Chapter 21 Chapter 20 Wang Tao’s Journey to Fusang——Exchange and Friendship between Chinese and Japanese Scholars

In the 1870s and 1880s, in addition to the diplomats stationed in Japan and officials visiting Japan sent by the Chinese government, there were also some folk scholars who traveled to Fusang and roamed in Yingdao. They forged deep friendship with people from all walks of life in Japan and promoted the Cultural exchange between China and Japan.Wang Tao is one of the best. On August 21, 1879, nearly a hundred Chinese and Japanese literati gathered in the Nakamura Building in Tokyo, Japan.Someone chanted poems drunk on the spot: This "crazy student" who speaks boldly and wants to leave his name in the history is none other than Wang Tao.

Wang Tao, courtesy name Ziquan, nicknamed Tiannan Dunsou, Taoyuan Laomin, Songbei Yimin, etc., was born in Suzhou, Jiangsu. Born in 1828 in a rural school teacher's family.He was intelligent since he was a child, and he had the ambition to save the world. At the age of 17, he was selected as a scholar, but because of his poor family, he only went to Shanghai to make a living by writing. In 1849, he entered the Mohai Library run by British missionaries, participated in the editing and proofreading work, and polished the Chinese translation of Western books for missionaries. In 1862, Wang Tao was wanted by the Qing government because he was accused of submitting a letter to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom under the pseudonym Huang Wan and took refuge in Hong Kong.During his stay in Hong Kong, he assisted the British missionary James Legge in translating books such as "Zuo Zhuan" and was invited to visit England to give a lecture on Confucius Theory at Oxford University and introduce Chinese culture. The thought of self-improvement. In 1871, he compiled 14 volumes of "The Franco-Prussian War", detailing the just-concluded Franco-Prussian War in Europe, providing the latest knowledge to understand the world, and making him famous. "Prussian Warfare" was soon introduced to Japan, was reprinted and circulated, and also aroused great repercussions in Japan. Japanese scholars admired Wang Tao's name, corresponded with him one after another, and invited him to visit Japan.The editor-in-chief of Japan's "Hochi Shimbun" Kurimoto Hoeun said: "I heard that there is Mr. Taoyuan Wang, who lives in the east of Guangdong today. If you want to travel freely, I would like to be the host.” Therefore, he, Sada Baimao, Kameya Yuki and others jointly initiated the invitation for Wang Tao to visit Japan.

Wang Tao set off from Shanghai on April 23, 1879, sailed eastward by boat, passing through Nagasaki, Shimonoseki, Kobe, Osaka, Yokohama, and finally arrived in Tokyo.He spent four months in Japan, totaling 128 days. Wherever he went, he was warmly welcomed and entertained by Japanese friends, leaving a moving chapter in the history of modern Sino-Japanese cultural exchanges.The Japanese scholar Masao Nakamura praised Wang Tao after he came to Japan, "everything is famous and strives to be friends with Mr. Wen, wine and banquets, there is almost no time for leisure, swimming in mountains and rivers, following like a cloud, extremely prosperous for a while."

People from all walks of life in Japan who interacted with Wang Tao include government officials, celebrities, poets and ordinary people; There are also old and young.Although their status, identities, experiences, and ideological tendencies are not the same, their love for Chinese culture and respect and friendship with Wang Tao are common, reflecting the traditional friendship between the Chinese and Japanese peoples.Wang Tao's profound knowledge and eloquence have made the Japanese admire him very much. "Everyone is willing to pay their respects and fear future generations." ".He even said that he "laughs and curses without fail into poetry".Wang Tao mentioned no less than a hundred Japanese friends in his "Fusang Travel Notes", and introduced and commented on many of them, depicting the image of the Japanese literary heroes in the 13th year of Meiji.For example, he called Oka Chiren "bold and high-spirited", praised Yoshida Yijian as "a man who is upright and magnificent", and praised Nakamura's honesty as "a suave article for a while".

Wang Tao often discusses the general trend of the world and compares Eastern and Western cultures with Japanese friends.In response to the tendency of some people in China and Japan to copy Western culture regardless of national conditions at that time.Wang Tao believes that learning from the West should be analyzed and differentiated, the essence should be picked up, and the dross should be discarded.He said: "If you want to choose what is good and get rid of what is not good, this is the way to go." He also pointed out that to study Western culture, you must learn its fundamentals and not just follow the superficial. Sheng, but in fact, it is still superficial. There are those who do not need to learn and learn, and there are those who must not learn and learn. The problem is that the practice is too sudden, and the imitation is too similar.” ("Fusang Travel Notes")

