Seeds of Tang: Dunhuang Stories Passed Down from Japan

Author: Wang Xiaoping
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2005-06-01
Features: Since the era of the Japanese envoys to Tang China, the Japanese have been accepting Chinese literature. The Tang manuscripts that have been passed down to this day tell the story of a long history of cultural exchange and have also made Japanese literature one of the most important external resources for Chinese literature. Folk literature, Buddhist literature, and popular literature are all parts of Dunhuang literature that are particularly worth noting, and are also the most valuable parts of manuscripts from the Nara and Heian periods. Dunhuang literature is a treasure of Chinese culture and a focal point of overseas Chinese culture studies. This book starts with the Dunhuang stories that have been passed down to Japan, and through detailed materials and rigorous analysis, it provides a thorough review and exploration of the spread of Dunhuang culture and Japan's cultural reception of it, drawing valuable conclusions. The sun rises and sets, illuminating the meditations of countless cross-sea thinkers; the tide comes and goes, igniting the passions of many book lovers. By comparing the Dunhuang literature materials of China and Japan, the characteristics of Chinese medieval literature, Japanese upper-class literature, and medieval literature become more vivid, and the connections between the two are clearer. "Transmission" means to spread, continue, and expand. This book mainly tells how the seeds of stories originally from the Western lands of the Tang Dynasty, found in literary works such as vernacular tales, took root and developed in Japanese literature.