Lu Xun

by Yoshimi Takeuchi, Jon Eugene Von Kowallis (Translator)

Lu Xun (1881-1936), generally considered modern China’s most important writer of fiction, social commentary, and literary criticism, had considerable contact with Japanese of all stripes and was himself a major consumer of Japanese writings. His short stories were translated numerous times by various hands in Japan and have circulated widely there, beginning in his lifetime and ever since. The first major work by a Japanese scholar and public intellectual on Lu Xun’s life and work was that of Takeuchi Yoshimi (1910-1977), which he titled simply Ro Jin (Lu Xun). The late professor Maruyama Noboru of Tokyo University, a critic of Takeuchi, writes that it “exerted a decisive impact on the study of Lu Xun in Japan. Every succeeding student of Lu Xun has been influenced by this pioneering work in one way or another; it has provided the starting point of even those whose viewpoints and conclusions differed from his.” The book has attracted keen interest in China as well, where Takeuchi is considered to have played a major role as Lu Xun’s foremost exponent in East Asia, in some ways surpassing the accomplishments of Chinese scholars in terms of situating Lu Xun at the center of postcolonial intellectual discourse.

Despite the plethora of writing about Lu Xun published in the Western world, the conclusions and, indeed, the viewpoints raised by Takeuchi in Ro Jin have yet to be read or addressed by Western scholars in the nearly eighty years since the book’s initial appearance. That is attributable primarily to the fact that it has never been translated, mainly due to the difficulty of its language. With this volume, that has finally been accomplished. Fogel is a scholar of Sino-Japanese relations, specializing in the impact of Japan and the Japanese on modern Chinese history and culture; Kowallis has been acclaimed the leading Western authority on Lu Xun and his place in Chinese literature. Throughout the years of the Covid pandemic, they engaged together by email on an almost daily basis with this fascinating, challenging, and legendary text, now often referred to simply as The “Takeuchi Ro Jin” 竹内魯迅).

336 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication July 31, 2026

About the author

Yoshimi Takeuchi (竹内 好 Takeuchi Yoshimi, October 2, 1910 in the town of Usuda, Saku District, Nagano Prefecture - March 3, 1977 of esophageal cancer) was a Sinologist, a cultural critic and translator. He studied Chinese author Lu Xun and translated Lu’s works into Japanese. His book-length study, Lu Xun (1944) ignited a significant reaction in the world of Japanese thought during and after the Pacific War. Takeuchi formed a highly successful Chinese literature study group with Taijun Takeda in 1934 and this is regarded as the beginning of modern Sinology in Japan. He was a professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University from 1953 to 1960 when he resigned in protest. He was known as a distinguished critic of Sino-Japanese issues and his complete works (vols. 17) were published by Chikuma Shobo during 1980-82.

In 1931, Takeuchi graduated from high school and entered the faculty of letters at Tokyo Imperial University, where he met his lifelong friend, Taijun Takeda. Together they formed the Chinese Literature Research Society (Chugoku Bungaku Kenkyukai) and in 1935, they published an official organ for the group, Chugoku Bungaku Geppo in order to open up the study of contemporary Chinese literature as opposed to the "old-style" Japanese Sinology. During 1937 to 1939 he studied abroad in Beijing where he became depressed due to the geo-political situation and drank a lot (cf. Second Sino-Japanese War). In 1940, he changed the title of the official organ from Chugoku Bungaku Geppo to Chugoku Bungaku in which he published a controversial article, "The Greater East Asia War and our resolve" in January 1942. In January 1943, he broke up the Chinese Literature Research Society and decided to discontinue the publication of Chugoku Bungaku despite the group becoming quite successful. In December, he was called up for the Chinese front and stayed there until 1946. This encounter what he saw as the real living China and Chinese people, as opposed to the abstract China of his studies, made a deep impression on him. He threw himself into a study of the modern colloquial language and during this time, his maiden work was published, the book-length study Lu Xun (1944).

After repatriation, his essays On leader consciousness and What is modernity? became the focus of public attention in 1948 during the Japanese occupation. It is from such essays that his status as an important postwar critic was gradually acknowledged. After 1949, he was greatly moved by the foundation of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and he continued to refer to the PRC in his articles and books. In 1953, he became a full professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University, a post he eventually resigned from in protest at the abuses of parliamentary voting procedures during the period of civil unrest and protest that arose while the ratification of the revised Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan took place in May 1960. During the struggle, he led the movement as one of the foremost thinkers in post-war Japan under the slogan "democracy or dictatorship". From 1963, he argued in favor of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Cultural Revolution in his magazine Chugoku published by Chugoku no Kai until the diplomatic normalization between Japan and the PRC (1972). He was particularly interested in Mao's "Philosophy of base/ground" (konkyochi tetsugaku) which involves the principle of making one's enemy one's own. For Takeuchi, this was similar to Lu Xun's notion of cheng-cha, or endurance/resistance. In his later years, Takeuchi devoted himself to doing a new translation of Lu Xun's works.

(from Wikipedia)