Sino-Japanese Cultural Exchange: Popular Fiction Master - Quting Maqin
The ancient Chinese classics were transmitted to fuso in the east and reached a new climax in Japan's Edo period (1603-1867). Due to the prosperity and development of popular novels in China during the Ming and Qing dynasties, a major feature of the teaching and reception of Chinese and Japanese culture in this period is that a large number of Chinese popular novels are included in the imported Chinese books. Qu Ting Ma Qin is a master of the use of Japanese Chinese popular novels.
Qu Tei Ma qin (1767-1848) was the best-selling novelist of the Edo period in Japan. Quting Maqin was born in Edo Fukagawa to a family of officials, his original surname was Takizawa, his name was Xingbang, Quting was his pen name based on the Chinese Baling Quting, in addition to his common pen names "Kasa-wong" and "Master of the Writings Hall". In 1814, the reading novel of his masterpiece "Nan Zong Li See eight dogs" was published in Japan, and for a time Luoyang paper was expensive and well-known, and people rushed to read it, it is said that "the book carver heels his door every day, waiting to be carved into a piece of paper; into a piece of paper." 10,000 copies are sold immediately, and they are far away from here." Therefore, he became the first full-time writer in Japanese history to rely on the cost of writing alone to support his family life.
Qu Ting Ma Qin, Akiwa 4 June 9 (1767), was born in the house of Nobunari Matsudaira, Edo Fukagawa Banner. However, please do not think that Ma Qin came from a noble or samurai family, in fact, his father was only a servant of the Matsudaira family, and Ma Qin was his father's fifth son. Ma Qin loved to read and literature from a young age, and read novels, plays and prose widely, so he was very talented, and it is said that he could compose japanese songs at the age of seven and haiku at the age of 10, and was a well-known and well-known little prodigy with some reputation. However, when Ma Qin was eight years old, his father died, and life in the family began to look a little embarrassing. But what made this teenager feel most unbearable was the cold reception from the main family, especially the overbearing and domineering young lord Hachigoro of the Matsudaira family, which made Ma Qin feel intolerable. In October of the ninth year of Ernst & Young (1780), the fourteen-year-old Ma Qin left the Matsudaira family due to excessive labor to find his own life. Since then, Qu Ting Maqin has listened to the persuasion of his brother and found several jobs, but he has changed hands 4 times, studied medicine, Confucianism, and calligraphy, but has not lasted long, and has always lived a precarious and wandering wandering life, because for teenagers who have literary ideals in their teens, those heavy and boring work is really too boring. However, a series of changes from his family eventually forced him to change his philosophy of living in the world. In June of the fifth year of Tianming (1785), his mother died. In August of the following year, the fourth brother Hezhong died. The relatives left one after another, leaving the young Ma Qin wanting to cry without tears, and he was determined to end the previous years of life and start a new life.
The god of fate has not forgotten the genius teenager Ma Qin. In the autumn of the second year of the reign (1790), Qu Ting Ma Qin became acquainted with the literary scholar Yamato Tomasa, who was six years older than him, and began to create literature under his guidance. The following year, Ma Qin published his debut novel in the name of The Great Rongshanren, a disciple of the Jingchuan Dynasty, "Exhausting and Bi-Pointing Wild Words", and finally after years of wandering, he accumulated thick hair and succeeded in one fell swoop, and found a life path suitable for his own strengths and hobbies. In his later years, he lost sight in both eyes, but he still insisted on creating.
Quting Maqin
Quting Maqin is a diligent and prolific writer who has written more than 300 novels with a total of more than 1,000 volumes in his creative career of more than 60 years. These novels can be divided into revenge novels, street novels, biographical novels, and historical novels according to their content and artistic style. Revenge novels are all revenge stories that depict the distinction between good and evil, punish evil and promote good, among which representative works include "The Strange Edge of the Moon Ice" (1803), "The Dove of the Young Branches" (1804), "The Legacy of Stone Words" (1805), "The Tale of one night in the Three Kingdoms" (1806), "The Rainy Moon Night Between the Clouds and The Magic", etc. The novel uses the street talk of men and women in love, showing the traditional morals and values of loyalty, filial piety, chastity, benevolence and courage, and the representative works include "The Dream of Nan Ke in the Three Sevens" (1808), "Changxia Grass Paper", and "The Strange Adventure of Silk Cherry Spring Butterfly". Biographical novels include The Tale of Persuasion (1806), The Tale of New Liberation, and The New Book of Meyanagi (1807). Historical fiction occupies an important place in Ma Qin's creation. This kind of work is not completely based on real events to reproduce history, but selects some historical figures as the center, adding other literary elements to write a novel. For example, "Tsubaki Bow Zhang Yue" (1807~1811), "The Tale of Junkuan Sangdu Island" (1808), "Chaoyi Patrol Island" (1815~1828), "The Legend of nan zong li see eight dogs" (1814 ~ 1842), "The Record of the Beautiful Teenagers in the Recent World" (1829 ~ 1834), "The Biography of the Chivalrous Guest" (1832 ~ 1855) and so on. "Tsubaki Says Bow Zhang Yue" describes the activities of the dynasty generation. The creation of the reading book "The Legend of the Eight Dogs" lasted nearly 30 years and was 106 volumes long. The protagonist, the Eight Dogs, combines benevolence, righteousness, etiquette, wisdom, loyalty, faith, filial piety, and compassion, and other feudal morals, showing the family story seen in the security room of the feudal nobility.
