![]() ![]() The story of Lu Xun’s life in Japan has long fascinated Japanese readers as a means of understanding his transformation into China’s greatest modern writer. Fujino,” also became familiar to Japanese students after they were included in the public school curriculum after the Pacific War in the 1950s. A number of Lu Xun’s short stories and essays, including the story “Mr. Thanks to the adoption of many of Lu Xun’s stories as part of the official People’s Republic of China public school curriculum, the details of his early life and his identity as a national hero became firmly enshrined in the memories of millions of Chinese citizens. The road he took was the very road of China’s new national culture. he was also the bravest and most correct, the firmest, the most loyal and the most ardent national hero, a hero without parallel in our history. The chief commander of China’s cultural revolution, he was not only a great man of unyielding integrity, free from all syncophancy. ![]() Lu Xun was the greatest and most courageous standard-bearer of this cultural force. Confucius was the sage of the feudal society Lu Xun is the sage of the New China.” In 1940 Mao showered Lu Xun with praise for his role in the May Fourth New Culture movement and paved the way for his elevation to the status of national hero and party stalwart: ![]() ![]() On the first anniversary of Lu Xun’s death, Mao spoke to an assembly at the North Shaanxi Public School in Yan’an and assessed Lu Xun’s influence on China as comparable to Confucius: “The value of Lu Xun in China is that he should be regarded as the number one sage of China. Lu Xun’s “conversion” to a life of literature suggests a quasi-religious renunciation of his past life and the beginning of a process of spiritual and political purification following his extensive contact with China’s longstanding national nemesis.Īs an intellectual who was both sharply critical of traditional Chinese social institutions and active in socialist literary and political circles until his death in 1936, Lu Xun’s apotheosis as a national icon within the Chinese Communist Party was swift and enduring. Through the lens of Chinese nationalism after World War II and the victory of the communists in 1949, the slide incident came to represent Lu Xun’s prescient decision to reject Japan’s bellicose nationalism and Western-style science in favor of a politically-motivated literature. Image 1: Portrait of the “magic lantern incident” Although they appeared to be physically sound, he felt that spiritually they were close to death. Lu Xun reported that rather than the sight of a fellow Chinese facing death, it was the expression on the faces of the Chinese bystanders that troubled him deeply. Lu Xun later recounted that the Japanese medical students were roused into a patriotic frenzy by scenes of the war, culminating in reverberating chants of “banzai!” One scene showed a Chinese prisoner about to be executed in Manchuria by a Japanese soldier and the caption described this man as a Russian spy (see image 1). The lesson had ended early and the instructor used the slide projector to show various images to students from the recently concluded Russo-Japanese War (1904-05). In January of 1906 in the northeastern Japanese city of Sendai, China’s most famous modern writer, Lu Xun (Zhou Shuren 1881-1936), claimed to have experienced a life-changing epiphany that led him to abandon his medical studies and “devote himself to the creation of a literature that would minister to the ailing Chinese psyche.” The now famous “magic lantern (slide) incident” allegedly took place at the end of Lu Xun’s bacteriology class at the Sendai Medical School. Japanese Visions of Lu Xun in the Light of the Magic Lantern IncidentĪbandoning Medicine to Minister to the Chinese Spirit through Literature ![]()
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