Author: Chen Yan (Researcher, Beijing Academy of Social Sciences)
The cat was one of the first animals domesticated by humans, but it was never too accommodating and submissive to humans. The cat probably believes that once he submits to humans, he will become arrogant and rude, so when dealing with people, he prefers to compete with people on an equal footing. And man, because he cannot completely capture the cat, wants to possess it more and more, loves it, loves the cat's free personality, and loves its independent character. Thus, in the cold, confident, dangerous and mysterious wildness of the cat, the sentient beings are reversed and the art is sprouted. As far as literary creation is concerned, it seems that Japanese writers write the most about cats, the most affectionately, and the most profoundly. Because of cats, they, and the Japanese literature they created have been redefined. In the case of Natsume Soseki, did It was Shushi who made the cat, or did the cat make shushi's literary path? Who can say for sure?
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As a masterpiece of classical literature produced in Japan in the early 11th century, The Tale of Genji is also the world's first novel. In one of these obscure chapters, a cat drives the storyline. The great general's son, Kashiwaki, fell in love with the Emperor's Third Princess, but she was married to the Hikari clan. One day, When Cypress was playing a game of keju with hikari in the light source's apartment with the son of the light source clan and others, a small cat accidentally hooked the string on the neck and lifted the curtain, and the three princesses who were smothered in the room were weeping at the window because they were snubbed by the light source clan. Cypress caught a glimpse of her in the darkness through the curtain, and at this glance alone, Cypress fell into lovesickness, and frantically managed to steal the cat: "That kitten always has to let me catch it." Although I can't talk to it, it can also comfort me from the pain of sleep. He took the kitten in his arms and immediately regarded it as the embodiment of the three princesses: "Want to comfort each other/ See the cat as if you see people / Why do you call me / Is it my confidant?" ”
Natsume Soseki and cat profile picture
Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965) fell in love with cats under the influence of Baudelaire. He had more than a dozen cats in his lifetime, and his preferences were limited to Western breeds of cats, especially Persian cats. While living in Izu, Tanizaki was very fond of a Persian cat named "Pelle", and legend has it that Pell was later killed by Tanizaki, who made a specimen and guarded it. Tanizaki was so envious of the cat's tail that he fantasized about how nice it would be if people could grow that kind of handy thing! Without talking, just wagging the tip of the tail, you can perfunctory talk and avoid the criticism of silence and inhumanity. In the novel Doris, Tanizaki portrays the story of how a man who loves a Persian cat serves a cat, and the man is clearly based on himself. In his novel "Foolish Love", Tanizaki describes a man's love for the beautiful woman Naomi, like the humbleness of the owner when he serves the cat. More than that, Compared with the broken love, Tanizaki writes the love between people and cats more softly, and does not hesitate to betray the world. For example, in the novel "Cat and Zhuang Zao and Two Women", Zhuang Zao's love cat Lily was taken away by his ex-wife Pinzi, and Zhuang Zao secretly sneaked to his ex-wife's house to see the cat because he missed Lily too much, and even had the idea of reuniting with his ex-wife in order to have a cat. The ex-wife did not love cats, but with Lily as a chip, she was able to hold the cat hostage to make the ex-husband and the ex-mother-in-law start a tug-of-war. Neither woman's love for ZhuangZao can resist his desperate love for cats. The real-life Tanizaki resembles Shozo: His wife Chiyoko falls in love with another famous writer, Haruo Sato, and leaves Tanizaki with a cat. The three parties also made a joint declaration. Later, however, Tanizaki repented and wanted to reunite with Chiyoko. This incident is known as the "Odawara Incident" because Tanizaki lived in Odawara, and it is used by the good deeds to prove the moral corruption of the writer.
Looking at ZhuangZao's love cat, it has entered a decadent age, and there is not much time left. The climax of the story is in the late autumn of the breath, and everyone is greeting the end of "an empty" in their own way after a precise calculation. At this time, you realize, where is Tanizaki writing about love? He is writing about love and the passing of life.