a literary life
"Machijin literature" occupies an important place in the literary works of the Edo period in Japan. Because it mainly reflects the social life at that time, the content is close to life, the text is simple and easy to understand, and most of the pictures and texts are rich, so it is welcomed by the general public. After entering the middle of the Edo period, the development of "Machijin Literature" was manifested in a variety of unique book editions, such as: yellow table paper, sprinkled book, reader book, funny book, and human love book. The so-called "yellow sheet paper" is actually a kind of comic book, like the "little man book" that was once popular in China and loved by children, and the content is mostly popular literature that satirizes and satirizes and pins and needles. Similar in form to yellow table paper, the "Sprinkler Book" is mainly a witty novel depicting brothel life. The "reader" is equivalent to a Chinese legendary novel, mainly describing historical stories, myths and legends, celebrity anecdotes and so on.
In the fourth year of Kansho (1792), under the introduction of Yamato Tomon, Makoto came to stay at the home of Shigezaburo Tsouya and began to study drama writing. As a well-known publishing magnate in the Edo period, Shigezaburo Tsukiya funded and compensated many literary writers and ukiyo painters, among which the more famous ones are: Toshikaku Ichiku, Tomasato Do Kizoji, Kitagawa Katsumi, Higashisu Saikura, Katsushika Hokusai and other well-known figures in Japanese cultural history. Yamato introduced Ma Qin to the past in order to learn as much as possible about the skills of literary creation, and to get rid of the predicament of life as soon as possible. The following year, the twenty-seven-year-old Quting Maqin married, and the bride was three years older than him, a widow of a shoe merchant. But their lives were supposed to be pretty good, and by the time they were three years later, in the eighth year of Kwan Zheng (1796), they had two children. In that year, Ma Qin published his first reading, "Takao Boat Character Text", which was based on the famous Chinese work "Water Margin" and borrowed many elements from the Famous Japanese Jingliu masterpiece "Galo Xiandai Hagi". This work is not only a sensation, but also occupies a special place in the history of Japanese literature, because this creative method of combining Elements of Japanese literature based on Chinese popular novels has inspired other Japanese writers of the same period, including his teacher Yamato Biography. Yamato's early works were mostly yellow sheets and spilled copies, but the leniency reform banned such works, and Yamataka was imprisoned for more than 50 days. Inspired by Ma Qin's "High-tailed Ship Character Text", Kyo Chuan also began to write a reading novel, combining the stories of "Zhongchen Zang" and "Water Margin", yu Kuanzheng eleven years (1799) created "Zhongchen Water Margin", which was greatly acclaimed and became a monument to the creation of reading novels. Unfortunately, since then, most of the reading novels in Yamatoto have been stuck in Japanese drama stories such as Seirryū and Kabuki, and although they have a strong dramatic nature, they lack innovation and creativity, so they gradually lose their readership. At the same time, Qu Ting Maqin's creation gradually entered a better state and embarked on the golden period of his literary career.
From May to August of the second year of his reign (1802), Quting Maqin traveled to Kyoto and Osaka (then known as "Kami" and became acquainted with many "kami" Kansai culturers and publishers, and reached many agreements to write books and publish books, and Ma Qin's focus on writing also shifted to novels called "reading books". In accordance with the agreement with osaka booksellers during the trip, Ma Qin published the book "The Strange Adventures of the Moon Ice" in the first year of culture (1804), which was well received as soon as it was listed, and more than 1,000 copies were sold in Edo and Osaka. Since then, he has been out of control in the writing of novels, and has successively created many works such as "The Dove of the Child Branches" (1804), "The Legend of Quting", "The Legend of Quting", "The Sound of Stone Words" (1805) and many other works, each of which is a best-selling hit. As a result, Quting Maqin became the most sought-after writer of reading novels at that time, and the creative base and publishing center of Japanese reading novels was also transferred from Kyoto and Osaka to Edo, represented by Yamato-tung and Quting Maqin.
