showing the mountain nor dew, so that it becomes one. If you compare it carefully, you will find that many plots such as Huangnigang and Erlongshan, selling treasure swords, robbing the law field, and Jingyang Gang Wusong fighting tigers have been transplanted into this work. Another example is the mother worm, Lu Zhishen and many other images, which also seem to be found in the book, but they are plausible, not exactly the same, at first glance it seems that there is no difference, and here the author's superb adaptation skills are shown. In its sequel, that is, after the 131st, many of the storylines in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms were transplanted, such as the fact that the guards were detained in Kyoto, just like Guan Yunchangzhi was trapped in Cao Camp. Guan Lingzhengyuan gave him gold and silver beauties, and he did not accept it, as long as he had a famous horse for the purpose of returning to the Eastern Kingdom. Finally, on the condition of letting him return to China, he went to fight the tiger. On the way back to China on a single ride, Yu Guan Pass was blocked, and Zhengyuan chased after him. These plots are all based on the story of Guan Yunchang in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. In the Battle of Miura with Kamakura and kamakura, many scenes in the Battle of Chibi were followed, such as the borrowing of arrows by grass boats, the skillful offering of serials, the theft of books by Jiang Gan, the borrowing of wind in Nanping, etc., all of which were interspersed with snare, and the author adapted and created with his superb and ingenious techniques, not only changing his appearance, but also truly reaching the level of rebirth, worthy of being a masterpiece in the adapted novel.
Regarding the creative ideas of this great work, Ma Qin said in the preface to the seventh series: "Although barnyard history is not beneficial, but it is harmless to read it to women and children by persuasion and punishment." This is the creative attitude and thought that he has always adhered to. He also evaluated "Water Margin" from the point of view of persuasiveism. He said: "Most of the one hundred and eight righteous soldiers in Liangshan were killed, and in the end Song Jiang and Li Kui also took poison to death, although the officials would feel regret, but this was the result of persuasion and punishment, and this tragic end was the author's intention." He admired the creation of "Water Margin" and considered it a giant in fiction, an unparalleled masterpiece in ancient and modern times. However, he believes that "Water Margin" does not consider persuasion and punishment enough, which is its biggest drawback. Japan also has no shortage of short works of persuasion and punishment in ancient stories, but his idea of persuasion and punishment seems to be more influenced by Chinese novels such as "Three Words" and "Two Beats", and is very prominent in his works. The eight heroic figures he created in "The Legend of the Eight Dogs" can be said to be the embodiment of benevolence and morality, and their every move is morally righteous. Through their struggle against evil, they finally defeated evil, and in the form of novels, they extolled the moral spirit of Confucianism, so that women and children who had not read the books of the saints could be educated, that is, entertained and educated. His approach is to directly oppose the good guys and the bad guys, and to pique the reader's interest in the development of plot entanglements. The result is that the bad people perish, the good people prosper, and the reader can go to evil and promote good, which is the author's creative intention. But according to the facts, it is often not necessary that good people will necessarily get good results, and evil people must get bad rewards. For example, Fu Ji was originally a good person but did not get good rewards, which was contrary to the intention of persuasion and punishment. Therefore, it is supplemented by the Buddhist view of cause and effect, saying that this is the misfortune suffered by Yuzi's work, and finally Yuzi received the deserved retribution and resolved this contradiction. For example, if Yoshishi was born because of the jokes of the eight dogs, with the help of the dogs, the Rimi family was able to prosper, and was blessed by the misfortune? Even if the concept of transformation with the misfortune of Theon's lost horse is complementary to it, his dissuasive doctrine can justify itself.
