On Kazumi Takahashi’s Trip to China：Focusing on the Daily Life of Chinese in <i>The New Great Wall</i>

Abstract

Kazumi Takahashi was a Japanese writer and researcher of Chinese literature, who was active in the 1960s. This paper focuses on Takahashi’s <i>The New Great Wall</i> and discusses the characteristics of Kazumi Takahashi’s trip to China. First, this paper summarizes the content supporting Cultural Revolutionary and the content opposing Cultural Revolutionary in <i>The New Great Wall</i>, pointing out that <i>The New Great Wall</i> has multiple meanings. This paper then compares Taijun Takeda’s and Takahashi’s trip to China, noting that Takahashi’s trip to China is characterized by discovering Chinese’s daily life through Takahashi’s personal experience. Next, this thesis uses watching the ballet <i>The White-Haired Girl</i> as an example to point out the difference in perceptions between Takeda and Takahashi. Takeda’s impressions are biased towards art criticism, while Takahashi’s impressions are based on his own literary ideas. His literary concept emphasized the unique experiences of the individual, so he questioned the collectivistic creation of the ballet <i>The White-Haired Girl</i>. This literary concept was consistent in his essays in the 1960s, and it was this literary concept that allowed him to discover Chinese daily life during his trip to China.