Entering the period of political transformation, Qu Ting Maqin's creative interest turned to long-form novels with historical themes. His Tsubaki Bow Zhangyue, in five chapters and thirty-nine volumes, describes the story of genji, a great general of the Heian period, who was exiled to Izu after the Hogen Rebellion, and later escaped and went to Ryukyu. It began to be written and published in the fourth year of culture (1807), and it took four years to complete it. After that, he also wrote a number of novellas with different themes and styles, such as "The Complete Biography of Sanqi Nanke Dream" (1808), "The Tale of Junkuan Sangdu Island" (1808), and "Matsu dye love shi qiu qicao" (1809). For example, "The Complete Tale of Sanqi Nanke Dream" is based on a well-known martyrdom incident in Osaka during the Yuan Lu period, although this story has been adapted into a drama and widely performed, which can be described as a household name and unknown to everyone. However, Quting Maqin did not pour pen and ink into the story of male and female martyrdom, but incorporated the meaning of persuading good and punishing evil into the narrative of the story, reflecting his unique creative theme, narrative style and value orientation.
Illustration of "Nan Zong Li See eight dogs"
The pinnacle
In the Tenth Year of Culture (1813), Yamato Tōren published "The Tale of Two Butterflies", although he devoted his life's efforts, but surprisingly the response was mediocre and the evaluation was not high, and the works created since then were mostly ordinary works. Three years later, the fifty-five-year-old Yamato-tōkō passed away. At this time, his student Qu Ting Maqin entered the peak period of creation, and began to create a masterpiece that has been handed down from generation to generation, that is, Qingshi's famous "Nan Zong Li See eight dogs". Qu Ting Maqin devoted all his efforts to the writing of "The Legend of the Eight Dogs seen in Nanzongli", from the eleventh year of culture (1814) to the thirteenth year of Tianbao (1842), which took twenty-eight years to complete, he often went to bed early in the morning to write, even three meals a day were completed on the bookcase, and at night he had to read by candlelight, sometimes even until the early morning of the next day. What is even more rare is that at the same time as Ma Qin created "The Legend of the Eight Dogs", there are new readings published almost every year, which is really old and strong for a writer who has entered old age, and his pen is not quitting, which is difficult for ordinary people to imagine and look forward to. "Nan ZongLi Sees the Legend of the Eight Dogs" is a huge work with a total of 190 times and more than 2 million words. It is based on the historical background of the end of the Ashikaga shogunate, based on the real history of Yoshishi Satomi escaping from Yuki castle and settling down in Anfu during the Cargill Rebellion, and taking the Satomi family and the fictional Eight Dogs as the main characters, depicting a legendary story of ups and downs, fascinating, and lasting for more than 60 years. The stage of the story unfolding activities covers almost half of Japan, and there are more than 400 characters on the stage, with grand scenes and many characters. This novel has two major characteristics that are indispensable for reading novels, namely: the main purpose and values of "punishing evil and persuading good"; and the imitation and reference of Chinese Ming and Qing novels. However, Ma Qin, with his superior ability and perseverance and brilliant brushwork, created a masterpiece that surpassed any previous reading novel, and wrote the most colorful and well-known stroke in the Edo literature chapter of the history of Japanese literature.
Blind writer
In the fourth year of Tianbao (1833), due to long-term fatigue and age, Quting Maqin's eyesight was greatly reduced and he was almost blind. His son Zongbo was also sick in bed. At this time, the "Biography of the Eight Dogs" had just been half completed, plus Ma Qin had no protégé disciples, and could only do everything himself, barely carrying out creation with weak eyesight, and for a time literary creation and family life fell into an unprecedented predicament, ma Qin had to sell his precious collection of books, sell the old house where he had long been accustomed, and move to an old house on the outskirts of the city. The difficulty was so great that Ma Qin felt cornered and had suicidal thoughts.
Two years later, his thirty-eight-year-old son Zongbo fell seriously ill and died young, giving Ma Qin another blow. Because Ma Qin had high hopes for Zongbo, he was passed on to his own mantle, so that Zongbo could learn sinology, medicine, painting, etc. from an early age, hoping that he could achieve something. Unexpectedly, Zongbo has been frail and sick since birth, and eventually walked ahead of his old father, leaving his wife Alu and an eight-year-old son.