Ma Qin believes that the novel is a plaything for the reader to enjoy, and he says in the preface to the first series: "Because the novel is a plaything, it is necessary to use flowery rhetoric, or add some colloquial slang, to make it interesting and perfunctory." From this we can know that since the purpose of his writing is to entertain and educate, he cannot make the novel completely trapped in preaching, but must be alluded to in pleasure. Therefore, in the novel, some strange plots of gods are mixed in, which is nothing more than to achieve the effect of persuasion and punishment. He knew very well that god's strange content would naturally arouse the reader's interest. Therefore, he believes that in some places it is absurd, but also out of necessity. To achieve this, the text should be easy to understand and smooth and pleasant. Therefore, just like the Chinese Six Dynasties, Four-Six Row Couplets, many of them are written with five-seven-tone or seven-five-tone rhymes. Among them, he is good at using a pun on the pretext of borrowing homophones, and making it deliberate, giving full play to and using traditional techniques in ancient opera and poetry. However, due to the language barrier and the translator's clumsiness, it is a great pity that it has not been fully expressed in the translation. Secondly, Ma Qin also tried his best to model China's Zhanghui novels in the format of the novel, such as the title of each time is basically published according to the original words of the author. Another example is the beginning and the end of the but said, words, words and gossip, words divided into two ends, and listen to the next decomposition, etc., are all copied from the Chinese Zhanghui novel as it is. In addition, some words commonly used in Ming and Qing vernacular novels, such as: Shade, this, this thing, Dengshi, the present, etc., have also moved into the Legend of the Eight Dogs. He was afraid that the reader would not understand it, so he put a pseudonym on the side note of the word. On this point he said: "The sixth and seventh series copied the sayings of Tangshan in the humble text, and annotated them under false names, so that they could know their meaning. Although it seems superfluous, Shu Ji can learn nothing about the world, and wants to read the tangshan barnyard history of the life of the hoof. This is the author's kindness. "The author has a rich imagination and profound knowledge, and the historical background and geographical environment he designs are carefully examined. Many of the allusions cited in the text, especially many of the Chinese allusions, fully demonstrate his profound knowledge and profound attainments in Chinese literature, which is truly breathtaking. In the ancient stories of our country, when a generation of Allah appeared, it must be accompanied by a dragon, and Ma Qin also quoted this plot, so the first exposition of the dragon in the "Ji Ji's Testament to the Death Festival, the White Dragon Returns to the South", although from the perspective of the structure of the novel, it seems to be a little cumbersome, not without the feeling of snake feet, but this is also out of his examination habits, want to show off his talents, and make the general writer feel beyond his reach.
"The Legend of the Eight Dogs" Color Illustration (Mototsuka-san Michi Festival Fire Escape, Utagawa Kuniyoshi painting)
Another feature of Ma Qin's novels is that they summarize and use many of the creation methods of China's barnyard history novels. He summarized it as the seven principles of barnyard history, namely: subject and guest, volt line, lining, care, opposition, saving pen, and concealment. In the creation of "The Legend of the Eight Dogs", he focused on the subtle technique. Subtle is obscure, not to directly say the author's true intentions, but to let the reader ponder and reminisce; perhaps the reader can't think through for a while, then it has to be left to find Zhiyin in the future. There are subtleties in the design of the plot, and there are also subtleties in the moral of the entire work, that is, a proposition, or a name, almost all contain subtleties. For example, in the opening paragraph of the wedge, he said that if limi saw the curse of no joke, how could there be the blessing of destroying Anxi and becoming the lord of an house? Marrying his beloved daughter to a dog is a curse, but in one fell swoop, eight dogs appeared and became a good general who assisted Saemi, just like the lost horse of Saion. He called this doctrine the reclining, which is what Lao Tzu said: "Where misfortunes and blessings depend; where blessings and misfortunes lie, where blessings and misfortunes lie." "Blessings and woes can be transformed into each other, as in the surface of things. It is according to this guiding idea that he designed the entire structure. In addition, in the name of the character, it can also be used to indicate his future misfortune. Such examples are also common in our country's barnyard history novels. For example, in the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", Feng Chi died in Luofengpo, which is considered to be a crime of truth and reality. Ma Qin followed this plot, and in the second episode, he designed mitsuhiro's death by arrow in The Fallen FeatherOka (the Japanese word for "Falling Feather" and "Falling Horse"). He said that there are also many such subtleties in the "Water Margin", but Tangshan's literati did not comment on this in detail, so they failed to find this subtle technique. For example, Lu Junyi finally fell into the water and died because of the name of Junyi, which was to remove the bird character next to the bird character and replace it with the human character. It is a pheasant that often drowns because of its love for its own shadow. There is also his servant Yan Qing, the prodigal son, who has a cloud in the "Naturalist": "People who eat swallow meat must not enter the water, they will be eaten by dragons." Lu Junyi's drowning also seems to be related to the use of Yan Qing as a servant. Although these may seem far-fetched, Ma Qin makes extensive use of this technique. For example, the name Fu Ji was born in Sanfu, so it was named Fu Ji, and later became the wife of the eight houses, does the word Fu Ji mean "human dog"? Another example is the name Bafang, because it has eight black and white spots on its body, so it is called Bafang (fang has a pinch of meaning), and later it can be understood as a corpse flying in all directions. There are many such names, although it is similar to a kind of intellectual game, but this ingenious creation also adds a new interest to the novel. He called this technique the self-interpretation of the self, that is, the meaning of the name and reality, through which the cause and effect of the person can also be implied.
The moral of a work is also subtle, which he calls "the deep meaning of the text". Ma Qin, who pays attention to the use of subtle techniques, wrote this huge work, so what is its moral? Yi Tian Xuehai believes that this novel is an allusion to the king's rebuke. From the very beginning of this book, it is the elimination of the rebel Yamashita Dingbao of the Emperor. After General Satomi pacified Ichigo, he first implemented the ren government, and then sent Inue's protégé Wei Ren to Kyoto to pay tribute to the king. After defeating the army of the two pipe leaders, he also entered the tribute to the capital to show his respect for the king. Even the surname of the Eight Dogs had to be given to the Kyoshi, which was rare in the Warring States period, so it was learned that his intention was to imply respect for the royal family. This inference lacks sufficient other evidence. Modern Japanese scholars, on the other hand, believe that this work was produced during the Ieki period of the eleventh shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate, which is a criticism and satire of the corrupt politics of this era. He adopted a subtle approach because directly satirizing contemporary politics would lead to penmanship. Therefore, he used the form of historical interpretation to push the era background to the era of Ashikaga Shogun at the end of Muromachi, and alluded to Tokugawa Ieki with Ashikaga Yoshimasa. In China's ancient literature, there is a saying that he wrote a book of indignation, and In the preface of Li Zhen of the "Zhongyi Water Margin", it is said that the "Water Margin" is a work of anger, shi and Luo Ergong are in the Yuan and the heart is in the Song, although they were born in the Yuan Dynasty, they are really angry about the Song Dynasty, so the destruction of the Liao and the destruction of Fang La are all for the purpose of venting anger. Ma Qin was deeply influenced by the Water Margin, so it seems that he also seemed to have absorbed the technique that Li Zhen said. Tokugawa Ieyasu ruled for many years, and after retiring, he still held the real power of the shogunate, and was a generation of arrogant and lavish shoguns. There were more than forty people in its side chamber, fifty-five children, and more than a thousand catties of sugar a day in the court alone, which alone was enough to explain the degree of its arrogance. The shogunate's fiscal deficit exceeded 500,000 taels a year, and the whole country faced a systemic crisis. During the fifty years of Yonechi's reign, there were many uprisings among the people, of which the rebellion of Ōishiwaira hachirō, which occurred during the Tenho period, was the most representative. Ōshio Heihachirō was a practical Yangming scholar who expressed deep sympathy for the suffering of the peasants as a result of the severe famine of Tenpo and the excessive taxation and exploitation of labor. He advocated that the peasants should be treated with light taxes and benevolent government. The peasant revolt under his leadership was aimed at abolishing the corrupt politics practiced by corrupt bureaucrats represented by the town (the head of the local government), which bore some resemblance to the banner of "for the Heavenly Path" played by the liangshan leaders such as Chao Gai and Song Jiang. The Great Salt Rebellion was the inevitable result of the corrupt politics of the rulers. Ma Qin said, "There will be demons when the kingdom will perish", which is why the demon tiger appeared, which is a precursor to the decline of the Ashikaga clan. Mr. Takeshi Tokuda, a modern comparativeist of Chinese and Japanese literature, believes that Ma Qin used a subtle technique to allude to the big salt that launched the riot with a demon tiger. The Demon Tiger was a precursor to the demise of the Ashikaga clan, and the Great Salt Rebellion was a wake-up call for those in power. The demon tiger was eventually shot to death by Inuyasha, and Daiyan was finally suppressed. In his view, the perpetrators of the disturbance must be punished as they deserve, otherwise they will not be enough to achieve the purpose of persuasion and punishment. He took the same view of Water Margin. He believes that if the Water Margin only has the first seventy times and no last fifty times, the one hundred and eight good men in Liangshan are only robbers who occupy the mountain, not good people. After accepting the invitation, he served the imperial court before he could be called loyal. In the end, they were framed by the traitors, and most of them were destroyed, but they deserved retribution for the evil deeds of thieves.
