| Abstract |
Xian Hu Ji is a collection of fiction written in Chinese in the late Tokugawa Shogunate era. As implied by the preface, the collection is mainly based on the author’s experiences. Therefore, to a certain extent, it reflects some of the events, values, and culture of Japanese society in the late Edo era. Nevertheless, it is quite pitiful that there have been barely any studies on the collection, a result which may be due to the lack of records about the life of the author Imoto Nimui. Despite that, a careful review of the content reveals the author’s profound accomplishments in mastering the Chinese language and his purpose of writing hidden between the lines. By analyzing the content of the collection, one can not only gain insights into the thinking, values, and some cultural features upheld by the Japanese people in the late Tokugawa Shogunate era, but also the presentation of Chinese literature and thinking, as well as the convergence of the Chinese and Japanese cultures. Based on the background mentioned above, this study conducts an in-depth examination of the collection Xian Hu Ji and the author Imoto Nimui; the imitation, adaptation, and quotation of other Chinese texts; and the main purpose of the writing of Xian Hu Ji, in order to identify the values of the collection as a text. |
