Lu Xun

Lu Xun (1881-1936), generally considered modern Chinas most important writer of fiction, social commentary, and literary criticism, had considerable contact with Japanese of all stripes and was himself a major consumer of Japanese writings. His short stories were translated numerous times by various hands in Japan and have circulated widely there, beginning in his lifetime and ever since. The first major work by a Japanese scholar and public intellectual on Lu Xuns life and work was that of Takeuchi Yoshimi (1910-1977), which he titled simply Ro Jin (Lu Xun). The late professor Maruyama Noboru of Tokyo University, a critic of Takeuchi, writes that it “exerted a decisive impact on the study of Lu Xun in Japan. Every succeeding student of Lu Xun has been influenced by this pioneering work in one way or another; it has provided the starting point of even those whose viewpoints and conclusions differed from his.” The book has attracted keen inter