"Ma Qin and Alu" by Kiyokata Tsubaki
In the eleventh year of Tianbao (1840), Qu Ting MaQin was completely blind. However, at this time, Ma Qin found a pillar, that is, his daughter-in-law Ah Lu. Alu is the daughter of a doctor, and although she is illiterate, she works seriously and has a beginning and an end. She proposed the way she wrote the record by Ma Qin, who dictated it, in order to complete the "Legend of the Eight Dogs" as soon as possible. The blind Ma Qin was undoubtedly a very good way to continue to create, so he agreed to her request, and the two continued to write "The Legend of the Eight Dogs" together. But the next difficulty to face was unexpected by both of them. Because Ah Lu is only rough and literate, ma Qin must start from kana and Kanji, almost word by word, first dictation, then teaching, and then writing records, so the writing speed is very slow, time-consuming, less work, and difficult to move forward. Sometimes the allusions quoted by Ma Qin are too profound for Ah Lu to understand for a while, and even cry out in a hurry. And Ma Qin also issued a sigh of "old age and decay, difficult to write, teach daughter-in-law to copy bitter words", and even planned to simply give up creation several times. Despite this, the two of them finally gritted their teeth and persevered through unimaginable difficulties for outsiders, and completed the final volume in August of that year, bringing this huge work to a successful conclusion.
In the twelfth and fourteenth years of Tenbo (1841-1843), the Edo shogunate underwent the third major reform since its opening, the Tenho Reform. During this period, Ma Qin did not create any works, but only used this time to complete the family tree "Wu Shu Nai Ji". In the second year of Honghua (1845), he compiled the previously unfinished reading novels, which was a summary of his creative career of more than fifty years.
Biography summary
On November 6, 1848, the first year of Jiayong (1848), Quting Maqin died at the age of eighty-two. Ma Qin was a hard-working, prolific writer. In his more than 60 years of creative career, he has written more than 300 novels, a total of more than 1,000 volumes. These novels can be divided into: revenge novels, alley novels, biographical novels and historical novels according to their contents. Representative works of revenge novels include "Moon Ice Adventure" (1803), "Baby Dove" (1804), "The Sound of Stone Words" (1805), "Three Kingdoms one night Story" (1806), "Cloud Magic Rainy Moon Night", etc., all of which depict the revenge stories of good and evil. "Three Seven Complete Biography of Nan Ke Dream" (1808), "Changxia Straw Paper", "Silk Cherry Spring Butterfly Strange Edge" are the representative works of lane talk novels, mainly based on the love stories of men and women in the alley and the city, showing the values of loyalty, filial piety, chastity, benevolence, righteousness and courage. Among the biographical novels are the Tale of Persuasion (1806), the Tale of New Liberation, and the New Book of Meyanagi (1807).
The Tale of the Eight Dogs in Minami Tsōri is a masterpiece of Qu Ting Ma Qin and the longest novel in the history of Japanese literature. Ma Qin devoted all his efforts to it, from the eleventh year of culture (1814) to the thirteenth year of Tianbao (1842), which took twenty-eight years to complete, and his literary career reached its peak with this book. "The Legend of the Eight Dogs" absorbs a large number of writing techniques and literary elements of "Water Margin" and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", with the eight dogs of the Satomi family as the protagonists, revolving around the lives and observations of these eight people, and trying to write a work comparable to "Water Margin". The conception and plot laying out of "Water Margin" gave Ma Qin a great inspiration, and the origin of the eight protagonists introduced in "The Legend of the Eight Dogs" at the beginning is almost the same as that of "Hong Taiwei Mistakenly Walking demons" in "Water Margin", and the one hundred and thirty-nine narratives about the competition between inujiang's personal guards and the generals of the family are exactly the same as the plot scenes in "Water Margin" about the blue-faced beast Yang Zhifeng Liang Zhongshu's order and Suo Chao and Zhou Jin's competition, and even the plot of removing the metal gun tip before the competition is exactly the same.