"I Am a Cat" book shadow profile picture
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In the history of Japanese literature, cats and literature have become inseparable, seemingly beginning with Natsume Soseki. According to Shushi's description in "The Tomb of the Cat", he and his family did not spoil his cat too much, and even somewhat indifferent when it was sick, but the sadness and nostalgia for it after his death continued. Shushi issued an obituary to relatives and friends, and wrote an epitaph for it, saying that "there is no more lightning and thunder under the Nine Springs", and buried it under the cherry blossom tree behind the study. Through this cat's eye, intellectuals living at the turn of the old and new eras face the new trend of Western thought, trying to adapt to it and are at a loss, and the arduous exploration, struggle and torment of intellectuals are vividly reflected. Since then, cats have appeared on the Stage in Japan more frequently.
Junichiro Tanizaki and the cat profile picture
Ryunosuke Wasagawa's (1892–1927) short story "The Chastity of Afu" is about the first year of meiji, when the emperor's army was pursued by Tokugawa's army, and Shimodani was told to ask for an emergency evacuation of all its men to escape the soldiers. A three-colored cat remains in the small grocery store of Nichicho, and the owner cries all day because he lost it, and Afu decides to return to his home in Shimodani Town, which will become a battlefield, to save the cat for the owner, when the beggar Shingong, who broke into the house to hide from the rain, turned a gun at the cat and threatened Afu to obey with his life. Unexpectedly, Ah Fu's eyes were clear, and he couldn't even see the shadow of terror", and he was ready to sacrifice himself in order to save the cat, which surprised Xingong, and he fled to the kitchen and suddenly lost his courage. Later, Shinko became a celebrity of the Meiji era, and when he passed Afu in a double carriage, Afu "was surprised and slowed down." Turns out she had feelings... XinGong is not an ordinary beggar. "A short story, the plot is constantly reversed, each reversal is sudden, that kind of irrationality, in fact, the author is through the cat to reveal the subtle secrets of human nature." In the direction of temptation and depravity, justice, loyalty and sacrifice are intertwined, and between the square inches, there are several universes, and the subtle and bizarre ineffable nature of human nature, which has been pinched to death by the thirty-year-old Wasagawa, has been continuously interpreted for a century, sometimes in the opposite direction. Only one of them read it in a peculiar way, saying that the novel had a hard wound.
Big Buddha Jiro, Wife and Cat Profile Picture
This man was the zoologist Suntaro Ishida (1874-1936). Wasagawa described the tricolored cat, called "Sanmaogong," as a male. Ishida pointed out in the form of intellectual archaeology that there are almost no males in the pansy cat, and this common sense has slowly spread after Ishida.
Ishida poured out his love for cats, and he once wrote an encyclopedia of capriccio style, "Cats", which included the daily life of cats, the intellectual feelings of cats, the practicality of cats, the beauty of cats, cat dictionaries, the psychology of cats when they do not come home, etc., as well as cats and haiku related to literature, which earned him the reputation of "the titan of cat research". In the 1960s, writer Shintaro Okino (1899-1967) and Japanese industrialist Nario Mizuno, jurist Toshiyoshi Miyazawa, serologist Tomoo Ogata, and Western painter Shohachi Kimura formed two camps to debate on NHK programs. After the show aired, a woman sent a letter and a small parcel to Okino, introducing herself as Ishida Suntaro's lover, saying that the parcel contained a photo of a cat named "Taro" that she had raised when she lived with Ishida in the past, ishida has passed away, and she herself is also a wind candle, so she entrusts the cat photo to Okano, who loves cats, to save. This is a postscript. It is said that the "Tiger Cat Hirataro" in "Cats" is a story told by ishida's cat "Tiger Cat". At that time, Shushi's "I Am a Cat" had been published, and Ishida's narrative style was undoubtedly influenced by Shushi.
