In 1937, after the start of the All-out War of Resistance, Peiping was occupied by the Japanese. Both the literati and patriots quickly went south to organize anti-Japanese resistance to save the country, but Lu Xun's brother Zhou Zuoren chose to stay in Beiping at this time.
In the spring of 1938, Zhou Zuoren also participated in the "Symposium on the Construction of Chinese Culture" held by the Japanese. After that, the whole country was in an uproar.
Zhou Zuoren and Lu Xun
In order to persuade Zhou Zuoren, who had traitorous tendencies, to turn back, Mao Dun, Yu Dafu, Ding Ling, Lao She, and seventeen other writers jointly issued an open letter exhorting Zhou Zuoren to "leave Pingping (Beiping) quickly and come south in the middle of the road to participate in the work of resisting the enemy and saving the country." In order to urge Zhou Zuoren to go south, Ye Gongchao risked his life to return to Beiping. At this time, Hu Shi, who was in England, did not go far to write a letter to persuade Zhou Zuoren to "fly south with a staff"...
But in the end, Zhou Zuoren still chose to stay in Beiping.
Seeing that Zhou Zuoren had become a traitor, the people who had worshipped him in the past were anxious, and his nephew Zhou Fengsan and several patriots planned a method of "destroying his flesh to prevent him from betraying the country."
This kind of thinking, which seems extreme today, was perfectly normal in the era of the national anti-Japanese resistance.
At the end of 1938, seeing that Zhou Zuoren not only had not left Peiping for a long time, but also agreed to go to the Japanese puppet government to serve as an education supervisor, the "Anti-Japanese Murder and Traitor Group" sent Li Rupeng to Peking University on a special trip, and he confronted the "Yanjing Group" Fan Xu and said:
"I bring an order from Shangfeng that there is a professor in your academy, one of the leading figures in China's educational circles, who has a profound influence on the people, who has agreed to go to the Japanese puppet government as the inspector of education, and this move has far-reaching effects, because people have great respect for him, believe in his judgment, and people like him who decide to cooperate with the enemy are more harmful than any amount of Japanese propaganda, and he must be eliminated before he can publicly declare his intentions."
Immediately after that, there was the "assassination incident" that people still talk about.
Zhou Zuoren
One day, when Zhou Zuoren and Shen Qiwu, a professor of literature in Peking University, were chatting in the living room, the outside newspaper said that there were guests visiting, or two students. As soon as Zhou Zuoren heard this, he let them in.
After the two entered the house, Zhou Zuoren got up and introduced, "I am Zhou Zuoren", and as soon as his voice dropped, the person walking in front of him took out a pistol and shot at him. Shen Qi stood up subconsciously without seeing it, and the man quickly fired a shot at him. After seeing Shen Qi fall to the ground without being shot, the people who came immediately left.
In this incident, Zhou Zuoren was not injured because of the covering on his body, and although Shen Qiwu was hit, he was not too badly injured. The main reason why both of them escaped the disaster was that the shooter used a small pistol, which was not very lethal.
But this incident really frightened Zhou Zuoren, and he began to realize that it was almost impossible for him to live in seclusion in Beiping. This cannot be because not only the Japanese will not let it, but even the Chinese will not let it.
Therefore, more than ten days after the assassination, Zhou Zuoren, in order to seek refuge from the Japanese, simply assumed the post of director of the pseudo-Peking University Library, and from then on, his path of traitors was out of control.
In 1939, Zhou Zuoren was appointed professor of the puppet Peking University and dean of the pseudo-University School of Literature; in January 1941, Zhou Zuoren was promoted to a member of the pseudo-North China Political Affairs Committee, a standing committee member, and a superintendent of the pseudo-Education General Administration, and visited Japan as a superintendent; in May 1942, in order to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the pseudo-"Manchurian Empire", he accompanied Wang Jingwei on a visit to Manchuria; in the same month, he went to Nanjing to participate in the celebration of Wang Jingwei's sixtieth birthday; in September, the pseudo-North China Writers Association was established, and Zhou Zuoren served as the chairman of the association.
During the period of hostility and hypocrisy, Zhou Zuoren's raw pen wrote many articles beautifying traitors and invaders, and he even wrote a pen to publicize "co-prosperity in East Asia."
After Zhou Zuoren became a "cultural traitor," countless people felt bitter about it, mainly for three reasons: First, Zhou Zuoren was a professor at the highest institution of learning at that time, representing the top level of Chinese culture; second, because he was one of the representative figures of the May Fourth New Culture Movement; and third, because he was also the younger brother of Lu Xun, who "woke up countless sleeping Chinese with his pen."
Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren and others took a group photo
In other words, in the eyes of the world: Zhou Zuoren is the most undeserved and least likely person to become a traitor.
Unable to accept the fact that Zhou Zuoren had committed a traitor, one day in March 1941, Zhou Fengsan, a nephew of Zhou Zuoren who was only 19 years old, actually pointed a gun at himself and resolutely pulled the trigger in front of him.
Zhou Fengsan's death did not awaken Zhou Zuoren's conscience, and after his death, Zhou Zuoren still frequently served the common prosperity of Japan's Greater East Asia. He shows that not only does he not feel the slightest guilt over his nephew's death, but he also finds him somewhat unreasonable.
After the Zhou Fengsan incident, the world determined that being a cultural traitor was inevitable for Zhou Zuoren. Because: he doesn't feel that being a traitor is a "bad" thing at all, or he doesn't feel that he is doing a "traitor" at all.
Zhou Zuo and Lu Xun were brothers of the same father and mother, so why was the difference between the two so great? The answer, I'm afraid, goes back to the beginning.
Zhou Zuoren was the second young master of the Zhou family, and when he was born, the Zhou family had already fallen into the middle of the road. Later, after his father's death, everything in the family was borne by his brother Lu Xun, and even the tuition and living expenses for school were all handled by Lu Xun.
As the second eldest in the family, he is neither the largest nor the smallest, naturally he is one who is rarely taken care of, if it is not excellent writing, he is likely to be the most inconspicuous one in the whole Zhou family.
It is also because he has always been the "second oldest of the millennium", plus Lu Xun has taken care of him since he was a child, so he does not have to bear any responsibility for anything when he urinates. After a long time, he naturally slowly became a lord without opinion.
After arriving in Japan, he had a relationship with the family's nanny, Hata Nobuko, and married him. This made his life in Japan extraordinarily comfortable, naturally, in terms of integrating into Japanese culture and so on, he was much more in-depth and thorough than Lu Xun, who also studied in Japan.
In 1919, after Lu Xun bought a house out of his own pocket in Beijing, he took over the Zhou Zuoren family. At that time, in addition to Zhou Zuo and his wife Yu TaiXinzi, who lived with Lu Xun in Badaowan, there were also Yu Taixinzi's family and even her sister.
This meant that when he returned home, he was also surrounded by the Japanese.
Nobuko Hata
It is no wonder that after Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren broke off their friendship because of Yu Taixinzi's affair, Lu Xun said that "there is only one Chinese in Badaowan". Because after Lu Xun and Juan and his mother moved away, the entire Badaowan was really all Japanese except Zhou Zuoren.
After Lu Xun left, Zhou Zuoren, who had never had an opinion, was naturally more "not the master".
Zhou Zuoren's lack of assertive personality also led to his different views on many issues from his bloody brother Lu Xun. As early as more than twenty years ago when he became a cultural traitor, Zhou Zuoren once wrote about his fundamental attitude toward the salvation and survival of the nation and the country in two articles, "Yue Fei and Qin Juniper" and "On the Worship of Heroes".
In these two articles, he fully supported the Southern Song and Jin dynasties' peace and war ideas, and at the same time, he completely denied Yue Fei's main battle as loyalty. Naturally, he also denied Qin Juniper's lordship and adultery, and for Wen Tianxiang's martyrdom, he frankly said that it was "meaningless at all", saying:
"The only advantage of Wen Tianxiang and others is that they have integrity, and the country is willing to die when it dies." This is a very admirable thing, we should show admiration for him, but we should not learn from him, nor can we be counted as our role models... This kind of death is of no benefit to the state and society. ”
Judging from these articles, it is not at all surprising that Zhou Zuoren later accepted Wang Jingwei's "Sino-Japanese Lord's Peace".
It was also based on this that when Zhou Zuoren was arrested after Japan's unconditional surrender in 1945, he felt that he was "wronged" to some extent.
On May 26, 1946, zhou Zuoren, after his arrest, was escorted to Nanjing. After his trial in the High Court, he was finally sentenced to fourteen years' imprisonment, ten years' deprivation of public power, and confiscation of all his property except for "living expenses for his family members at his discretion", for the crime of "conspiring with the enemy and attempting to rebel against his own country".
In the face of this judgment result, Zhou Zuoren even defended: "I am not convinced." And his reasoning was that what he did during his pseudo-post was either conducive to the war of resistance or had to be done as a last resort.
In fact, Zhou Zuoren's actions during his period as a puppet post caused great harm to the country, and if nothing else, the mere fact that he "hired Japanese as professors to change Chinese textbooks and promote enslavement education" during his term of office was enough to confirm his "crime of traitor."
Because Zhou Zuoren was dissatisfied with the verdict of the trial, and because Hu Shi, Jiang Menglin and other celebrities spoke for him, he was finally sentenced to 10 years in prison when his sentence was reinstated on December 9, 1947.
Zhou Zuoren and Yu Tai Nobuko
Since then, Zhou Zuoren has been imprisoned in Nanjing Tiger Bridge Prison.
On January 22, 1949, more than a year after being rehabilitated in prison, Lee Jong-jen took over as The President of the Republic of China, and political prisoners were pardoned in the air of peace talks between the Kuomintang and the Republic.
Zhou Zuoren was released from prison on January 26, 1949 because of this good luck, and after that, he took a train to the home of student You Bingxi in Shanghai. Soon after, he settled in Beijing with his family.
After the founding of New China, Zhou Zuoren, who had just gained his freedom, began to worry: What should he do next? Will the new regime deal with him because it has "lost" its footing?
Because of his inner uneasiness, he simply wrote a long letter to Zhou Enlai. In the letter, after he introduced his research field and achievements, Pen Feng turned to why he stayed in Peiping and did not follow the school south, he said:
"At that time, my mother was still alive, and the four wives of my brother-in-law, my daughter (who taught at the Northwest United University) and her three children were all in my home, plus my own family of fourteen, and I thought that if I ran to the rear and taught there for a few years, it was always empty talk, and it was better to do little by little for the school or students in the fall, but it was real."
The meaning of Zhou Zuoren's words could not be clearer: I did not go south at that time, not because I wanted to stay in Beiping as a traitor, but because I was thinking of saving the country with a curve!
After Zhou Enlai received the letter, he immediately conducted a relevant investigation, and the results of the investigation were: Zhou Zuoren did indeed do a lot of "real things" during his period of being a traitor, including helping the underground party at that time.
For example, Li Dazhao's daughter Li Yanhua once received help from Zhou Zuoren after joining the underground party with her husband. Zhou Zuoren, who was in a pseudo-post at that time, actually received them several times when he knew that the two were underground parties.
In addition, he also used his position to help release the underground party that was arrested for anti-Japanese resistance.
After understanding this layer, Zhou Enlai and the leaders' attitude toward Zhou Zuoren changed. At that time, it was the time of employment in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, and after learning that Zhou Zuoren knew Japanese and Greek, the leaders decided to entrust him with a heavy responsibility: responsible for translating Greek classical literature and Japanese classical literature.
Since then, Zhou Zuoren has lived up to his trust and devoted all his energy to the study of Japanese and Greek literature. In the more than ten years of research, he has handed over a large number of high-quality Chinese translations of Japanese literature and ancient Greek literature, such as "Greek Mythology", "The Tragedy of Euripides", the oldest surviving history book in Japan, "Ancient Chronicles", "Pillow Grass" and so on. These were all translated by him.
Zhou Zuoren's translation of Greek Mythology
I have to say that zhou zuoren in his later years was shining in new China.
According to historical records, during this period, Zhou Zuoren's salary level has not been low, and after serving as a special translator of the Beijing People's Literature Publishing House, his salary has risen even higher, and he can get 400 yuan a month.
However, because Zhou Zuoren's Japanese wife had always been accustomed to being generous, so during the Great Leap Forward, his income, even if it was high, was often unable to make ends meet. After Yuta Nobuko fell seriously ill, his family's financial situation was even more worrying.
During this time, the relationship between Zhou Zuoren and Yu Tai Nobuko was also very bad.
As early as July 1, 1960, Zhou Zuoren had described Yuta Nobuko in his diary, saying:
"The proposed work stopped because of unhappiness, and she seemed to be sick and had seizures."
What Zhou Zuoren calls "illness attacks" refers to the pathological situations that Yu Tai Nobuko often appears due to suspicion and so on. Opening Zhou Zuoren's diary in his later years, there were many cases about recording yu Tai Xinzi's "easy to do" and "crazy and easy to do", and every time at this time, Zhou Zuoren said: "Even unhappy", "and unhappy", "unhappy and unusual".
Zhou Zuoren also wrote in his diary: "I really don't know what to do", "Although he is sick, he destroys all his feelings, and he does not hesitate to break the boat, and the real 'devil' is also" Yunyun to vent his dissatisfaction with Yu Taixinzi's inability to contain.
This state of affairs continued until the death of Hata Nobuko in April 1962.
The first one on the right in the front row is Hata Nobuko
After the death of Hata Nobuko, Zhou Zuoren has been living alone. Soon, for various reasons, his salary was often suspended. Later, Zhou Zuoren, who could not make ends meet all day, had to live by selling antiques, calligraphy and paintings, and old books in his later years.
During that special revolution, Zhou Zuoren, a literati who had once "lost his footing", was not spared after all: a crazy crowd rushed into his home, and after his property was confiscated, he was also thrown into a shed that leaked on all sides, and this shed was even too small to let people get up and walk.
The year he was driven into the shed, Zhou Zuoren was 80 years old, and because of his old age and physical weakness and malnutrition, his body quickly collapsed. Because of his humiliation, Zhou Zuoren twice wrote to the police station to request "euthanasia" on sleeping pills, but in the end, he failed to do so.
From Zhou Zuoren's quest for "euthanasia", it can be seen that Zhou Zuoren, who was lonely and helpless in his later years and forced to live in a shed, had an extremely difficult life.
In 1967, Zhou Zuoren, who was detained in solitude, died of a sudden illness when he went to the ground to relieve his hands, at the age of 82.
In his later years, Zhou Zuoren
It is a pity that as a great literary hero with the same name as Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren did not cause a single reaction from the outside world after his death. Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren researcher Qian Liqun said when describing the scene when Zhou Zuoren died:
"No one said goodbye to him except his family.".
And this "family" who came to say goodbye did not include his nephew, Zhou Haiying, the son of Lu Xun.
After Zhou Zuoren's death, someone specially informed Zhou Haiying and invited him to come to the funeral, but Zhou Haiying refused to attend after receiving bad news.
Such an ending, more or less, as the old monk who gave Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren the name of the Law in the past, was: "The Qiming of the East (the name of the Zhou Zuoren) and the Name of the West Changgeng (the name of Lu Xun), the two stars will never meet!" ”
Today, when people talk about Lu Xun, they are full of respect, and Zhou Zuoren is full of contempt. Such a very different ending, it is really amazing!