Library

"Modernity" has various meanings, and it is still one of the hot topics in politics, literature, economics and other fields. The creations of Ryuyuki Akutagawa, a representative writer of the Japanese New Thought Movement around the 1920s, involve multiple perspectives such as space construction, body writing, and civilization criticism. They also contain two narrative dimensions, Chinese and Japanese, and provide a textual reference for us to understand the multiple aspects of "modernity." This book takes the modern Chinese-themed novels written by Akutagawa before and after his trip to China in 1921 as the main line, and uses the "Gendaimono" that describes Japan's Meiji period as a reference. It explores the essence and connotation of "modernity" writing in Akutagawa's literature from multiple dimensions, clarifies his reflection and criticism of Japan's modernization process, and opens a new horizon for re-examining the characteristics of Akutagawa's literature.