Ma Qin fused the Confucian concept of morality with the Buddhist concept of cause and effect, established a concept of fiction marked by persuasiveism, and wrote this legendary novel with strong romantic overtones. Like Shi and Ergong Luo, he was unable to write works that transcended time and space because of the limitations of history. In particular, Japan is a country with no history of armed revolution, where not only is there no history of the victory of the peasant revolution, but even the situation in Liangshan has never emerged. Therefore, although "Water Margin" and "The Legend of the Eight Dogs" have some similarities, the specific content is obviously different. The ending of "Water Margin" is that Song Jiang and others accept Zhao An and are framed to death, while the ending of "Eight Dogs" is that the eight dogs meet the general with the attendant Ren Junli and get a reunion. Some people think that this is Ma Qin's ideal world. He practiced Confucianism, opposed "committing troublemakers", and only expected the emergence of a benevolent monarch for the corrupt politics he faced, which was General Rimi. The Eight Dogs are all good people, and the good people are all unfortunate, all because of the harm of the servants who are in charge of the family, and these little evils are solved one by one through the revenge of the Eight Dogs, and the fundamental problem is the stewards who spoil the lords. Therefore, in the second part of the one hundred and thirty-one times, the battle against the guan leader was arranged, and through this battle, the general Satomi of Shi Renzheng was victorious, so that the evil could be expelled, the good people could gain power, and the author's ideal world was realized, which was probably the biggest hidden secret of Ma Qin, and it was also the moral of this novel.
"The Legend of the Eight Dogs" Eight Dogs Family Emblem Ring Lining
The Tale of the Eight Dogs was produced about a hundred years ago in the early nineteenth century, due to the limitations of the times, such as from the perspective of modern literature. Naturally, many shortcomings can be picky. As far as its main body is concerned, due to the continuous perfunctory extension in the twenty-eight years of writing, since the eighth series, there is a great snowball in the design of the chapter, which shows that its structure is not very rigorous. In terms of ideological content, in addition to propagating the Confucian concept of morality and the Buddhist concept of causality, the idea of persuasion and punishment centered on it is also mixed with certain grotesques and superstitions, which can be evaluated historically. In the text narrative, although Ma Qin has made great efforts to make careful words and sentences and strive for excellence, it seems to be too lengthy due to excessive detail and perfection. In terms of character description, because he wanted to write the eight dogs as a perfect person who embodied the eight elements of benevolence and righteousness, he did not write as vividly as many characters in "Water Margin", but felt that the bad guys were written very vividly. In terms of storyline, it is always the good people who are saved, and the bad people who suffer in the end, which is very different from modern novels. In short, the great work "The Legend of the Eight Dogs" is not flawless, but it is not hidden, it is undoubtedly an immortal masterpiece in the history of Japanese literature.
Novels that punish evil and persuade good, whether in Japan or In China, have existed since ancient times, not from Ma Qin, but they are not as important as Ma Qin. He said: Some of the permitted aspects of barnyard novels lie in persuasion and punishment. To punish those who are wrong and punish those who commit adultery. For more than twenty years, he has worked tirelessly to write and ink, that is, he wants to punish evil and persuade the good to educate those foolish women and children, and become a good raft for them to survive the confusion. Therefore, punishing evil and persuading good is undoubtedly the essence of Ma Qin's barnyard history novel. Times vary, and the standards of good and evil are naturally different. But in the struggle between truth, goodness and beauty and false evil and ugliness, people always hope that the former can defeat the latter, and even today it is not difficult to find traces of persuasion in dramas or novels.
The reason why this translation of "The Legend of the Eight Dogs" was introduced to Chinese readers is because this huge work is a representative Japanese novel created by imitating China's "Water Margin" and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", and not only can we see a lot of traces of imitation from its structure and content, but also quote a large number of Chinese story classics, which has a strong Chinese interest. It is a unique Japanese novel, which can be said to be the crystallization of Sino-Japanese cultural exchanges. We read it not only with great affection, but also with pride in the impact that our ancient literary works have had overseas. In addition, the Japanese people are good at transplanting foreign things to make them their own, and this spirit of learning that is introduced and digested is also a good reference for us. It not only comes from modern times, but has long been carried forward since ancient times, so it has continuously achieved fruitful results in various fields.