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The writer Daifō Jiro (1897-1973) regarded cats as companions rather than pets, he had five hundred cats in his lifetime, wrote about sixty cat books, and liked to use hand warmers made of cat-shaped pottery in his daily life. He succeeded in impressing his wife, who did not like cats. In the article "Every Day with Cats", he said that he likes cats because cats are cold and ruthless to humans, but such a cold cat soothes people's extreme silence and anger. His last words read: "Whether there is an afterlife, I still don't know. If there is an afterlife and there are no cats there, I will feel very bad. If there is no afterlife, then the most important sentence in my last words is: Don't put my own works in my coffin, but put my favorite books and cats. Today, the Giant Buddha Jiro Memorial Museum often hosts cat-themed exhibitions, and the stray cats admitted to the museum are chased like stars by various paparazzi, which has also become a scenery.
In contrast, Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) was not so lucky. Mishima sincerely lamented that the cat "has a bit of a clever and temperamental expression, neat teeth, cold flattery, I really like it beyond recognition", but his father, because he loves dogs, often loses his cat, he tried his best to get it back; later married a wife who did not love cats, and even the right to secretly feed the cat dried fish was deprived.
Yukio Mishima with cat profile picture
In the eyes of Shintaro Okino, among Japanese writers, Muramatsu Kaze no Kaze's love cat is unmatched. Muramatsu configures beds and special electric heaters according to the number of cats, prepares special ultraviolet lamps to prevent cats from suffering from skin diseases, and asks cat doctors to diagnose the health of cats every one or two weeks; cat food is based on sashimi as the main food, horse mackerel as a dish, and whenever the cat eats, stray cats are invited to accompany them.
Uchida Hyakasa (1889-1971), known as the cat of modern Japanese scribes, described his cat, "Kur", as not at all inferior to being raised, going his own way, running amok, and needing anything unceremoniously asked. When the cat ran away, he searched like crazy, crying so much that he couldn't think about tea. Akira Kurosawa's film "Sunset Love" did not forget to bring this story to the screen.
Some writers fall in love with cats because of their dislike of people. For example, Osamu Dazai, he said, "I can't love people, I can only love cats." Haruo Sato, who does not know whether he is a love rival of Junichiro Tanizaki, is also based on his dislike for people who think they are "stupid people", and they feel that cats are precious. The author does not know much about the writer Kajii Kijiro, he put aside the temperament, voice, and temperament of cats, preferring cat's claws, presumably a writer with some feminine temperament. He described in Caress: "Cat hand makeup tool! I grabbed the cat's front foot, smiled strangely, and stroked the fine hairs on the top. The sides of the cat's front feet, which wash their faces, are covered with short, carpet-like hairs that do look like they can indeed be used as makeup tools for adults. But what good is this for me? I rolled over on my back, lifted the cat high above my face, grabbed both of its front feet, and pressed the soft soles of my feet against each of my eyelids. The cat's pleasant weight, the warm paws, and the incomparable tranquility that does not belong to this world are deeply immersed in my tired eyeballs. ”
Haruki Murakami and cat profile picture
Kajii said that the "incomparable peace that does not belong to this world" created by cats really hit the heart of the cat slave! Cats exist, but the peace it creates is more thorough than when there were no cats. Humans, fearing loneliness and wanting peace, cats effortlessly satisfy humans by nature. Of course, there is also coldness in the nature of the cat, it will suddenly leave when it is caught off guard, and haruki Murakami must have felt this, so the women he wrote are often like cats, disappearing at any time, leaving a desolate world for men.
Cats can also be frightening, so there are all kinds of strange talk about cats in the world. Folklorist Kunio Yanagida uses cats as a window to observe the nationality of Japan. In "Cat Island", he listed various rumors about cats, saying that Cat Island forbade dogs to go to the island because cats and dogs have been evil since ancient times. He added that the human cat is not a true friend, the cat has a selfish soul, is an independent animal, has its own circle, but the complex emotions of cats and foxes are worth careful study. Yokai and cats are important phenomena in Japanese culture and are regarded by Yanagida as one of the ways to understand Japanese history and nationality. From this, it can be understood that the "Legend of the Demon Cat" filmed by director Chen Kaige wants to tell the story of the Tang Dynasty, but the script used is the Japanese writer Dream Pillow Tapir's "The Legend of the Demon Cat: Shamen Empty Sea". Writers Toshima and Shio said in "Cat Sex" that beauty talk is based on habits, and neither cats nor art weird talk can be built on the basis of habits, and excellent art always contains weird power.