In addition to the plot and conception of "Water Margin", Ma Qin's "Biography of the Eight Dogs" pays special attention to imitating the writing method of using classical Chinese novels, that is, Jin Shengsi, Mao Zonggang and others summed up when commenting on "Water Margin" and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms": the "Seven Rules of Barnyard Novels" such as subject and guest, volt line, lining, care, opposition, provincial pen, and hidden micro. Therefore, Ma Qin's book should be read by the "Water Margin" and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" of the commentary book, but Ma Qin is familiar with these writing rules and literary theories, and can be integrated in the writing practice, so although there is no imitation of the grass snake gray line in the work, it cannot but admit that he uses it just right, and there is no sense of violation. For example, the seventh time in the "Tale of the Eight Dogs" tells that The Golden Bowl Hachiro was about to commit suicide by caesarean section, and after taking the knife in his hand, he was in a trance, only to see a ball of fireworks flying like a ghost, "as if the shadow of a woman suddenly appeared next to Daisuke and suddenly disappeared." This narrative follows the story and scene of the thirteenth time, the son of Golden Bowl Hachiro, who shoots Yafu and appears in front of Fuji, the former is also the latter's fu line.
Ma Qin prefers the concept of warriors and value standards in his creative concepts, he is nostalgic for the samurai world, opposes the simple entertainment of literature for entertainment, opposes the entertainment supremacy of the townspeople, and advocates that literature should have the function of punishing evil and persuading good, so in the novel, he promotes the spirit of Bushido, Confucian benevolence and morality, and the idea of Buddhist karma, and the characters in his pen are often the practitioners of these ideas. In terms of artistic techniques, his novels absorb the writing skills of Chinese novels such as "Water Margin" and Japanese works such as "Baoyuan Story", "Taiping Ji" and "Limi Junji", with complex structures, many characters, twists and turns, and gorgeous words, thus developing the creation of reading and closing novels to an unprecedented new level.
Era features
Throughout the Edo period, both the earlier Genroku culture and the later Kasei culture were almost always "machijin literature" that depicted ichijin life. Although the literary level of most of these works is not high, they are conceived and created from the perspective of the commoners and in the language of the citizens, satirizing the ignorance of the feudal aristocracy at that time, and criticizing social phenomena that do not meet the standards of samurai values, so they are very popular. In addition to Yamato Katsura and Quting Maqin, there were also several famous writers among the literary masters of the Huazheng era. The first is Akinari Ueda (1734-1809), whose masterpiece is shiki's novel The Tale of the Rainy Moon, which was influenced by the Chinese "Three Words" and is considered to be a representative of the early reading novels. Secondly, there is the Ten Returns to the Horse (1765-1831), which is represented as the comic book "Tokaido Middle Knee Chestnut Hair", and some of his satirical novels also have a certain influence. In addition, there are Shitei Sanma (1776-1822), representative works such as "Ukiyo Bathhouse" and "Ukiyo Barbershop", the Chinese translation of these two works was translated by Mr. Zhou Zuoren. Also known for his romance novels was Yong Chun Shui (1790-1843).
Compared with the great view of the novel, it is difficult to find someone in the field of poetry in the era of the political era who can stand shoulder to shoulder with the former sages, and only Kobayashi Kazucha (1763-1827) is slightly famous. In the field of theater, kabuki, as was popular in the early Edo period, developed to a climax due to the enthusiasm of the citizens. Famous figures emerged in both Osaka and Edo, and of course, famous playwrights such as Tsuruya Namboku IV (1755-1829). The literary works of the Huazheng era were influenced by the world style of the time, and most of them had a strong taste of commercial kitsch. In order to attract the attention of readers, many writers have mixed a lot of obscene and kitsch content in their works. Even the japanese songs and simple and beautiful haiku, which have always been considered solemn and elegant, have also shown a tendency to formalize and vulgarize. Although the literary circles in Japan and China do not highly value the literary works of this period, they still have a relatively special position in the history of Japanese literature because these works truly record the social life of the time.
Exactly when the Chinese classical literary masterpiece "Water Margin" was introduced to Japan is still unreliable time to verify. But from the Japanese monk Tenkai (?) ~1643) In the bibliography that has been handed down, the title of the Water Margin can already be found, so it should be generally reliable to determine that the Water Margin was introduced to Japan around the beginning of the seventeenth century. After the introduction of "Water Margin" to Japan, it became the most popular novel among people, the media and the literary circles in the Edo period, and many Edo literati imitated and learned the writing techniques and narrative conceptions of "Water Margin", and even a good man of Liangshan overturned the case, imitating works such as the carp across the river, emerging in an endless stream, citing its big ends: "The Water Margin of the Dynasty", "The Japanese Water Margin", "The Eight Heroes of Xiangzhong", all of these, and so on. However, none of them could compare to Qu Ting MaQin. Whether it is imitation, overturning, reading and understanding, Quting Maqin is second to none and outstanding.
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