Wang Tao traveled around places of interest and historic sites in Japan, and described in beautiful writing the Chidori Waterfall in Kobe, the exhibition in Osaka, the climbing of Mount Huading in Kyoto, the cherry blossom viewing in Ueno in Tokyo, the fireworks in Mojiang, and the boating on the Sumida River and Nikko. Mountain View Waterfall and so on.He also went to Korakuen to reminisce about the past, paid homage to Zhu Shun's ink treasures, paid homage to the Tokugawa family temple, and paid homage to Minamoto Yoritomo's tomb. Wang Tao also made an in-depth study of the influence and changes of Chinese culture in Japan.For example, it is described that the Confucian temple in Tokyo has been converted into a library. "When the old curtain was in full swing, the sacrament of Confucianism was extremely prosperous." The books of Japan, China, Thailand and the West are complete, and many scholars at home and abroad have read them." He also discovered many rare books in Japan that have been lost or rare in China.For example, when I saw the "Jitang Anthology" by Sun Baoren, a literati in the early Qing Dynasty, at Chongye Anyi, I felt that "this collection is very rare in China, and I don't know when it will flow into Ridong."

Wang Tao once made careful observations and vivid descriptions of Japanese classical drama Kabuki, and praised "Japanese actors and actresses who are very good at depicting emotions and scenes, and making joys and sorrows".He also compared the characteristics of Eastern and Western drama art, and believed that "Eastern and Western dramas are full of fish and dragons, and the brilliance is different, and the western country wins. The houses, mountains and rivers, trees, boats and cars are all lifelike, and they change instantly, just like castles in the air. Take Japan as the leader."

Wang Tao gave many Japanese friends poems, inscriptions, prefaces, and texts in Japan. In his diary of visiting Japan "Fusang Travel Notes", he recorded a large number of sung and poems, and recorded how he contributed to Ben Duozheng's "Anecdote of Qing History" "As a preface, it is a poem adaptation of Miyajima Seiichiro's "Lixiang Shichao", which "begins to finish after three days of effort".Wang Tao also donated 16 volumes and 78 volumes of his own works brought to Japan, such as "The War of Popularization of Law", "Yingyi Magazine", "Taoyuan Chido" and so on, to the Tokyo Prefecture Library (the predecessor of today's Tokyo Library) .In exchange, the museum also gave Wang Tao 100 copies of "The Great History of Japan" and two large and small globes.Its exchange documents are still preserved in the Ueno Library in Tokyo.

On August 21, 1879, the eve of Wang Tao's return to China, Japanese friends hosted a farewell banquet for him at Nakamura Building in Tokyo.Minister He Ruzhang and Counselor Huang Zunxian also came to the banquet. Chinese and Japanese literati and scholars attended the banquet.Wang Tao sang poems to bid farewell to his Japanese friends on the spot. In addition to the heroic words quoted at the beginning of this article, he also wrote: "Yingzhou Misty Immortal Residence, a hundred days of fate is also a joy." Japanese literati and scholars also wrote poems to bid farewell.As Satoshi Kano wrote:

Masao Nakamura also recited a poem: It fully expresses the sincere feelings of reluctance to Wang Tao.Wang Tao left Tokyo on August 23, and seven Japanese friends, including Shigeno Yasuhiro and Oka Chiren, were sent to Yokohama all the way. On August 29th, Wang Tao returned to China by boat from Nagasaki. When he was parting, he presented a poem to his Japanese friends: Japanese friends admired Wang Tao's articles and knowledge, and asked him to write a diary and publish it in Japan.Wang Tao agreed, so he must write it down every day, and everything he writes becomes an article, like flowing clouds and flowing water, with blending scenes, intimate and natural, and recorded many poems and essays of singing and giving and answering, forming a beautifully written collection of poems and essays in diary style, namely "Fusang "Travel Notes", a book of nearly 40,000 words, divided into three volumes, the upper, middle and lower, was published by the Japanese Hochi News Agency.After the book came out, Chinese and Japanese intellectuals competed to read it.Japanese literati are proud to be included in it, and Chinese literati also learn about Japanese society and the style of the literary world from it.

After Wang Tao returned to China, he was still not reused, so he expressed his willingness to travel east again. When the news spread to Japan, "everyone from the other capital led and looked forward to it."He Ruzhang, the Minister in Japan, also wrote to the Qing government requesting to hire Wang Tao to work in the embassy in Japan, but all failed.Wang Tao is a scholar who has made great contributions to Sino-Western cultural exchanges and Sino-Japanese cultural exchanges. His trip to Japan in 1879 was indeed a grand event in the history of modern Sino-Japanese cultural exchanges.