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Shintaro Okino was convinced that cats could read people's hearts, and he had ten cats at most. In his article "Love Cats", the most wonderful thing is not his description of his cat career, but the use of cats to recall The Beijing and China he studied in. He described the Mongolian cats in Beijing as "fierce and wild in nature." Only by watching the 'Mongolian cat' walking slowly in the courtyard and listening to the sound of Yuqian 'rustling' falling to the ground will my heart be solid and I feel that this is the Beijing life of my dreams." In the quiet, full of fun, Okino's life in Beijing was carefree, and in his later years, he said that this memory was unforgettable in this life, so he constantly wrote about Beijing and China to return to his cultural homeland. He is familiar with Chinese classics, counting the "begging cat poems" and "sending cat poems" in Chinese poetry, such as the Song Dynasty poet Huang Tingjian's "Begging Cat" and the relative "Xie Zhouwenzhi Sending Cats", as well as Lu You's "Giving Cats", and he also compares the two, believing that Lu You knows more about the diet and temperament of cats than Huang Tingjian, and is more worthy of "loving cats".
Compared with Okino, who is familiar with the atmosphere of each hutong in Beijing and the quality of the dishes in each restaurant, Haruki Murakami is much stranger to China, and the Chinese imagery that appears in his works is ambiguous. However, his "Abandoned Cat: What I'm Talking About When Talking About My Father" two years ago has attracted so much attention that this biography, which was first published in Japan's "Literature and Art Spring and Autumn" magazine, was recently translated into an exquisite one-line translation.
The story begins with Murakami's father taking him to abandon the pregnant female cat to the beach, only to find that the abandoned female cat returned home before them, and the father's expression changed from "surprise" to "surprise" and finally to "peace of mind". The first layer of metaphors for this female cat is Murakami's father's experience of being given as an adopted son by his grandfather; the second layer is the fate of young Japanese people who were recruited by the Japanese government during the war and abandoned by the state. Even the abandoned cat was worse than the young people who had been sent to the battlefield, including Murakami's father, facing the fate of never going back. At the end of the novel, Murakami tells the story of another kitten that can't get up from the tree. Saying that a kitten seems to be showing off its agility and bravery to Murakami, he climbed a pine tree with a loud voice, but when he climbed so high that he disappeared and could not get down, he had to make a cry for help, but Murakami and his father who was called by him were helpless, and the lesson Murakami learned was that it was much harder to come down than to climb. The fate of the cat, which could not climb from a high place, echoed the narrative of the previous war: Japan launched a war, but it could not end it. Japan had conquered many of China's cities by force, but how could Japan have ruled the vast expanse of China? Murakami once said, "Violence is the key to understanding Japan." But Murakami has also been criticized for his precariousness toward history and war responsibility. This time, and for the first time, Murakami completed a clumsy reconciliation with his father in a naked way to himself and history, and at the same time, as a son, he also inherited the "mental trauma" caused by his father's disgraceful experience. As Murakami concluded, "No matter how unpleasant that content is, how much it makes people want to turn around and avoid it, people have to accept it as part of themselves." Otherwise, what is the significance of such a thing as history? Reading this biography, I seem to hear Murakami rustling little by little with a scalpel, which echoes the cry for help from kittens that can't climb to a high place, unveiling the violence of Japanese history.
One might worry: the more obsessed you are with cats, the farther you are from a fiery life. But you see, these Japanese writers don't want to see people, don't want to talk, immerse themselves in fantasy, they are not depressed, but they are doing wild dreams like cats, that kind of dream all the framework can not be constrained, in the cat's body, in the writer's body how much, once the dream is stimulated, excellent works are born.
Guangming Daily (2021-03-18, 13th edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily