A JAPANESE INTELLECTUAL IN NORTH-WESTERN CHINA: INOUE YASUSHI’S TRAVELOGUES OF WESTERN REGIONS JOURNEYS (1977–1980)

Abstract

My Travel Notes of Western Regions Journey describe in detail four journeys of famous Japanese novelist Inoue Yasushi to East Turkestan in 1977–1980. The writer, who is passionate about history of China and its Western regions, visited north-western China as part of a group of Japanese cultural figures against the backdrop of improving Japanese-Chinese relations. The travelogue develops millennial diary tradition of Japanese literature and, according to improved model of describing China in travelogues that developed after Meiji Restoration, demonstrates true state of affairs in changed China, but the close attention is paid to China’s ancient past. The paper examines both application of this principle and complex of representations and images that constitutes an intellectual picture and spatial-temporal unity of region, which were built from the point of view of highly educated Japanese intellectual.