The first banned novel in history, but it influenced Japan for hundreds of years. The first banned book in history: the Chinese people do not let it read, but it has swept Japan and South Korea for hundreds of years, what exactly is written?
Banned books refer to books that are prohibited from being published or read. The most tragic book ban in history was Qin Shi Huang's "book burning" move. In the history of Chinese and foreign literature, there are thousands of banned books, and the frequent prohibition of Chinese literary books began in the Ming Dynasty, mainly because after the Ming Dynasty, the themes of zhiwei legendary novels became more extensive and penetrated into all aspects of human nature, so there will be some works such as "inappropriate for children" or "causing discomfort to readers", so they have been banned from publication and reading by the government.
There are more than ten kinds of books banned in the Ming Dynasty, the first of which is not the familiar "Golden Bottle Kai", but a collection of literary short stories called "Cutting the Lamp". What kind of work is "Cutting the Lamp", so that the Ming Court banned it?
The author of "Cutting the Lamp New Talk" is Qu You at the end of the Yuan And the beginning of the Ming Dynasty. Qu You is a native of Qiantang, rarely has a poetic name, and was once praised by Yang Weizhen, the leader of the poetry circle at that time, as the "Thousand Mile Foal" of the Qu family. During the reign of Emperor Hongwu of the Ming Dynasty, he successively served as a governor in Renhe, Lin'an, Yiyang and other counties, and later promoted to the post of Right Governor of the Imperial Palace... Qu You wrote many works in his lifetime, only "Cutting the Lamp New Talk" is one of the most widely circulated works. "Cutting the Lamp New Talk" was compiled into a book in the eleventh year of Hongwu and became popular as a manuscript. In the fifteenth year of Yongle, Qu You re-edited "Cutting The New Talk of Cutting Lights" at the age of seventy-five in the security guards of the exile land.
Qu You lived in the turbulent years of the late Yuan and early Ming Dynasties, people also lost interest in orthodox Confucianism, reading preferences turned to the world and curiosity, Qu You's "Cutting the Lamp New Talk" was born at the right time, the story in the book is for the love of men and women - or marriage between people, or write about the love between people and ghosts, all highlight a "love" word. The desire for love and a good marriage is a common demand of the majority of women, but their demands are stifled.
There is a story in the book called "The Record of Jin Fengchao", which mainly describes wu Xingniang's ghost pursuing true love on earth. Wu Xingniang and Cui Xingge were engaged since childhood, because Xingge traveled far away with his father's eunuchs, and he did not hear from him for fifteen years, and it was difficult to get married, and the result was depressed and ended up in half a year. But after her death, Xingniang was not willing, she had the persistence of "poor and falling into the Yellow Spring", and her ghost finally met with Xingge and eloped with Xingge to live a year of conjugal life. Finally, when she was exposed and had to leave, she also used the method of ghost possession to ask her parents to marry her sister Qingniang to Xingge, which continued the frontier.
Such a "story" was a "clear stream" at that time. The advent of "Cutting the Lamp" aroused the love and resonance of countless readers in the dull political environment at that time, not only the peddlers and pawns, the local tycoons and gentry, but also the Confucian students in the formal official school, taixue, who loved it so much that they abandoned their studies. Subsequently, imitators arose, and similar "Cut the Lamp Yu Words", "Imitation Collection", "Seeking Lights Because Words" and so on were also published.
"Cutting the Lamp and New Words" gets rid of the Song people's atmosphere of "relying on the past and avoiding recent news", telling the current story and thinking about the current things, which has obvious characteristics of the times. While narrating the story, he also pays attention to his own life experience and thinking. In "Cutting the Lamp", the author shows us the world of three people: the love world of ordinary men and women, the inner world of the literati, and the world of ghosts and gods. These "three worlds" are all set against the background of the war and chaos at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, and unify to construct a panorama of the end of the world, with obvious characteristics of "chaotic literature".
Orthodox fighting is not "evil", which is what apologists do not want to see, the book imitates the strange and mysterious distortion of men and women, and the love between man and ghost "as in the human world", which is directly intolerable to orthodoxy, so it soon ushers in the end of being banned.
According to Gu Yanwu's "Rizhilu Yu" volume IV "Forbidden Novel": "In February of the seventh year of the orthodox year, Xin Wei, the Guozi supervisor sacrificed wine Li Shi mian said: Recently there are vulgar Confucian false strange things, decorated with rootless words, such as "Cutting the Lamp new words". Not only the frivolous people in the city rush to recite, but as for the Confucians, they do not learn to speak, memorize day and night, and talk about it; if it is not strictly prohibited, they are afraid of heresy and heresy, and they will flourish day by day, and confuse people's hearts. The Ministry of Beggars and Ceremonies wrote inside and outside the gates, and was transferred to the imperial history of the school, and according to the inspector, he toured the places, and when he encountered such books, he was ordered to burn them, and those who printed and sold them and tibetan practitioners asked for the law, and the people knew the right way and were not deceived by evil. From there. ”
Although "Cutting the Lamp" was banned in China, it could not stop its pace towards the world. "Cutting the Lamp New Talk" is one of the earliest collections of classical novels that went abroad and influenced the world in China. It has been popular in Korea since the 15th century and later spread to Japan.
Most of the themes of "Cutting the Lantern Novel" are the records of the war and chaos in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, the disasters of the literati, and the love affair of children (human ghost love), which makes it surprisingly acceptable in Japan, South Korea and Vietnam: readers there generally appreciate Qu You's "story" plot and "discourse" method, and many writers are inspired by the "New Story of Cutting the Lamp" as the highest model of novel writing, which is popular in these countries after the civil war or such a dark era.
After the introduction of "Cut Lantern New Talk" into Japan, it was deeply loved by Japanese readers and had a major impact on Japanese literature, starting from the Edo period, they began to translate and rewrite "Cut Lamp New Talk", and then had a decisive impact on the establishment and formation of Japanese ghost literary style.
For example, in "Cutting the Lantern New Talk", there is a "Peony Lantern Record" ("Peony Lantern" tells the story that Qiao Sheng, who has just been widowed, met the female ghost Fu Liqing on the fifteenth night of the first month, and finally died in the coffin, and the two ghosts often came out to harm people, and finally were sent to hades by the Iron Crown Daoist), which was passed to Japan, imitated by Japanese writers, and formed a series of "peony lamp" stories. Even in modern times, there are directors who have remade the "Peony Lantern" series of stories into movies, which shows how great and tenacious its influence and vitality are!
(Image from the Internet)