Article excerpt from Pinghu City Li Shutong Memorial Hall Wang Weijun
Li Shutong's appearance in "Huang Tianba"
In 1905, Li Shutong's mother Wang Shi died in the Caotang in the south of Shanghai, and after his mother's funeral, Li Shutong regained his mood and embarked on the road of his pursuit of hopes and dreams.
During the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War, China was forced to sign the Treaty of Maguan, which humiliated the country, and the intellectual elite who worried about the country and the people began to think about why the big country was defeated by the small country of Japan, and why Japan was rich and strong. So they turned their attention to Japan, hoping to find the answer to the problem and the way to save the country and the people.
At the end of the nineteenth century, Japan absorbed a large number of foreign new ideas and new cultures, introduced advanced Western science and technology and management methods, learned Western civilization, developed modern education, improved the level of national knowledge, and integrated with its own national culture, cultivated modern talents, and promoted the progress and development of society. However, China's feudal autocratic rule greatly constrained the thinking of the Chinese and hindered social progress and development, and progressive intellectuals and revolutionaries took the strong enemy as their teachers, eager to draw nourishment from the progress of Japan's Meiji Restoration, and went to Japan to study and explore new knowledge.
Li Shutong, who was determined to awaken the sleeping Chinese people with literature and art, like Sun Yat-sen, Huang Xing, Chen Duxiu, Chen Tianhua, Zou Rong, Qiu Jin, Lu Xun, and a large number of benevolent men and women, chose to study in Japan to seek his ideal road of saving the country and saving the people and the gate of the world.
Before leaving, Li Shutong wrote this "Golden Wisp Song", leaving the motherland and classmates behind, full of a strong fist to serve the country's pure heart: "Wearing hair and pretending to go wild." Mang Zhongyuan, twilight crows, a few fading willows. Who cleans up the broken mountains and rivers? The scattered westerly wind is still there, and it will cause people to lose weight. Line of pro-stream heavy breath, said acacia carved bone double red beans. Gloomy, thicker than wine, and constantly swaying. Hate year after year, cover up the difficulty of looking back, twenty articles shock the sea, after all, what is empty talk? Listen to the roar of the dragon at the bottom of the box, the long night of the west wind can not sleep, du Qunsheng that pity the heart and liver section. Is it the motherland, bear with loneliness"?
The six years in Japan were a period of widespread artistic knowledge for Li Shutong. In 1905, Li Shutong designed the cover of the enlightenment magazine "Awakening Lion" edited by Gao Tianmei, a student studying in Japan, and published "Drawing Cultivation Method" and "Watercolor Painting Method" in the journal, introducing the role of drawing and the drawing method of watercolor painting to import new knowledge.
In 1906, Li Shutong independently edited and published the first music magazine in Chinese history, "Music Magazine", which was printed in Japan and sent back to China for distribution. Most of the magazine's cover design, illustrations, and contents were written by Uncle Li; the book wrote an article introducing the music master Beethoven, "The Biography of Le Saint Bi Dufen", and carefully drew the "Le Saint Bi DuFen Portrait" with charcoal, becoming the first Chinese to introduce Beethoven to the Chinese people;
And the introduction of Japanese, German and other music, foreign for Chinese use, for his own creation of "Sui Di Liu", "My Country" and "Spring Suburb Race" three lyrics with music; in the preface, Li Shutong expounded the view that music can play a huge social function, reflecting his music enlightenment education ideas and musical views. In September 1906, Li Shutong was admitted to the Western Painting Department of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, which represented the highest level of Asian art at that time, and was initially named Li Ai, also known as Li An. At that time, a total of 67 people applied for the Preparatory Department of Western Painting in the same year as Uncle Li, 30 of whom passed the examination, becoming 23 undergraduates; of the total of 30 people who applied for the Western Painting And Writing Department, only 5 people became undergraduates, and Li Shutong was one of the five.
During his studies, Li Shutong studied Western painting with the famous Japanese oil painter Kiyoshi Kuroda, and at the same time, he also learned Western music from Kamasayuki outside the school, specializing in piano and composition. He also explored theatrical performances, and was taught and helped by the new Japanese dramatists Kawakami Otomijiro and Fujisawa Asajiro. Because of his outstanding genius and outstanding poetry, Li Shutong soon integrated into the Japanese scribes and celebrities, and became an active member of the famous Japanese poetry society "Sui Ou Yin Society", and his poems such as "Spring Wind", "Former Dust", "FengXi", and "Asayu Unbearable Pond" were published in the "Sui Gull Collection" and were well received by Okubo Shonan.
Li Shutong's outstanding literary and artistic achievements attracted the attention of the Japanese media, and on October 4, 1906, the Japanese "National News" opened a column entitled "Qing Guo Ren Zhi Yu Western Painting", detailing the Chinese Li Shutong, who studied Foreign paintings, and published his paintings and photos in the newspaper.
During his study abroad, Li Shutong was attracted by the democratic spirit and novel forms of Japanese new school dramas, and in the winter of 1906, Li Shutong, together with Zeng Xiaogu and other Japanese scholars, founded the new drama group Harusanagi Society in Tokyo, and began and devoted himself to the practice of drama.
At the beginning of 1907, some Japanese newspapers and periodicals reported that there was a serious famine caused by floods in Jiangsu and other places in China, and they were in urgent need of relief. In February, Chunliu Society performed the third act of The famous play "La Traviata" by Dumas of France in the newly completed Auditorium of the Chinese YMCA, Li Shutong played the Traviata Margaret, and the set planning and drawing in the play were written by Li Shutong, which was the first performance of Chunliu Society and the first time Chinese performed a drama.
Li Shutong as the drama "La Traviata"
Following the successful performance of "La Traviata", in June, chunliu society opened the Ding Wei acting conference and once again staged the drama "Black Slave Calling Heavenly Record" adapted from the novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by the American writer Mrs. Stowe, a total of five acts, li Shutong starred in the play Mrs. Ai MeiLiu, and served as the director of set design and creation. Li Shutong's drama practice has made him a pioneer in creating Chinese drama.
Japanese theater critic Matsui Matsuo said in the article "Doubts about Chinese Drama": "Chinese actors, I admire Li Shu Tongjun the most! When he was in Japan, although he was only an international student, the Chunyanagi Society Theater Troupe he organized performed tsubaki's drama in the music booth, which was really very good, no, it was better to say that Li Jun, who played Traviata, played very well." In his article "From China's New Drama to Drama", Hong Chen said that Li Shutong's Chunliu Society was the vanguard of China's "drama revolution" and the founding father of modern drama in China.
On March 29, 1911, Li Shutong completed six years of undergraduate studies at the Tokyo Fine Arts School with honors. In the 1910 volume of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts Alumni Association Monthly Report, there was a column of "Diligent People", which recorded: "In the previous academic year, the Diligent Scholars were awarded the Elite Diligence Certificate by the University", and only Li Shu was the same international student who obtained the certificate at that time. Today, Tokyo University of the Arts still preserves Li Shutong's graduation transcripts, which clearly records that Li Shutong was the best among his classmates at that time.
Photo of Uncle Lee graduating from Tokyo University of the Arts
After returning to China after completing his studies, Li Shutong came to Shanghai, coinciding with the establishment of the "Pacific Daily" in Shanghai by the League, as the main garden for the members of the Southern Society to exchange ideas, Li Shutong was hired to serve in the "Pacific Newspaper" as the chief writer of the newspaper's literary and art column, the director of the advertising department, and the editor-in-chief of the "Pacific Pictorial".
At that time, Li Shutong had many innovations in the field of art. First, a column entitled "Western Painting Method" was opened in the literary and art column, serializing the teaching methods of charcoal painting and plaster sketching, taking the lead in promoting Western painting ideas in China and promoting Western painting education.
Lü Fengzi, a famous painter who was the president of the National Academy of Arts, commented: "Strictly speaking, the initiators of the traditional Chinese painting reform movement should be promoted as the first person. Mr. Li should be the first person since the Republic of China to introduce Western painting ideas between China, and thus inspire the reform trend needed by traditional painting in China, and then Liu Haisu, Xu Beihong, etc. have in essence accepted the influence of Mr. Li"; second, he has created a new situation in the art of newspaper advertising with a new style of cartoon expression. Publishing Li Shutong's advertising paintings in the form of comic art in the Pacific Newspaper created a new atmosphere in the form of advertising in Chinese newspapers and breaking the old situation of a single form of commercial advertising at that time.
In 1912, after Li Shutong joined the bourgeois revolutionary cultural group Nanshe, he and Nanshe members Liu Yazi and Hu Pu'an founded the "Wenmei Society", whose members included Chen Shizeng, Huang Binhong, Fei Gongzhi, Yu Tiansui and more than 40 others, pioneered literary and fine arts research activities, and edited the "Wenmei Magazine". In 1913, he joined the Xiling Printing Society, the earliest famous printing society in China, in Hangzhou, and became one of the early members, studying gold and stone printing and calligraphy and painting.
The Xinhai Revolution led by Sun Yat-sen overthrew the rule of the Qing Dynasty, ended more than two thousand years of feudal despotism, and wrote a glorious chapter in the annals of the Chinese revolution. Li Shutong was full of hope and longing for the future and destiny of the motherland, swept away the heavy depression and sadness that flowed out of the previous poems, and with majestic momentum, excitement and heroic words, he created "Manjiang Hong, The Sense of Zhaozuo Zhi of the Republic of China", which was published in the fifth episode of the "Nanshe Series" in 1912. Singing the great merits of the Xinhai Revolution in overthrowing the feudal monarchy and establishing a bourgeois democratic republic, and the great spirit of the heroic dedication of the revolutionary martyrs, its bold words and sentences are full of the author's fearless heroism and patriotic passion: "Kyauk kyauk Kunlun, the moon on the top of the mountain, some people shout." Look at the bottom of the bag, the sword is like snow, how much enmity there is. The hands cracked open the weasel bile, and the inch of gold cast the civil rights brain. Count this life not to be a boy, good head. Jing Ke Tomb, Xianyang Dao: Nie Zheng died, the corpse was violent. As far as the great river east to go around the aftermath. The soul transforms into a jingwei bird, and the blood is splashed into red heart grass. Look at the present, a good mountain and river, heroes to build."