“中国形象”的话语建构与想象空间--以近代日本人的中国考察为中心

摘要

In the modern Japanese investigations of China, the greatest problem that “China’s image” encountered was not so much the differ-ence between reality and imagination as the internal tension of “China’s image”, namely the problem of “image’s tension”. With such a strained relation, the modern Japanese investigations of China’s image were, from the superifcial level of external imagery, deepened to the study of a series of domains such as the Chinese society’s families or nationality, arts or religion, customs and habits, literary interests, cultural characters and regional customs, which have gradually constructed the China’s image as a “cultural other” different from that of Japan. In this process, the western modernism became the theoretical foundation of Japanese intellectuals’ discourse construction and imaginary space of “China’s image”.%近代日本人的中国考察之中，“中国形象”遭遇到的最大问题，与其说是现实与想象之间的差异，倒不如说是“中国形象”内在的一种张力、即“形象张力”的问题。就在这样的紧张关系之下，近代日本人的中国考察自中国的外部表象深入到了中国社会的家族或国民性、美术或宗教、风俗习性、文学志趣、文化性格、地域风土等一系列领域，逐渐地构建起有别于日本的、作为“文化他者”的中国形象。在这一过程中，西方的现代性理论（Modernism）成为日本知识分子“中国形象”的话语建构与想象空间的理论基础。